The dropshipping business model assumes that the seller does not maintain their own inventory but instead forwards customer orders to external suppliers or distributors, who then fulfill the orders and ship the products directly to the customer.

This model significantly reduces upfront costs and simplifies inventory management. At the same time, it also comes with trade-offs — such as limited control over shipping times, stock availability, and product data quality — all of which can impact the customer experience. That’s why it's essential to carefully select reliable suppliers and define your niche before committing to this model.

If you're looking to enter the automotive aftermarket with minimal initial investment, dropshipping can be an effective and scalable way to get started. This article will walk you through setting up a dropshipping workflow in X-Cart, including catalog sourcing, inventory updates, and order automation. However, you need to define your niche before you go this route.

Your niche defines the type of automotive products your store will focus on. You can choose to offer a broad catalog of general automotive parts (a General Profile), or you can specialize in a specific category such as Wheels & Tires or Performance upgrades. Choosing a niche helps shape your product offering, marketing strategy, and customer experience.

A General Profile niche means offering a broad range of products to a wide audience. Rather than focusing on a specific category, your store serves a variety of customer needs.

To support this model, you can use one of the following setups:

1. Setup with separate Catalog and Warehouse providers

SEMA Data currently offers one of the most comprehensive and well-structured automotive parts catalogs on the market. Importing from SEMA ensures access to highly detailed, consistent, and complete product data.

Other providers (ASAP Network, AutoSync, CatalogRack) may also be suitable, depending on your business needs.

Keep in mind that each catalog provider has unique strengths and limitations. Brand and product selection, as well as data quality and consistency, can vary significantly between sources. A single product may appear differently in different catalogs—or may be available from one provider but not another. Choose the provider whose catalog best supports your business goals.

The typical workflow includes:

2. Unified provider: Catalog + Fulfillment in one

Turn14 Distribution integration combines a well-maintained product catalog with direct-to-customer shipping through its distribution centers. This makes Turn14 a viable all-in-one solution, eliminating the need for separate catalog and warehouse distributor integrations.

This niche focuses specifically on products related to car wheels, tires, and accessories. It can be easier to manage than a general catalog due to its narrower scope. It's ideal for businesses targeting customers seeking replacements or upgrades in this product category.

Available setups:

1. Setup with separate Catalog and Warehouse providers

This setup allows you to effectively manage your wheels and tires inventory while keeping pricing and stock accurate through your distributor integration. Your store’s catalog will primarily be populated by importing product data from AutoSync, while inventory levels and pricing will be sourced through your warehouse distributor integration.

2. Unified provider: Catalog + Fulfillment in one

AutoSync can serve as both a catalog data source and a fulfillment partner. However, there is a limitation: automated order creation and fulfillment data exchange are not supported at this time. If using AutoSync for dropshipping, you'll need to manually contact their support to make fulfillment requests for your customers.

The Performance niche caters to customers interested in enhancing their vehicle’s power, handling, or appearance. Products may include high-performance automotive parts and accessories, including engine upgrades, suspension systems, exhaust systems, and more.

Recommended setup:

This combination offers a wide range of performance parts, up-to-date inventory data, and competitive pricing. Your store catalog will be populated using product data from ASAP Network, while stock levels and prices will be maintained via warehouse distributor integration.

The specific steps and tasks required to launch a store based on the dropshipping model may vary depending on the auto integrations involved, but the overall workflow remains consistent. The steps below provide instructions and links to relevant information. For more detailed guidance, refer to the articles linked throughout this document.

After reflecting on the key questions about what your X-Cart–based business should look like (outlined in the article What to consider before launching your X-Cart Automotive store), you can move on to setting up your X-Cart store.

The Getting started with X-Cart guide walks you through the essential steps to prepare your store for selling. While most configuration tasks can be completed independently, our onboarding team is available to assist with the initial setup if needed.

Depending on your chosen niche and setup, you will need to install one or more auto integrations. Follow the steps in the Connect an auto integration guide.

Online auto parts shoppers often don’t know the exact name or part number of what they need — they just know their vehicle details. Your X-Cart-based automotive store can be configured to let them quickly filter and find parts specifically compatible with their vehicle. This not only saves your customers time but also reduces the risk of incorrect parts being ordered — a common concern in the industry — and helps minimize returns.

The ability to shop by vehicle for your customers is powered by the Make/Model/Year add-on. This add-on is used by all automotive stores on X-Cart. To ensure the filtering and search functionality for auto parts works correctly for your customers, you must verify that the MMY configuration settings defined in this add-on meet the requirements of your auto integration(s).

See the guide on Set up how vehicles are organized for detailed information.

After setting up your store's MMY configuration, the next step is to import vehicles. Follow the instructions in the Import your vehicles guide.

You will need to configure each auto integration you plan to use. In addition to fields for entering connection credentials, the integration settings page includes sections for adjusting your preferences related to Import Options and Currency & Price Conversion. Some integrations may also include additional settings, such as switching between Test and Live modes, and configurations affecting payment and shipping workflows, among others.

The Import Options section for your connected integrations will likely require special attention — especially if you’re using a combination of integrations (e.g., a catalog provider plus a warehouse distributor). After the initial import of product data into your store’s catalog, you'll need to ensure this data remains up to date. This means scheduling regular updates to refresh previously imported records. The settings in the Import Options section control how these updates are handled.

It is critical that your initial product import is performed via the integration that you intend to use as the primary catalog source. Catalog provider integrations typically supply highly detailed product data (such as images, complete descriptions, and well-structured taxonomy for product categorization), making them ideal for the first import. X-Cart does not limit the number of data sources you can use, so you are free to import from multiple catalog providers if needed. However, if you do so, it’s important to evaluate which provider offers product data that most closely matches the structure and quality you want in your store — minimizing the need for manual adjustments.

During the initial import from a catalog provider, each product added to your X-Cart store will be assigned a SKU and a category:

SKU and category are key identifiers for each product. Once assigned during the initial import, they will not be overwritten by subsequent imports from other integrations. For example, if you initially populate your store catalog using SEMA Data, SKUs will be generated based on the brand-specific settings of brands imported from SEMA Data, and product categories will reflect SEMA’s taxonomy and your chosen category mapping configuration.

When updating previously imported products with data from another integration (such as stock or pricing data from a warehouse distributor), the system will enrich or supplement the original product records. The match between integrations is made using a shared identifier (either SKU or MPN), which you can specify in the Import Options.

To keep your product catalog current, you’ll need to regularly update data from your primary integration (catalog provider). Review the Import Options and specify which types of product data should be updated — such as Product Name, Descriptions, Attributes, Images, Fitments, and so on. Note that these update options only apply to repeat imports. During the initial import, all available product data will be pulled in regardless of the update settings. However, the fields selected in the Update section within Import Options will determine which data types can be overwritten in future imports.

For the integration used as your warehouse distributor, you will also need to configure the Import Options to enable updates for stock levels and prices.

You will need to set up the general settings for catalog import — which will affect the import processes for all of your connected auto integrations. This includes:

See the Set up import rules and preferences guide for detailed information.

After onboarding, your store will come preloaded with a default category taxonomy — a structured category tree where your store’s products will eventually be placed. This default taxonomy is intended as a starting point and will be used by your store unless modified.

Review this preconfigured structure to determine whether it meets the needs of your business. If it doesn't, you're not required to use it as-is. You have full control to customize the taxonomy by editing category names and restructuring the hierarchy of category branches. Alternatively, you can choose to delete the preinstalled taxonomy entirely and instead use the category structure provided by your primary catalog data supplier.

In the first scenario — if you plan to build your catalog taxonomy by adapting the category tree that already exists in your store at the end of the onboarding process — you will need to perform category mapping before importing products from your catalog data provider. This process involves defining rules that determine how product categories from the provider’s taxonomy should correspond to categories in your store. During the import, these rules guide how products are placed into your store’s catalog structure. Category mapping is discussed in more detail in the next step.

In the second scenario — if you intend to replicate the provider’s category structure in your store without changes — you may want to review and clean up any unnecessary categories that were previously added as part of demo data. This step is optional, since X-Cart does not restrict combining categories created within X-Cart with those imported from a provider’s taxonomy. However, removing unused demo categories in advance can help avoid confusion later, when it becomes more difficult to distinguish them from newly imported categories.

In either case, the next step is to import categories from the auto integration, as described in the Bring in product categories guide. For most auto integrations, this is handled as a separate step. Please note that importing categories from a catalog provider at this stage does not immediately alter your store’s visible category structure. Instead, it retrieves metadata about the provider’s taxonomy. Your store’s actual category tree will only be updated after you finalize your category mapping configuration and complete the initial product import.

After completing the initial product import from your primary catalog data supplier (catalog provider), you will also need to import category information from your warehouse distributor and map those categories to your store’s existing catalog structure.

If you need to align the categories of an external catalog (as sourced from a catalog provider or a warehouse distributor) with the categories that you use in your X-Cart store, complete category mapping - as described in the Map categories guide.

Before importing products, you need to retrieve brand information from your primary catalog data supplier (catalog provider). To do this, follow the process outlined in the article Import your brands.

For each brand whose products you intend to include in your X-Cart store catalog, you must configure data import rules. This needs to be done for all auto integrations you plan to use. Instructions for adjusting data import rules at the level of specific brands can be found in the article Customize brand settings.

Important: At this time, X-Cart does not receive data from auto integrations indicating how many products are available for import per brand, nor can it estimate the potential size of the product data. Therefore, it’s up to you to decide products of how many brands you wish to import. If you are launching your store on a basic hosting plan with limited disk space, we strongly recommend starting with a small selection of brands. As your business grows, you can upgrade to a more advanced plan and expand your catalog with additional brands and products. Please refer to the article What to consider before launching your X-Cart Automotive store regarding the size and complexity of your product catalog for more context.

Instructions for importing products are provided in the article Import your products.

If certain types of catalog data were missing during earlier stages of store setup—following the steps in the Getting started with X-Cart guide—and this prevented you from configuring your shipping, tax, or payment settings, you should now have all the necessary data in place to complete these configurations.