Since 2002, Doba has hosted its own marketplace for drop shipping, catering to all aspects of selling products: manufacturing, distributing, and retailing. Its Web site and platform hosts about 1.5 million unique products from more than 250 suppliers, and thus has the potential to create thousands of buyer-seller relationships.

“We are exclusively focused on managing that supply, in helping retailers and suppliers simplify that process,” said Blaine Nielsen, CEO.

The convenience it provides for both retailers and suppliers has resulted in major growth. In fact, last year’s growth was a 400 percent increase from its 2007 profit, Nielsen said. The company also ranked high on Deloitte’s North American Technology Fast 500 and MountainWest Capital Utah’s lists.

Nielsen and the company attribute much of the past year’s success to its Product Sourcing application performance interface (API). Launched last February, the Product Sourcing API allows retailers to use the company’s supply chain programming within their own applications, for functions ranging between searching product catalogs and pulling shipping information.

Following its launch came ten new partners, though the Product Sourcing API adds to the overall cost and time-efficient services that Doba provides. For one, the company taps into the rising popularity of drop shipping, which Nielsen called “enticing in a recessionary time.”

Online retailers can test their target market and suppliers can market products supplementary to their tried-and-true, without much risk.

“There’s a lot less financial investment in there,” Nielsen said. “Even to the extreme that they don’t make any money out of it, at least they are getting over that hurdle.”

In addition, access to its marketplace saves both retailers and suppliers from most of the painstaking process that usually comes with finding potential customers. The company, after all, strives to combine “the supplier’s distributing ability and the retailer’s purchasing power at a single connection point,” its Web site states.

For 2009, Nielsen hopes that Doba continues to expand in all possible ways, by increasing their number of suppliers, products, and partners.

“We hope to turn the number of new partners into 20 or 30,” he said.

Including back-to-college sales, back-to-school spending makes up the second largest retail season of the year. Nielsen predicted, then confirmed through findings that this past season was “shorter but more intense.” Consumers had waited for more aggressive sales and promotions to appear as the first day of school drew near.

In anticipation of a slower season, retailers cut back-to-school inventories in anticipation of a slower season, according to The New York Times . But consumers also cut their spending, resulting in double-digit sales declines and more fall merchandise left on their shelves.

Sales of digital cameras, MP3 players, desktops and printers all went down during the back-to-school season, according to CNET News . But expected declines in notebook sales and the introduction of new product categories make the holiday season difficult to compare to the months before.

In efforts to cope, retailers have been offering more bargains to move inventory throughout the next two months – resulting in a more drawn-out holiday season than they usually have to bear.

“While low inventory levels may enable retailers to avoid ‘fire sales,’ consumers are looking for deals and value,” said Stacy Janiak, Deloitte ’s U.S. retail expert.

Considering such expectations, discounters fared well during the back-to-school season, and are predicted to be consumers’ primary destination for holiday shopping. After Deloitte found that more consumers will shop at dollar stores for their back-to-school needs, the National Retail Federation found that about 70 percent of consumers planned to shop at discount stores this holiday season.

After offering school supplies for as little as 5 cents each – then seeing growth in September and October – Wal-Mart will continue week-to week savings and Rollback sales throughout the holiday season. It hopes to save consumers an additional $200 million the holiday season, as it predicts low single-digit comparable sales growth going into 2009.

In the meantime, retailers are still advised to promote their deals and values.

“Retailers will likely not be penalized for their lean staffing levels since consumers are focused on value rather than on other factors,” Janiak said. “As we saw in the back-to-school season, price-oriented retailers have an edge in this environment.”