Shopify Collective's Communication Issue (From a Retailer)

[SwagZone]

I’ve been using Collective as a retailer for a couple of months, and while it’s a great way to make sales without holding extra inventory, I’ve run into a major issue. Most suppliers don’t respond, and there’s no way to find their contact information.

After clicking "Request Pricing," Collective generates a well-crafted message for retailers to send to suppliers, including the retailer's contact details, but it only provides the supplier’s website with no direct contact info.

Collective is designed to streamline retailer-supplier connections, but the lack of supplier contact information is frustrating.

Without the ability to follow up or ask questions directly, it’s hard to know if the suppliers even see the requests. Since most of these pricing requests are being sent to suppliers who aren’t already on Collective, they’re essentially being sent as an invitation to join the platform. As a result, it feels like the requests may be getting overlooked, or suppliers might not understand the value of responding. This creates a significant bottleneck in the process because I’m left waiting for a response that might never come. Without confirmation that suppliers have even seen the request, it makes it nearly impossible to move forward with any certainty, which delays potential sales.

A solution to this would be either providing retailers with the supplier’s direct contact information (they already see ours) or implementing a system where suppliers can quickly acknowledge or reject the request, so we know where we stand.

Has anyone else run into this or found a way around it?

[wrw1509]

We have experienced the same issue, and have found no solution. It becomes even more critical when you have a customer issue with an order (lost or damaged product). We make it a point before going live with a vendor that accepts us, to contact them by email or phone to discuss the sales pipeline and issue resolution. We also insure that we have good phone and email contacts for the supplier. 

As for suppliers not answering reply's to become a retailer of their products, we have dozens of them who have not replied, and a lot that do reply have no idea why they are listed on collective or what the app is even used for. We've used the opportunity when we run across a supplier like this to explain the benefits and how the program works. In most cases we end up with a valuable supplier. We have even gone as far as to find the contact info on their store and initiate a phone call to the person responsible for their e-com platform to discuss the opportunity. 

While we find Collective valuable there are many things we would like to see improved upon, With over 200 suppliers and growing, many features are missing to be able to manage all the in's and out's of dealing with 10's of thousands of products and the orders associated with those products and suppliers.  

Hope this helps.