What are your thoughts on the Shopify Collective platform?

[Dascalargo]

This isn't a question, per se, though I'm sure I'll have some. Rather, I wanted to offer my unsolicited (and likely unwanted) feedback on Shopify Collective, both in the hopes that it'll help improve the product and may answer questions for some of you who are contemplating signing-up.

First—and this isn't criticism of Collective, but rather on how the Shopify Community sees Collective—it's nearly impossible to find anything about Collective here because when you search COLLECTIVE, you get every thread that has questions about COLLECTIONs.

OK, onto Collective, starting with what I really like:

• The initial setup works well. I found it easy to use (having gone through both the retailer and supplier setups). It's also pretty painless for the retailer to import the supplier's products.
• I'm glad they thought to let a supplier have multiple price lists for their products.
• It was smart that the programmers created Collective (Supplier) as a sales channel, so a supplier could, if they wanted, setup a product that is used only for Collective, and doesn't appear online.
• I am thrilled that when a supplier fulfills an order, the corresponding order on the retailer side is also marked and the customer gets an automated email from the retailer.

The stuff I like less:

• If the price and SKU must remain the same between the supplier and retailer, those fields should not be editable on the retailer side. (I figure that'll get corrected when too many retailers who haven't read the documentation annoy support asking why they can't change the price.)
• Both a supplier and I (as a retailer) have automatic payments turned on, but our relationship has automatic payments off. Not sure why that's the case (and don't have time to look into it right now).
• I think it sucks that Collective reports are not available to Shopify Basic subscribers. Perhaps they shouldn't have the same depth of reports, but none?! I don't need them, but that missing is going to make it nearly impossible for some smaller stores to track their sales.
  • Side note: "Collective reports are available to Standard and Advanced plan users." Please make up your mind about what that middle plan is called. There is nothing listed as "Standard" in plans.
• Here's my big issue, a true hate: The packing slip generated is the supplier's. Um, no. Unacceptable. When I kept getting nags that I had to update my packing slip, I had hopes that it was because they were laying the groundwork for suppliers to be able to print retailers' packing slips, but that is not the case.
  • The customer is the retailer's customer. My payments to the supplier do not cover customer service, nor should they. So why is the supplier's address, phone number, email address, and website printing on the packing list?
  • Future business from that customer should continue to go through the retailer, not the supplier. Again, the info provided to the customer is counterproductive in that regard.
  • Yes, I could send my own packing slip manually (and will henceforth) but then why am I using an app? The data is there. Use it.
  • Either print a barebones packing slip using whatever basic store info is imported with the order or, the better option, use the retailer's template.
• As a retailer, I'd also prefer to see my name on the return address for Shopify-generated labels, or no name and just an address—as most dropshippers will do—but I'm willing to let this one go as there may be reasons why the label must have the supplier's info on it.

Features I'd add I could:

• Better notifications between supplier and retailer:
  • A supplier added new products after I imported what I thought was their entire catalog. I only noticed because I happened to look.
  • A supplier changed retail prices after I had imported their products and I received no notification.
  • I haven't had it happen yet, but what happens if a supplier changes their cost and/or shipping? Is there a notification?
• Sync timeline comments between the corresponding retailer and supplier orders, either by default or by using @ tags, so we can share notes about an order.
• Why must the retailer use the supplier's price? That's certainly not how it works in the real world, nor with dropshipping, so I'm wondering if that can be changed or if it's a technical limitation.

I know some folks have been using Collective longer than I have, so if you have answers to the questions I posed above I welcome your input. Likewise if you're new to, or are thinking about using Collective, and want to know about how it works in certain situations, I'm happy to share what I've learned. I found the help docs wanting.

One final question: Anyone know if there are liquid objects for Collective orders published somewhere?

[BOTORI]

I have seen that you can change the price, however it doesn't change the agreed supplier margin (if you make price higher or lower). 

[Dascalargo]

Can you, @BOTORI? I tried and while I can change it on the product card, it remains the same on the customer-facing product page. My change is totally ignored.

[jro13]

How do returns work as a retailer?

[Dascalargo]

The help files suggest to both the retailer and the supplier that they discuss how to handle returns ahead of time. As a retailer, I want returns to come to me. For all intents and purposes, I have already paid for the product. But I also have a brick-and-mortar and can add returned items back to inventory, whereas some retailers probably don't want that.

Regardless of where the return is going, the customer return needs to be handled by the retailer. That transaction is always between the customer and the retailer, so if there is a refund to be issued, that's the retailer's responsibility.

In my case, the return would come back to me, I would refund the customer, and that'd be the end of it. I don't usually pay for return shipping for regular returns, but if it was damaged or wrong item, I would generate a label as I would for any other return.

If the return is to go to the supplier, the retailer would request a return on the order, but that is totally independent of the retailer's refund to the customer. If the item is going back to the supplier, the supplier would generate the label. (Edit: The supplier would have to send the label to the retailer, who would, in turn, snd it to the customer.) Once that happens, if the supplier and retailer have automatic payments setup, the refund is also automatic. Otherwise, the supplier would handle a refund or credit manually.

Return shipping is not handled by Collective. If the supplier is supposed to be reimbursed by the retailer, that has to happen separately. I am unsure what happens to the original shipping charge if you have automatic payments setup, whether that gets refunded to the retailer when the supplier authorizes the return. The help docs don't say, as far as I can tell, but I'm assuming it looks to the supplier just as the return to the customer looks to the retailer (i.e. you can choose to refund less than the full amount).

The retailer can request a cancelation before the supplier has fulfilled the order. If the supplier agrees, then the retailer's order is updated by the system to reflect that. In that case, there is no refund necessary from supplier to retailer because the supplier doesn't get paid until the order if fulfilled.

[Beacon]

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@Dascalargo wrote:

First—and this isn't criticism of Collective, but rather on how the Shopify Community sees Collective—it's nearly impossible to find anything about Collective here because when you search COLLECTIVE, you get every thread that has questions about COLLECTIONs.

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THIS. I even tried adding quotes when searching "Collective" since some other search environments use that format to exclude similar results. No luck. 

As for the OP assessment of collective, I have yet to gein access personally, but agree with all these points. They are important. Big +1 from me.

[RoofTopOverland]

Totally agree. Been surprised at how little info I can find on how it works, much less if. Even the interweb has limited worthwhile content I can find on the processes. Great post overall. Thanks for sharing

[denimdaisystore]

I agree with everything said - I wish that the packing slip and shipping label were shown as coming from the Retailer, and not the supplier

[RandomActsofArt]

Thanks for this post. I was looking for more information before I moved forward with adding the app. The information from Shopify is lacking. The packing slip is a major issue for me and will stop me from moving forward at this time. I guess I'll check back eventually to see if they get that resolved.

[Dascalargo]

Yeah... I'm not worrying too much about the mailing label, but the packing slip is definitely a major issue. My volume is low enough that I just email the supplier one of my packing lists, and they've all been great about using it instead of their own.

[CuratedMass]

We are a supplier, and while I agree with you that the packing slip should read the retailer info so that your customer can look to you for customer services, Shopify should be providing that packing slip as the packing slip within the order to print. Your volume may be low, your supplier’s volume may not be.  To stop and print a packing slip outside of Shopify if a supplier mass batch prints and ships would not be an easy task.  A smaller supplier may indeed have the capability, expectations should be placed on Shopify for this task. 

[Dascalargo]

I could not agree with you more.

[TransportParts]

Does anyone know how the inventory and SKU's are tracked from the supplier side? We use Quickbooks to track inventory. When someone places an order from our Shopify store, it auto feeds the SKU to quickbooks to update our inventory. From what I'm reading, retailers don't use our SKU so how would my systems know what is sold. Does the SKU feed through on my end but not show on theirs? Any help is appreciated! 

[Dascalargo]

I use QBO for my inventory, as well. When you import products from the supplier, it gives them SKUs that start "sku-" follower by a number. That product will sync into QBO, but it’s inventory will not sync back to Shopify.

[TransportParts]

I don't need Shopify to sync inventory as we set everything to 0. I just
want to make sure that if I'm a supplier, it feeds to QB correctly and
doesn't mess up my inventory by not feeding through from Shopify
Collective.

[Thomas_Mains]

I can't believe this is still an issue with the shipping label and packing slips. We're fairly new to the Shopify Collective, and are only receiving a couple of orders a week from the Collective retailers, which we're currently manually changing the addresses to reflect the retailers address. Yet if we start receiving more orders from Shopify Collective, we'll need to make a decision as to how much time is being taken away from fulfilling our customer orders.  

[mtelebishop]

I'm a supplier selling skis and ski bindings. At the end of our winter season, it is typical to mark down our inventory with big discounts. I am trying to figure out how my retailers can also mark down my products to match my discounts. Right now it looks like they'll simply pay it out of their margin, or even go "negative" for discounts greater than their margin.

Has anyone figured out how to manage discounts with retailers?

[curbside]

Hey!  I've just heard about Shopify Collective and working on setting up as a supplier.  You mentioned that a product can be setup just on the collective and not on our own online store.  Can you help me on how to do that?  When I go to setup a price list and add a product, it is the products I currently have in my own store and I can't adjust the prices.  Thanks!

[Dascalargo]

Hi @curbside,

When you become a supplier in Shopify Collective, you'll have a new sales channel called "Collective (Supplier)." Just as you can make a product visible or not on any channel (Online Store, POS, Shop, Google & YouTube, etc.), you can make your product show or not on the Collective (Supplier) channel,

If you already have the products on your site, but want to have different pricing for Collective, you can make copies of the products. Keep the originals visible on your Online Store (and any other channels you use), but make sure the Collective channel is NOT checked. Then make the copies visible on ONLY the Collective (Supplier) channel.

Make sense?

[curbside]

That makes sense!  Thanks so much!

[Nesha_12]

Hello,

I am worried about retailers use the same content as supplier(us), creating duplicate content issue on the web. I found your suggestion above for copying products and making them visible only to Collective channel might work for this? If we can change the content on these products, but keep the other information the same? Then they would still be synced in terms of inventory? Any other issues might occur in this scenario if it is possible to do?

[pbsnyc]

It would be great to setup different titles and descriptions and even pricing to be used for Collective. But I guess the previous suggestion to dupe products and make only available to Collective is the workaround for that.

[Dascalargo]

@pbsnyc You can edit the title and description. I do that with most of my listings. You just can’t change the SKU or price.

[pbsnyc]

yes I do the same on the retailer side. Sorry I was referencing features I'd love on the supplier side. 

[MHonig]

I agree with everything you've said. We are super excited to use Collective as a Retailer as it helps us round out our offerings. It seems it has SO much opportunity to grow and I hope it does. Our issue, as a retailer, has been trying to figure out how to post and sync these transactions with QB. The inventory shows up in Shopify, but of course, it is not physical inventory in our warehouse. If we manually add all those products to QB, I believe that will help the posting and syncing issues. But is it then going to make it look like I am carrying huge inventory when I'm not, in QB? Has anyone had any experience with this side of Collective?

[Dascalargo]

Hey @MHonig,

I’m using Quickbooks Online. I'm not sure where your issue is.

When the Collective products were added in Shopify, they synced over to QB, but they all have no inventory and no cost. Is that not what happens with yours? Or have you not gotten that far in the process yet?

[MHonig]

Hi and thanks for replying! I am pretty sure we are on the desktop version of QB but am checking with my accountant to confirm. Do you use Webgility? Or do you sync directly between Shopify and QB? We are still trying to figure that out.

[SerinaLee]

Run into an issue on payment. My autopayment is on. But if an order I received is not processed through shopify payment, how do I pay my supplier? Any advise? Thanks.

[pbsnyc]

If it is processed by Shop Pay, Shop, or Affirm/Klarna methods.. they tend to have a longer delay time for processing but all eventually go into your Payouts. The issue I cam across with this is that it "misaligns" with timing of when Collective debits the COGS+shipping and result in that order getting stuck. Because now the payout funds isn't available and unfortunately Collective doesn't debit from your bank (which is ridiculous). On top of that... there is no clear transparent ledge of activities siimilar to what you see in your bank account. So it's hard to even know when Collective will make another attempt to debit. The workaround I've had was to reach out to the supplier and ask them to send me a separate invoice and provide the tracking number, to which then I request to cancel fulfillment on the original stuck order (or else Collective will continue to attempt the debit), and manually fulfill the original order with the tracking info. It's not clean on the supplier's end so your mileage may vary.

[SerinaLee]

I totally agree with you! It's annoying that it can't withdraw from the connected bank. I talked to a support when I first ran into this issue, he told me it will withdraw from my bank, which was not true at all. I waited for a couple days and nothing happened. I talked to a second support, he couldn't provide much help either. It seems their support knows very little about the app..

[SerinaLee]

Thanks for sharing! I'm going to get on Collective soon and couldn't find much info about it online. This really helps!

[Dascalargo]

Glad you found it helpful. Be sure to add any of your own thoughts once you’re up and running.

[SerinaLee]

Did you put on waiting list before approval? I signed up last week but still on waiting list.

[Dascalargo]

We were not put on a waiting list, but we also started quite some time ago. It’s possible that they now have more signups than they can handle.

[SerinaLee]

I see. I just read some people said it was over a month and still not moved off the list. I'll wait and share how long it takes for me.

[kaseykrom]

I just joined the waitlist today. Have you moved off the waitlist yet?

[SerinaLee]

I haven't. It turns out all sales have to come from Online store channel, which I still fall short. So... hopefully soon. If you think you met the requirement, you can contact the support and ask them to set up for you.

[pbsnyc]

The workaround for this is to get invited by a supplier.

[Adronet2]

I’m so confused by collective!?  How do I find suppliers?  Is it only by sending out “invites” to a supplier via email? I don’t know why but I assumed there would be a list of retailers that I could look through to add them myself? Am I missing something? 

[TransportParts]

I thought the same thing. It doesn't seem to be set up to streamline the
process.

[Dascalargo]

@Adronet2 and @TransportParts,

I don’t think you missed anything. Collective is far from perfect. Currently, it works best for managing retailer-supplier relationships that were established elsewhere, though you can send an invitation. Its primary focus is order processing rather than discovering new suppliers.

I initially adopted it to streamline processes with existing vendors. Previously, I worked with small vendors who drop-shipped products—a practice that often gets a bad reputation but can be valuable when dealing with independent makers. Before Collective, I had to manually create product pages (without inventory access), take orders, place fulfillment requests with suppliers, and then process payments. Now, that entire workflow is significantly easier. I can import product pages and adjust them as needed, view inventory levels in real time, and once an order is placed, fulfillment is mostly automated.

Collective has also been useful when I come across potential suppliers using Shopify. I can introduce the idea of working together through Collective—often explaining the platform to them in the process. One key advantage is price synchronization: when a supplier raises their prices, mine automatically adjust as well. While this has both pros and cons, it eliminates the risk of unexpected margin erosion due to delayed price updates.

If I were developing this app, I’d prioritize features like supplier networking and the ability for suppliers to print retailer-branded packing list, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those are already on the roadmap. Should they have waited until all those features were in place before launching? I don’t think so. That would have delayed the launch and made the learning curve steeper. While there’s definitely room for improvement, Collective is already a valuable tool for me.

[ship-n-style]

Shopify collective is okay. However, one hug issue I have is with automatic payments turned on and a balance that is sufficient enough to cover the order, the supplier does not receive payment to ship within a timely manner when orders are placed. I got an email that the supplier was waiting for payment. I have no way to manually push the payment through and the balance is waiting to be withdrawn. This is super frustrating! My customers do not want to wait 7+ days just for the order to ship. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks. 

[SerinaLee]

This sounds frustrating! I just got on Collective last week and working on getting suppliers and setting up products.

Is the auto payment always this slow? We try to ship within 3 days..

[ship-n-style]

If they pay via Shopify payments it is usually within 2 days. But if they pay via paypal, installment options, or any other way besides shopify payments it takes a long time. 

[SerinaLee]

Appreciate your reply! I guess the funds have to be available at Payout balance within shopify to be withdrawal by shopify collective, and it can't withdraw from the checking account that receives payouts? My customer paid outside of shopify and sent directly to my checking account.. I asked the shopify support but didn't get any good answer..

[pbsnyc]

This was initially a huge problem but I have a workaround for now. As I mentioned in the comment above, the workaround I've had was to reach out to the supplier and ask them to send me a separate invoice and provide the tracking number, to which then I request to cancel fulfillment on the original stuck order (or else Collective will continue to attempt the debit), and manually fulfill the original order with the tracking info. It's not clean on the supplier's end so your mileage may vary.