Occitanie: a student from Mines d'Alès develops a tool to fight against dropshipping
The principle is simple: just paste the links of the items you want to buy and the tool tells you if the product comes from dropshipping, and where to buy it at the initial price on AliExpress, the Chinese site e-commerce in general.
Also read: "Dropshipping": do you know this legal practice that often hides scams?
Jimmy Fayolle is a student at Mines d'Alès and has been developing this tool, available online and on Android, for more than a year and a half. This idea came to him during the first confinement, when he was "hanging out on social networks" and saw many advertisements for dropshipping sites and training to become a dropshipper. "We sell dreams to students who don't have a lot of money and we dangle things for them but very few succeed. I don't find that very moral," he says. The first version of its website was launched in April 2020. On December 24, 2020, everything became official. "We launched it by chance, on Christmas Day", laughs the young Piscénois.
Antidrop is basically a personal project. Seeing the potential, Jimmy was quickly contacted by his school's incubator to attend classes related to business management. Despite this help, he created the site alone. For its Android version, a friend, Adrien Deconinck, made it.
More than 30,000 visitors
Since its creation, Antidrop has accumulated more than 30,000 visitors. The creator regularly receives feedback to improve their site and application. He does not yet receive any remuneration but compensates the costs of the site by donations on Paypal and affiliation. If you decide to order directly from AliExpress, through its site, it will receive a small commission. "The long-term goal is for the majority of users to come from search engines. This will mean that I will be well referenced".
One thing is very important to him: respect for privacy. There is no advertising and all of its services are hosted in France.
Ultimately, the Piscénois wants to create his business thanks to Antidrop. Many updates are to come: improvement of the algorithm and the Android application, creation of an iOS application, development of an extension for browsers. He should be able to count on the help of a comrade who should participate in the development of the project"
"Saying it sucks doesn't get you anywhere"
"PlayStore reviews are very helpful"
"Unfortunately, users will put a bad note when they are not happy, but only rarely put it when they appreciate it", laments the creator of Antidrop. For him, the customer experience is very important "as long as it is a constructive comment".
When dropshippers influence the rating
"I had discussed on Facebook consumer defense groups and they had alerted me that dropshippers were going directly to applications to put bad ratings, on purpose , he confides. It has never happened to me but overnight maybe that will be done to me."
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