How to block sales of certain products outside the US

[Hilary4]

We are about to start allowing sales to overseas customers and are looking for an approach (an app or other workaround) that will help with a shipping issue related to international sales.  We are a retail shop located in the United States, and some of our suppliers have recently told us that we are not allowed to ship their products (or some of their products) to addresses outside of the US (due to licensing or distributorship agreements they have). So we need a way to identify certain products and then prevent their sale to shipping addresses outside of the US.

We have received recommendations for several apps, but upon exploring them, it seems like there is an issue with each one that would make it not ideal for what we need.  Before we consider hiring someone to modify our theme, we wondered if you know of any other apps or other solutions to consider.

This is what we want to do:

Identify certain products in our store (either by putting them in a collection, or identifying them by their title, etc.) that would not be eligible for shipping outside the US.  The customer would still be able to see these products on our site (and maybe even put them in their cart), but in checkout when they enter a shipping address outside the US, they would be prevented from completing checkout until those items were removed from their cart. 

The apps we have been told about so far are:

https://apps.shopify.com/geoip-based-product-blocker#modal-show=ContactSupportModal  (the problem we see here is that we think it blocks the products from being seen on our site depending on the location of the customer’s  IP address.  We would want all our products to be visible to everyone, and we’d only want a customer to be blocked during checkout if their shipping address was outside the US.  If, for example, someone in Australia was placing an order to ship a gift to someone in the US, that should be allowed.)

https://apps.shopify.com/vendor-shipping-rules-1#modal-show=ContactSupportModal  (the problem we see here is that we think it can’t display the discounted rates we would get through Shopify shipping to our customers.  We would still pay the discounted rates when we buy shipping labels, but our customers would be charged rates that we would get from DHL, for example, which would be higher than the rates we'd get through Shopify.)

Any thoughts are appreciated!

[lpenner]

We've been on the hunt for a solution to the same need. Did you ever find something that would work for this? 

[Hilary4]

Hi there,

We ultimately hired someone through Storetasker to create a custom programmed solution for us.  If you decide to go that route, I'd be happy to give you his name.

[lpenner]

That would be great if you could share the contact, thank you! With what they did, are you able to add new brands/products if you bring on a new brand that has the same restrictions, or do they need to edit it for you? I am assuming it is just built into the liquid of your shopify+ store code? Thank you! 

[Hilary4]

We found the person who helped us on Storetasker.  His name is Nasif and his company is called Solver Circle, I believe.  Feel free to say we referred you.  Yes, we can add new products and have them excluded from international sales by just adding a specific tag to the product record.  I hope this helps!

[lpenner]

@Hilary4 Thank you so much! This is exactly what we are looking for.

[Lakshmishri]

Hi @Hilary4 ,
You can solve this issue even without any app. You need to create different shipping profiles for the different sets of products you want to ship within US and outside US. You can create shipping zones under Shipping and Delivery, set the ship to settings & include specific countries, and add the rates for these zones . So, whenever a customer outside the US tries to place an order for product within specific shipping profile, rates won’t be displayed at the checkout.  This way you can handle this isssue. If you require any other customization with the rates, you will have to use an app that handles this scenario.

[lpenner]

@Lakshmishri I couldn't get shipping profiles to work for this since we have some products/brands that can only ship within Canada, but then others that can ship world wide. Unfortunately, since you can only have one product per profile, and the profiles combine shipping together if someone purchases from both profiles, this doesn't work for this situation.