Allowing pre-orders in one market and normal sales in another market

[BRG202]

Greetings everyone.

I have a product that normally will be available to order for my EU customers and for my UK customers.

The problem is, right now certain products are out of stock in my UK market.

I want to use a third-party app that will still allow me to process pre-orders for out of stock items in my UK market.

But the same products are still available in my EU market.

The problem right now is, because I have inventory in my EU location, it is making the product available for everyone to order, not just the EU.

I need a way to show out of stock for UK customers but in stock for EU customers. (without hiding the product)

So I need my EU customers to be able to order the product as normal if they are coming from an EU location.

What's the best way for me to make certain products only available as pre-order in certain markets but to be available as normal in other markets?

Thanks for any advice.

[Sonya_2025]

Hi @BRG202 

I found a similar post like yours

https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/show-inventory-exclusive-to-location-selected-by...

You can choose to customize your theme or choose a proper app to achieve your needs

Hope this helps!

[Jo_EarlyBird]

Hi @BRG202, 

Josiah here. 👋 We're an Aussie-founded pre-order & back in stock app (Early Bird). We came across a similar question last year - except it was for US and AU. The merchant didn't want to pay for expensive shipping costs shipping from the AU warehouse to US customers and vice versa, when one of the locations was sold out.

TLDR: What worked for them was creating 2 fulfilment locations and 2 shipping profiles which only ships locally. So when one is sold out locally, customers would see it as sold out or preorder only. (Rather than being able to purchase from the other country; in-stock.)

Please see below (hopefully I haven't missed any steps):

1. Go to Settings > Markets. Include the product in both of your UK and EU markets.
2. Go to Settings > Locations. Create 2 locations to separate your UK and EU inventory.
3. Go to Settings > Shipping & Delivery. Keep the general shipping rates, create a new custom profile for your specific product.
4. Add the 2 locations you created under "Locations" as Fulfilment locations (separately).
5. The Fulfilment location has a Shipping zones section; add UK in the first one, then add EU in the second one.
6. Don't forget to adjust shipping rates if needed.
7. Scroll down and you'll see 'Not shipping from these locations'; exclude all your other Fulfilment locations (because we don't want customers to be able to purchase from other countries as in-stock)
8. Since you're only applying this to one product, you might not need a 3rd party app. You can use the back order method - i.e. enabling the "Continue selling when out of stock" setting in your product.
9. You'll just have to find a way to set clear customer expectations that it's a back order product. E.g. Adding to product name, adding to product description, or maybe your theme has built-in functionality to show additional badges and labels with custom text etc.
10. If you want functionalities such as partial payment (deposit) or display the preorder info prominently beyond the product page (cart and checkout), then you can consider using a preorder app like ours.

I did some testing in my test store again before replying here (using US and AU as test countries), our app was able to show it successfully as a back-order and as a pre-order when viewing from the US, in-stock when viewing from AU.

Let me know how you go with the above - fingers crossed it's the same steps and simplicity for your actual store! 

Josiah