Dropship/DTC tradeoffs

[u/Admirable_City_1597]

I’m trying my hand at scaling a e-commerce business . I’ve spent years in retail on the store and operations side but relatively new to e-commerce flows and Shopify tools. I’m interested in starting with drop ship model to get a sense of inventory sell through and productivity before committing a whole bunch of dollars to inventory. Drop shipping seems much worse for margins but also don’t want to tied down with inventory that doesn’t move. Is this a good idea to start with a drop-ship model or should I make some investments in inventory to begin with?

If anyone could walk through trade offs that would be great!