The pointless middle-men of ecommerce.

A drop shipping store is a web "store" that's little more than a form that forwards your order to a distributor or wholesaler or some other real store. The distributor makes wholesale and ships direct to you, the "drop shipper" pockets everything you paid above wholesale as their cut for deceiving you into believing they were some kind of stock-holding entity when in reality you could have gone to the wholesaler and saved money.

It's a niche rife with scammers, hence most payment processors officially wanting nothing to do with them.

Let's say I run a webstore called cookhardwoodfloors.com. I sell hardwood floors, but I don't hold any invetory. When I make a sale, I send an email to another company that holds the inventory. I ask them to ship out the item to my buyer.

That's drop shipping.

Direct from manufacturer to retailer(they don't keep stock).

No, Not from the manufacturer usually, just a third party, and to consumer, not retailers. Some third parties advertise themselves as drop shippers and some don't know they are drop shipping. If I list an iPhone on ebay and instead of shipping it out ( I don't have it) I go to amazon and order it and put the buyers shipping address and have amazon ship it directly to my buyer - that is drop shipping. I am selling something that I don't have in stock and having a third party ship it out.

Listen, I work for a giant manufacturer, I know what drop shipping is. You've given another example of drop shipping, the first being manufacturer directly to retail, without using a distributor. In the end, drop shipping is about cutting out the middle man (distributor, or in your case the retailer).