That's a dropshipping site for AliExpress products shipping from China. You'll save money if you buy the product straight from AliExpress without a middleman in between.
However as you said, the toothbrush doesn't actually work.
Why is it now a trend to point this out? Marketing foreign-made inventory in your country is a long-standing legitimate business. Most individuals do not want to personally deal with a Chinese outlet.
I think you have misunderstood what dropshipping means.
In dropshipping the business won't have any foreign made inventory and neither will they have any in their country. Instead they will hook you up with a Chinese outlet without telling you.
The Chinese outlet will handle shipping, returns, etc with the dropshipping business just taking a cut for essentially spending money on Facebook Ads. This is the part where you'll deal with a Chinese outlet regardless of your preferences, because the dropshipping company basically did this to you without your knowledge.
They don't have a local stock to replace items under warranty. They don't have a local warehouse to return your item to if you're unsatisfied. They might've never even seen the product themselves and thus cannot even provide support regarding it's use.
So that's why I think it's important to point out dropshipping. It's a completely different thing than keeping a foreign-made inventory. There isn't really any good reason to buy from a dropshipper, because you'll deal with the Chinese outlet behind it regardless.
> They don't have a local warehouse to return your item to if you're unsatisfied
Yeah well that's their problem and not yours. That's the value they are providing! The person who sold you something can't disclaim responsibility for selling it to you, at least under American law.
What value? What kind of logistics value could they possible provide if they don't have logistics in the first place?
It of course is problem of the consumer, as consumer is the one returning the item and the one who ultimately has to deal with a Chinese company that may not even speak English, not to mention the time the package takes to get there for a refund.
While it's the seller's responsibility in theory, yes, they make it very clear that you'll be dealing with a Chinese seller in their terms. Yes, it is your job to read the terms before you buy, however if you do read them, why wouldn't you just go buy from AliExpress after that? Absolutely no extra value buying from the dropshipper once identified.
Because it blew up as a get rich quick scheme / "hustle culture" trend recently as it became much more accessible via internet-based dropshipping facilitators, and there's a lot of people trying to make a buck on it, in sometimes nefarious ways.
Dropshipping is when you order from a merchant and all the merchant does is make an order with your name and address from someplace else. In other words, you could have simply made that second order yourself and saved yourself whatever margin the merchant added on top.
Do note that dropshipping is a very specific term, which does not mean "importing things from another country and then selling them locally", but rather "taking orders from customers and then just ordering a shipment from someone else directly to the customer". For example it would be dropshipping if I made an eBay listing for some product and, whenever someone bought the eBay listing, just ordered the product from Amazon to their address. I never touched or shipped the product; I just made another order posing as the customer.
It's not ethical for someone to clone a more expensive version of some Amazon listing onto another site, and then order stuff from Amazon to whoever buys the listing, pocketing the difference. It's just scummy. Sites like Alibaba really do help because otherwise importing stuff is a lot more manual of a process, but dropshipping on its own is just ugh.
> It's not ethical for someone to clone a more expensive version of some Amazon listing onto another site, and then order stuff from Amazon to whoever buys the listing, pocketing the difference
This is textbook marketing. You connect buyers and sellers and take a profit. You are bringing the product to the attention of a previously-unaware consumer. I can't imagine what you think is not ethical about this.
It's okay when the product they're selling is their own product. Say, Amazon fulfillment. The manufacturer sends their products to an Amazon warehouse and then Amazon handles shipping them out. But if a seller claims to have their own product but then just goes to another listing and buys it to the customer, that is what I think is unethical.
IMHO reselling is OK only if it's disclosed what the original brand of the product is... but even reselling doesn't necessarily imply dropshipping.
Alibaba has a "search by image" feature. It has been the BEST weapon to catch dropshipping.
As a bonus, if it's on Alibaba, you can either A: order a sample direct cheap or B: find the product on Aliexpress and order that way for cheap, too. I love catching scams and flipping the tables to buy it myself at their own price if I think it's nifty.
I built a homemade hot tub system around one of those "ice plunge" bath tubs that seem to be a thing going around these days. They're a rigid inflatable tub, but anyone selling them alongside a chiller sells the tub alone for $500-1000. I found the direct source (Shenzhen Gateo Sports - https://gateo.en.alibaba.com/) and bought one for $200 direct from the factory and love my unbranded tub. ;)
#1 is the website ships globally with no restrictions. A lot of Chinese businesses ship to any country. A local business with their own stock generally won't handle shipping to every single country around the globe. Sure there are exceptions to this rule, but in general it works well as your first sign.
Read the terms and conditions, privacy policy and other more "obscure" information like that. Dropshipping items always ship from China and returns are received to a warehouse in China.
In their Terms of Sale, Sonic Brush mentions that it is rebranding the following product "We are selling the following brand mark : W-White.". So this would be the dropshipping product they buy from AliExpress.
I've wondered if you could make something to floss multiple teeth at once. Maybe something that fits over a span of teeth such as all the top teeth and is custom fitted so that it fits on the same way each time. It would have holes that you can thread floss through so that when you put it on the floss ends up between the teeth. Then you can pull on the ends of the floss and it flosses between all the teeth that the device is covering.
You don’t want the floss just moving in and out between the teeth. The point of floss is to scrub the inside face of each tooth. So when the floss is between 2 teeth you want to press it against first one tooth and move it up and down several times and then press it up against the other tooth and do the same thing.
There’s really no way to do that to multiple teeth at once without something much much more complicated.
I actually had this thought one day. Do billionaires waste time brushing their teeth? If yes, why? If no, do they use a solution that they just stick their face in and it brushes for them?
That's what I'd do as a billionaire anyway. I wonder how I'd solve peeing...
I keep hearing that dentist-grade cleaning is a not-strictly-necessary way for dentists to make money now that their core service has been 95% resolved by fluoride in water and toothpaste.
Outside my skillset to comment on that claim, but I do keep hearing it.
;)