Module B · for the own-store / dropshipping door
Dropshipping beginners get quoted pre-2025 math everywhere: no duty, no returns, ads that pay for themselves. Three things changed or were always true — China-direct parcels lost their duty-free treatment in 2025, about 1 in 5 e-commerce orders comes back, and no store arrives with shoppers. This checker puts all three in the numbers before you spend a dollar.
Benchmarks checked October 2026: average store conversion ~1–2%; e-commerce returns ~20% on average (apparel higher) per NRF / Happy Returns reporting; sustainable break-even return on ad spend for typical products ~2.5–4×. Planning ranges, labeled as ranges — not promises, in either direction.
Line 1
For years, China-direct parcels under $800 entered the US duty-free (the de minimis rule). That treatment ended in 2025. Supplier quotes still show the old, clean product cost — the duty now lands on you, the seller of record. Our checker adds a 25% planning figure for China-direct goods and says so out loud.
Line 2
About a fifth of e-commerce orders come back, and in dropshipping a return usually means the product cost is simply gone — shipping it back to the supplier costs more than it is worth. A margin that ignores returns is a margin you have not met yet. We reserve against every order, by category.
Line 3
A store with no visitors has a 100% margin on zero sales. If your traffic answer is "not figured out yet," the checker says don't start — no matter how pretty the product math is — and points you at a door where the shoppers already exist.
Same person, two models: both start with no inventory and little capital. Dropshipping ships an existing product from a supplier (fast to list, slow to arrive, duty exposure). Print on demand prints your design after the order, usually closer to the customer (no duty question, higher base cost). When the checker says "print on demand fits you better," it means your specific numbers — thin margin, slow route, printable product — point at the other model. The full comparison.
The First Door Kit includes the test-budget worksheet for this door: a capped test, a stop date, and the keep/kill numbers decided before the first ad runs — plus the own-store launch checklist.
Included in the $39 First Door Kit
Yes — it is ordinary retail with a supplier shipping for you. The obligations are the ordinary ones, and beginners miss two: you are the seller of record (consumer law treats the sale as yours, including the FTC rule that you must ship within the time you promise, or 30 days if you promise nothing), and import duties on your goods are your cost, even when the parcel comes straight from the supplier.
'Dead' is a genre, not a fact — the doom articles recruit for the next method. The model still works for stores whose math survives duty, returns, and ad costs; it fails, as it always has, for stores whose math was a supplier screenshot. Run yours above and believe the table, not the genre.
Because most calculators stop at price minus product cost. Ours subtracts the duty adjustment, the payment fee, and a return reserve on every order. If a product only works without those lines, it does not work.
Enough to buy data: roughly 40 attempts at your break-even cost per sale (the checker shows yours). Less than that is a lottery ticket; more than that, without a sale pattern, is a donation.