Multiple Customer Orders, Single Delivery

[Poul_Jensen1]

Hello

i have nanutrade.com and nanufood.dk . 

My question is, how can i give my costumers the option to purchase from my store, say like three different families, who wants to share a shipment. 

The reason is the encreased shipping prices and the shipping cost is very high for just one. 
it is also what i know bigger companies are doing them selves, when the consolidate the shipment. 

So in a way it is a consolidation request. 
If i have say these three families. the all order several boxes of food. We can put them together on a pallette and have it shipped by a ship. 

But is there an app for that or. 
I have been looking and can not find any. 

thank you in advance. 

Poul 

[PaulNewton]

Nothing a direct solution afaik to single recipient ship 🤔, so with anything off the shelf would require cleverness and reframing how some apps are used. This is likely needing a custom app ,and also possibly a carrier api integration(to surface basic info during /checkout shipping step).

At it's most basic your just making sure they all enter the same shipping address, or someone indicate the group address they belong too. Then during a time period any orders with that shipping address, or indication, get consolidated during fulfillment.

That could be facilitated by automation apps, such as usemechanic which is scriptable.

Example starting script https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=tag%20address 

Along with theme customizations so on the frontend customers can get information about the shared shipment, kinda like a membership site where customers can make their own groups.

For other apps tangentially maybe a chance of doing this by using apps that enable a "groupon" like behavior.

Research "group purchase" or "group buying" , or "social cart" apps (see cartonomy app?).

Or custom order form, RFQP apps that can be split into separate draft orders . With then solve the problem of how to designate the primary address for all involved parties.

Or possibly charity apps where everyone puts payments towards a purchase/invoice/draft-order/order. 

Or marketplace apps where the groups sign up like vendors. 

If the store is on shopify Plus your options are greater as you can edit the /checkout.liquid template and affect the checkout process more, and or use checkout-scripts.

Also if on Plus , hypothetically using the B2B feature may be a workaround for this behavior 🤔.

If there is a parallel  process that lets a single customer that places the order for ALL involved parties making a single order/payment then a /cart sharing app, or order form app, can facilitate that use case. 

[Poul_Jensen1]

Soory for the late response. And thank you very much for your detailed input. 

And yes i absolutely see, what the problem here is. 

The problem is, that it is not a simple resuest. 

It is even harder to define the exact search term to find the right solution. 

1) The target market is, first and foremost Greenland. Very remote up north east of Usa and Canada. 

2) everything purchased by the customers are sent to Halifax, CA or Portland, Maine shipping port and awaits the next ship going in that direction. 

So our customers knows it takes a long time, but they dont mind. 

3) NOW every shipment is created and have each their own palette and shipping papers. 

If i just consolidate my self, with out the costumer interference. I prefer they know each other when recieving the shipment, because other wise they will get the palette with out knowing who the others are. 
4) that is why i want them to know each other when doing the order. Like a family or friends sharing a "ride", in this case just sharing a palette. That way when there is a main recipient it is no problem to call the rest of the group and go get it together. 

The shipping company is Eimskip in Canada or Us. 

I hope this elaboration helps a bit. I also helped my own processing of the "actual" problem and description. 

Thanks. 

poul 

[Fulfillman]

If your speaking about delivery rates then normally shipping discount rates are discussed with your provider(s) of choice on a yearly basis based upon expected delivery volumes. You may also coordinate with Fulfillman. They can process multiple orders and delivers it fast bulk shipments using their own Private Line. 

Once negotiated, you can have your dropshippers use your shipping account numbers to process your shipments so you can obtain the worked out discount rates on a per delivery basis.

In relation to normal decrease ship agreements: the vendor normally works out a margin based upon expected sales. The vendor/dropshipper will certainly nonetheless maintain the right to size business with the seller need to fulfil their expectations.