I haven't heard of dropshipping before. It's fascinating.
Dropshipping is a hot new trend - the new key to being a net retailer. The dropshipper, the new version of a wholesaler, supplies the goods directly to the end customer instead of to the retailer, complete with an invoice customised for the retailer. The retailer only has to put up a website advertising the goods, take the orders, and take the money. The dropshipper does everything else. Apparently, the end purchaser usually does not know that the dropshipper was involved, so it makes it easy to start a net business with no up-front stock or delivery hassles to worry about - just a website and a payment system. Very clever. You need to be a bit careful that you choose a good dropshipper, as your own reputation as a net retailer can only be as good as the dropshipper's services.
Apparently, some people selling on ebay are doing nothing but listing products from dropshippers, and don't even have the hassle of delivery to worry about, let alone having bought the product in the first place, or even putting up a website or payment system. Okay, nobody will read the rest of this. You'll be too busy setting up an e-tail business as soon as you can. It does sound like money for jam.
But it also means for products like Blis that listing at a dropshipper makes it easy for lots of other sellers to "stock" your product, as it costs them almost nothing to do so. They just have to add a product page to their website.
It seems that one of the Japanese sites I mentioned is a successful and reputable dropshipper, although I won't say which one in case my foreign language translations are somehow in error. They look like they have extensive connections - they have over 2000 products for sale in the health and beauty section alone, for example. They also helpfully can list their products in sales order (or that's how I read it via translation), presumably for the retailers' benefit, and Epoca seems (via translation) to have made it up to page 45 of 47 in health and beauty after being available for one week. Obviously that is no measure of repeat sales, but would nevertheless suggest some interest in getting hold of the thing.
It makes me wonder how many of the US sites are selling via dropshippers, too. Dropshipping started in the US apparently. However, I wonder who pays for the marketing, or even bothers to do it at all, in such a situation? The dropshipper has little to gain, as they are selling as many different products as possible presumably, while the net retailer is presumably trying to minimise effort all round anyway. Maybe this is why Blis are pushing the global branding idea - to reflect the modern net retail market?
Anyway, the use of dropshipping would seem to raise the possibility that Blis sales might move faster than expected initially due to potentially large numbers of websites listing it straight away.