Can You Dropship Luxury Items Like Louis Vuitton? (2024)

Is it possible to start a dropshipping store selling luxury items or products from large brands like Louis Vuitton?

The short answer is yes. You can dropship luxury items.

In fact, some suppliers focus on providing luxury items for dropshippers to sell.

With that said, there are things you should know before you start.

This article aims to teach you whether you can dropship luxury items, how you can actually do it, the pros and cons of it, as well as the suppliers we recommend using.

Let's start by defining what luxury items exactly are.

What are luxury items?

In simple terms, a luxury item is a product that's considered to belong to an elite group of people.

For dropshippers, this can mean products like:

• Luxury clothing
• Luxury jewelry
• Luxury handbags
• Luxury fragrances
• Luxury accessories
• Luxury furniture

The luxury products that dropshippers sell are usually divided into two categories: branded and non-branded.

Branded luxury products would be from luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein, GUCCI, Iceberg, or Levi's.

Luxury item suppliers like BrandsGateway can get you access to these products.

There are also non-branded luxury products, which you can find from suppliers like Modalyst and MerchMixer.

A good example would be many of the women's clothing products offered by Modalyst:

The non-branded products don't have any brand names attached to them, giving you a chance to brand them yourself.

Can you dropship luxury items or big brands?

As we have gone through already, it's possible to dropship luxury items/big brands.

However, before you start selling, you should make sure the following things are in order:

1. The company you work with has authentic products

To ensure you sell luxury items legally, you should always check that your suppliers work with legitimate suppliers and they have authentic products.

You can usually find this information on the supplier's website.

For example, BrandsGateway has this visible for everyone:

If you can't find the information on the website, you can even call or email them to ask for proof of the product's authenticity.

No matter what you do, you must use your own common sense here.

For example, AliExpress has many knock-off versions of big brand products, no matter what the suppliers would tell you when you contact them.

2. You get approved to sell the products

Not all, but some luxury suppliers have an approval process that you must go through before you can start selling the products.

For example, KidsDistribution first asks you to fill out this form:

After that, you also have to send them an email, where you have to apply to become a reseller with them.

Luckily, many luxury item suppliers offer dropshipping programs that don't require any application processes.

Some of these suppliers are BrandsGateway, BDroppy, and Modalyst.

3. You follow the rules of selling luxury/branded products

You should be aware of some rules before you start selling luxury items/branded products. These will prevent you from getting into any legal issues.

The main ones are:

• You shouldn't misrepresent yourself as the brand. For example, if you sell Calvin Klein's products, you're not allowed to claim to be them or even an affiliate of them. If you do this, their team will most likely find it out and can threaten you with a lawsuit.
• You should make it clear that you're a retailer. When you build your online store selling luxury and branded items, you should make it clear that you're the retailer of the product, not the original brand.
• You don't breach their trademarks. If you sell BMW products, for example, you're not allowed to use their logos, images, banners, or slogans without their permission. Instead, take your own photos and build your own brand around the products.
• Permission to sell. Make sure the goods are permitted for sale in the jurisdiction in which you are selling them (for example, the brand owner already sells them in that region).

We have an essential article for dropshippers on how to not get sued when dropshipping, so check that out if you're more interested in this topic.

Can you dropship Louis Vuitton?

One luxury brand that many people are interested in dropshipping is Louis Vuitton.

There is one supplier that immediately comes to mind when it comes to dropshipping luxury fashion, and that is BrandsGateway. (You can check our BrandsGateway review here.)

However, while offering brands like Gucci, Dior, and Christian Louboutin, BrandsGateway does not offer LV items.

This is because new Louis Vuitton items are exclusively sold in authentic LV stores.

So, what is the conclusion?

You can't dropship brand-new Louis Vuitton items because they are sold exclusively in LV stores. However, with the right supplier, it is possible to sell preowned LV items on your dropshipping store.

You can either try to find a supplier similar to BrandsGateway that offers used LV items (which, at the time of writing, does not exist yet), or check if dropshipping LV from a fashion marketplace like Poshmark or Vestiaire Collective is possible.

The pros and cons of dropshipping luxury items

Luxury items are not the easiest product group to get started with, but they can offer high profits when done right.

Let's go through the pros and cons of dropshipping luxury items.

The pros

Let's start with the pros!

1. Brand recognition

This is a big one.

When you sell products from luxury brands like Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, or BMW, you already have massive brand recognition on your side.

When a potential customer sees a product from a luxury brand in your store, your store appears more valuable to them.

You have to keep in mind that your store has to be trustworthy for this to work in your favor.

If your store, ads, or product pages don't look trustworthy at all, this will work against you.

Related articles:

• 14 Best Shopify Tools to Build a Great Store (Free & Paid)
• 10 Standard Pages for a Shopify Store & How to Create Them

2. Possibility for high profits

Because of the premium price of luxury items (high-ticket), the profit margins can be higher.

What also makes the profit margins higher is that the luxury suppliers usually provide the luxury items at a discounted price.

For example, see what BrandsGateway states about their prices:

This is usually the case for all luxury item suppliers (that they offer discounted prices).

It's good news for you as a seller.

3. High barrier to entry

This is both good and bad.

For beginner dropshippers, it may be a bad thing.

For more advanced dropshippers, it may be a good thing.

Because selling luxury items requires more capital, better marketing skills, and authentic suppliers accepting you to their program, it doesn't attract many dropshippers.

If you're serious about it, you can have an excellent opportunity to stand out.

Luxury item supplier BDroppy even has a unique program called 'Be The Only One' where you have the opportunity to be the only one selling luxury items in a specific country.

To apply, you already have to have an established ecommerce business.

The cons

Next, let's go through the cons of dropshipping luxury items.

1. Startup costs can be high

Many luxury item suppliers, like KidsDistribution and TicDistribution, require you to place a minimum order value at one time. For example, for TicDistribution, the amount is 400 euros.

For KidsDistribution, the required minimum order value is 200 euros.

This can raise the need for a warehouse from your side, as you potentially have to store the products (it can get expensive).

The companies that don't have minimum order value usually have monthly plans that you have to pay, which can get expensive, too.

With BrandsGateway, for example, the cheapest plan for dropshippers is $297 per month.

This may not be a dealbreaker for you, but something you should keep in mind.

2. Not beginner friendly

The barrier to entry for selling luxury items is relatively high.

Why?

Here are a few reasons:

• More testing is needed. Usually, with high-ticket products, you must spend more money on advertisements to test whether you can make the product profitable. It's not an ideal situation for beginners who have a limited budget.
• Marketing skills. You need advanced marketing skills to make your luxury product store stand out. This is because you have to sell more of the lifestyle than the actual product. Who would buy a watch for $1,000 to see a time, right? The reasons for buying luxury items are more emotional than logical.
• Design skills. If you want to create a successful luxury dropshipping store, your store has to be highly trustworthy for the buyer. If you're creating an online store for the first time, it may be hard to know how to make it trustworthy and visually appealing simultaneously.

3. Reputation risk

Like Warren Buffett says:

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

If you end up partnering with luxury item suppliers that offer fake products, you will get in trouble fast, and it may cause you reputation problems.

This can even happen accidentally.

If you end up selling knockoff products, your brand can get bad reviews and reports to Facebook and even Shopify, and your store may be shut down.

Also, customers may want to return their products when they realize that they are fake and of bad quality. This can get expensive.

How do you start dropshipping luxury items?

Next, let's discuss how you can actually start dropshipping luxury items.

This consists of five steps, each of them equally important.

Let's get started!

1. Sign up and set up your Shopify store

We recommend Shopify as the platform for most people looking to get started dropshipping luxury items.

Why?

Simply because the available integrations with the luxury suppliers are best for Shopify stores.

As an example, MerchMixer, a supplier that has some available luxury products, is designed mainly for Shopify stores.

So, go with Shopify if you want your integrations to be easy.

To get started with Shopify, head to their website and click on one of the free trial buttons.

If you want to save time, you can sign up using our link here and get a free 3-day trial + 1 month for $1.

You need to go through Shopify's signup process, which shouldn't take more than ten minutes.

Shopify will ask you basic questions about your business, like what you plan to sell, where you're located, and other business information.

Once you finish the registration, you will get access to Shopify's admin dashboard!

If you need help setting up your Shopify store, we recommend you read the following article:

• How to Start a Shopify Store: The Definitive Guide (2024)

You're ready for the next step once you're done with the basic Shopify store setup!

2. Choose the luxury products you want to dropship

As part of the second step, it's essential to ask yourself: what luxury products do you want to dropship?

Most luxury dropshipping suppliers focus on a specific niche, so you should have an idea of your niche before selecting a supplier.

To help you select your niche, let's go through the main luxury product categories.

For each category, we will also recommend available suppliers.

Luxury fashion products

Probably the most popular category of dropshipping luxury items is luxury fashion products.

Luxury fashion products involve:

• Clothing
• Shoes
• Bags
• Sunglasses & frames
• Jewelry
• Backpacks

The good news is that there are suitable suppliers available for these categories.

If you're looking for suppliers that cover all of the above, we recommend checking out BrandsGateway, BDroppy, Griffati, and AppScenic.

If you're dropshipping kid's luxury fashion products, a good option could be KidsDistribution.

Using the above suppliers, you can find products from these brands:

• Calvin Klein
• Versace
• Bikkembergs
• Burberry
• Gant
• Kappa
• Tommy Hilfiger
• Michael Kors

And 200+ other luxury brands.

Luxury fragrances

A more niche option for dropshipping luxury items is fragrances.

It's still an option many consider. If that's you, we recommend you check out FragranceX, a luxury supplier focusing on fragrances.

You can find over 15,000 brand-name fragrances with them. Some of the most popular ones are:

• Hugo Boss
• Christian Dior
• Bvlgari
• Givenchy
• Ralph Lauren
• Jimmy Choo
• Mont Blanc
• Kim Kardashian

They don't have a dropshipping program, which is the only downside (you must fulfill orders manually). This is still possible if you're committed to it.

Luxury watches

Luxury watches are an area that interests many who are looking to dropship luxury products.

TicsDistribution is one of the leading luxury suppliers in this area. They're a supplier focusing only on watches.

Some watch brands you can find from them are:

• Tommy Hilfiger
• Michael Kors
• Marc Jacobs
• Emporio Armani
• TAG Heuer
• Tissot
• Fossil

TicDistribution has over 4,000 different watch models available in its catalog.

Disclaimer: If you're a beginner, be cautious about dropshipping watches. You can learn more in this article: Please DON’T Start Dropshipping Watches (4 Reasons Why)

Luxury furniture

Furniture is also an area where you can find interesting luxury product opportunities.

If that piques your interest, we recommend checking out luxury product suppliers Modalyst, MerchMixer, and AppScenic.

Using these suppliers, you can find luxury furniture products like:

• Outdoor furniture
• Cabinets & storage
• Bedroom furniture
• Home office furniture
• Kitchen furniture
• Bathroom furniture
• Furniture accessories

Most of the furniture products that these suppliers have are not branded. This means that you have the opportunity to fully brand them yourself.

Luxury accessories

Luxury accessories involve products from all niches.

These are products like:

• Hardware accessories
• Arts & craft accessories
• Car accessories
• Sports accessories
• Garden accessories

If you want to dropship luxury accessories, you should take a look into Modalyst, MerchMixer, and AppScenic.

All of these suppliers have luxury accessories in many different niches.

They also have the most extensive product catalogs from any supplier we listed in this article.

3. Do supplier research

Now that we have gone through the recommended suppliers, it's time to do supplier research.

You might wonder: didn't we already do that?

Yes, but there are other things you want to know about your potential supplier.

Some of these things are:

• Do they have a minimum order requirement?
• Do they require a monthly plan to get started?
• What is their return & refund policy?
• What their customer service is like?
• How long their shipping time is?

Most of these things you can find directly from the supplier's website.

Let's take BrandsGateway as an example.

You can access their pricing section from the website header.

To see their refund and returns policy, we checked their dropshipping page, where we found this.

In the same way, you can usually find all the required information directly from the supplier's website.

If you can't find something, you can email the supplier (you can also find public contact details from every supplier's website).

Related article: 9 Best Luxury Dropshipping Suppliers in 2024 (Free & Paid)

4. Integrate the supplier with your store

Once you know what supplier you want to go with and you have selected a paid plan (if they have one), it's time to integrate them into your online store.

The integration process differs from supplier to supplier.

Some offer direct integrations with ecommerce platforms, and some don't.

You can usually find this information directly from the supplier's website. For example, BrandsGateway shows it clearly on its header bar.

Not all suppliers directly integrate with ecommerce platforms, but most do.

If that's a priority for you, make sure that the supplier you select has an ecommerce platform integration available.

To show you how easy the integrations usually are, let's go through the integration process of BrandsGateway.

As you see from the above image, BrandsGateway has Shopify integration available.

This usually means that it can be found directly from the Shopify App Store:

To start the integration process, we have to click 'Install.'

After this, you have to go through a simple installation process.

This is also usually where you have to select your plan. BrandsGateway has two available plans, so you must select one.

While BrandsGateway is quite expensive, some of the suppliers are even free, so keep that in mind if you have a tighter budget.

Once you have selected your plan, BrandsGateway will appear in your Shopify store in the 'Apps' section.

After this, you can also start importing luxury products directly to your online store.

5. Start advertising your products

As a last step, after your online store is set up, you have your supplier selected, and you have imported the products, you can start advertising the products.

We will not go through a whole advertising strategy here, but we want to share a few tips for advertising luxury dropshipping products.

Think about your target demographic

This can make or break your advertising efforts.

Before you spend any money on ads, think about what your target demographic is.

Because you're dropshipping luxury items, most likely, the target audience is rich people.

Someone interested in Lamborghinis is much more likely interested in your luxury products than someone interested in Ladas.

Or, a person with a high rank in a company is more likely to be interested than someone earning minimum wage.

Think about this when setting up your ads.

This is especially important for paid advertising, where you can add interest to the people who receive the ads.

Try out different platforms

Depending on your product and target audience, the best platform for advertising your product may vary.

You should consider trying:

• TikTok (both paid ads and organic)
• Instagram (paid ads, organic, and influencer marketing)
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• Pinterest

Sell a lifestyle, not a product

What does 'sell a lifestyle, not a product' exactly mean?

Luxury products are considered to be high-ticket, meaning they are expensive to sell and buy.

If you sell these kinds of products, you must sell a lifestyle behind the product, not just the product itself.

Someone buying a $5,000 Rolex watch doesn't care about the time (easier to see from a cell phone). They care about what the watch represents and the respect they receive from society when they wear the watch.

In the same way, your advertising efforts need to emphasize the lifestyle behind the product (instead of just telling the consumer they can see time with the watch).

Be clear with your customers

This is especially true for luxury products, which are expensive, and customers demand nothing but excellence.

You want to be as clear as possible with your customers.

These things can help:

• Have high-quality ad images and videos.
• Clearly show all necessary shipping info (especially how long it takes).
• Explain your available return and refund policy.
• If you have insurance for the product, make sure you explain the details.
• Make sure your website looks trustworthy.
• Make sure the process after the order is as smooth as possible for the customer to minimize returns and refunds.

These advertisements and website-related things should positively affect your dropshipping sales!

If you want a more comprehensive look into how to advertise your dropshipping store, the following articles can help:

• Marketing for Dropshipping: How to Pick the Right Method
• 14 Ways to Advertise Your Dropshipping Store (No Facebook!)

FAQs of dropshipping luxury items

To better understand how dropshipping luxury items work, let's look into a couple of frequently asked questions about it.

Taking action

Reading and absorbing information and knowledge is great (definitely if it's free!), but do you know what's even better?

Taking action!

So, to help you with taking action with what you have learned in this article, take a look at the bullet points:

• Your luxury item supplier depends on what you want to sell. When researching, you will quickly discover that most suppliers offer different products. If you don't know what to sell, you can do some product research to find out what the market wants.
• Compare luxury item suppliers. After you have some kind of idea of what you want to sell, you can start comparing the luxury item suppliers.
• Select your luxury item supplier. Once you have compared the different suppliers, you should select one. Check out if they have a free plan or trial available that you could use to test out the platform.
• Confirm that the products are original. Before you start selling, we also recommend you double-check that the products are authentic and from original sources. This can usually be found on the website or directly contacting the supplier.
• Integrate the supplier to your online store. As a last step, you should integrate your luxury item supplier into your online store. For most people, we recommend Shopify as they have the best integrations available for luxury item suppliers.

Conclusion

That's it.

Our guide for dropshipping luxury items and big brand products.

As we mentioned multiple times in this article, the first thing before you start to sell is to always confirm that you work with authentic suppliers.

This will help you ensure that you don't run into problems in the long run and that your brand reputation stays high.

If you have any questions about luxury product dropshipping, feel free to leave them below! Or, you can contact the suppliers directly.

Good luck!

Want to learn more about high-ticket dropshipping?

Ready to move your high-ticket store to the next level? Check out the articles below:

• The 10 Best High-Ticket Dropshipping Suppliers in 2024
• 16 Great High-Ticket Dropshipping Product Examples in 2024
• Can You Do Dropshipping Worldwide in 2024? (Know This First)

Plus, don't forget to check out our in-depth how to start an high-ticket dropshipping store guide here.