Is it possible to have 2 locations with 2 different stocks? 1 dropshippers location and 1 mine.

[Kidsland-co]

Hello 

I have 2 locations I want to set up. One would be a drop shippers location (california) and the other location would be my location (florida) for the stock I have. 

My confusion is that I set up 3rd party fulfillment email and so how will it know when to send that email for items at the drop-shippers location? I'd hate for someone to order an item located at the FL location but not get fulfilled because the email would be sent to the 3rd party in California.... (or for them to receive an email for an item they don't have) Not all of the items are at their location. The only solution I have is to do an order test to see what happens exactly because I am THAT confused. What is the proper way to set this up? 

Thanks in advance.  

[StephensWorld]

Hey Kidsland-Co,

I think the closest thing to what you're looking for is Shopify's "locations" functionality. 

Here's the official help doc: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/locations

Enabling/setting-up this functionality will allow your store to have multiple locations in the back-end admin. Each location can have it's own inventory count.

So you'd want to set up a location for your inventory (Florida) and then another location for your dropshipper (California). However, this only really makes sense to do, if you know what your dropshipper's inventory count is. 

What I'm not sure of is if your '3rd party fulfillment email' will still work with this setup. From what I can tell from the "custom fulfillment service" help doc (https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shipping/fulfillment-services/custom) is that you have to assign the 3rd party fulfillment email to a product as a whole -- I don't believe you can have the fulfillment email only send when it's purchased from a specific back-end location. 

I'd need some more details on how your dropshipping works in order to better recommend a path forward. If you're using an kind of Shopify dropshipping app (ex. Printful, Printify, etc.) then you wouldn't need to track inventory or setup a separate location on the back-end (it should all be automated through the app). If your dropshipper isn't through an app, then it might make more sense for you to just manually email your dropshipper each time an order is placed. 

Otherwise, you might need to make separate products for each location (which I really wouldn't recommend, as it'll be confusing for your customers). 

Let me know a bit more about how you have things set up, and then I can try to give some more guidance. 

Cheers,

Stephen

[Kidsland-co]

Hi, 

Thanks so much for the reply. 

As of now the flow is I send an email to them when I have an order. I have 2 locations set up now as I do have access to their inventory that I update manually twice a week. What did you mean it would be confusing for customers? I think what I should do is have it all at one location for now and send the email manually when I do have an order for them after reading your response. My question then would be, how will the shipping be calculated if that's the case? We have some heavy items so the shipping part would also be a bit of a concern for me. I hope I provided enough detail. Thanks again. 

Amy 

[StephensWorld]

So if you need the shipping charges to be different, depending on which location it's being shipped from, then you DO want to have 2 separate locations. 

When I mentioned it could be confusing for customers -- I was referring to if you split the product up into 2 completely separate products (I don't recommend doing that). Keep it as a single product, with the 2 locations, with each location having it's own inventory and shipping rates. 

Then ditch your 'custom fulfillment' 3rd-party emails, and handle emailing them manually, whenever you get an order. 

This is going to be the easiest (and 100% free) solution for what you're doing! 🙂

[Kidsland-co]

Great! I will do that then. I have will have 2 locations set up so the can each have their own inventory. (the stock I have in FL are different products) So I will start with that. 

So as far as the separate shipping calculations, how do I set this up? Do you have any links for this? 

Thanks a ton! 

[StephensWorld · Accepted solution]

Here's the official help doc for setting up Shipping Settings: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shipping/setting-up-and-managing-your-shipping/setting-up-shippin...

When you're in your shipping settings, click into "shipping profiles".

From there, you'll see a section above the zones that says "shipping origins" ... which will list each of your locations. Note: you may need to click "update shipping" button before this option appears. 

Next to one of your locations, click the pencil icon, and then you'll get a popup box that says "create new rates" and "remove rates".

If you click "create new rates" then it'll reconfigure the page, so that you can set different zones/rates for each of your "shipping origins". 

Then just set up your rates as normal, for each of your 'shipping origins' and you should be good to go! 🙂

The 'shipping zones' are different parts of the world that you want to ship to. Each zone can have it's own set of rates (ex. based on weight, price, or else automatically calculated by your shipping provider). 

[Kidsland-co]

Hi Stephen, 

I set up all my products to one shipping profile. It shows all products with Rates for 2 Locations(california drop shipper & my origin florida) and 2  Zones. (US & Canada) How is it possible that at check out with items from both origins, its showing a double shipping charge....what am I missing?

Thanks again

Amy

[StephensWorld]

If the order has items that are being shipping from 2 different locations (ex. item one is from location A, and item two is from location B), then there would be 2 separate shipping costs. 

It's only if both items can be fulfilled from the same location, that there would be a single shipping cost.