Building a multiple seller marketplace w/ SSO to my own website - is it possbile with Shopify?

Store Design
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Greetings Shopify community!

If you are confused about the title and the terms I use in this discussion, then please bear with me as I am fairly new to Web Development, eCommerce, and Shopify. Also, I apologize for my English. It is not my first language.

I would like to build a “Marketplace” that would accommodate multiple sellers, something like “Amazon” in the West or “Lazada” in South East Asia. Those sellers would have individual accounts, and would be able to do some functions present in the Shopify store admin on their own. (Orders, Products, Analytics, and so on). Using the 14-day free trial, I observed that I can somehow achieve this by creating a Shopify partner account and registering it to my store as a collaborator, but correct me if I’m wrong, other collaborator accounts could see and modify other products too. If possible, sellers would only see their own products and would not have to register any Shopify account, the reason will be explained in the next paragraph.

I would also like to “connect” the seller accounts of my own website to this “Marketplace”. I have my own website that is built using PHP and MySQL. My site is an Auto dealership website that has sellers/agents. If possible, I would like to import the seller accounts from my own website to the marketplace and would not have to create a Shopify account to be able to login. Also, it would have a separate dashboard for individual sellers and to have a less hassle when jumping from my website to this marketplace. If creating a Shopify account is necessary, I am thinking of using SSO (Single Sign-on), either by using a provider or creating my own. Though it would be a bit inconvenient for my users.

Another concern of mine would be the payment methods. I don’t know how this works as I have no experience working with it. Ideally, who would handle the payment, the marketplace or the seller? Which would be better?

Here are some questions to summarize:

  1. Is it possible to create a “multiple seller marketplace” in the Shopify platform?

  2. Is it possible for the individual sellers to not have to create a Shopify account in order to use the marketplace? (Managing products and orders, analytics, basically like the admin page of a store)

  3. If the answer on #2 is yes:

3.1. Is it possible to import seller account to the marketplace?

3.2. Is it possible for the seller to have their individual dashboard/admin page?

3.3. Can orders and added products be categorized by seller, i.e. an individual seller would only see and modify orders or products added by themselves?

  1. If the answer on #2 is no:

4.1. Is it possible to have SSO between my own website and the marketplace/shopify?

4.2. With a shopify account for sellers, is it possible for the seller to have their individual dashboard/admin page?

4.3. With a shopify account for sellers, Can orders and added products be categorized by seller, i.e. an individual seller would only see and modify orders or products added by themselves?

  1. Ideally, who would handle the payment, the marketplace or the seller? Which would be better?

  2. Am I getting something wrong about the capabilities of Shopify? Please do tell.

  3. What other approach could you recommend to achieve my goals?

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Hi @nd_malayang ,
In short, building marketplace on shopify is very difficult, shopify wasn’t build for marketplace project also shopify apps which you can get on shopify stores usually covers only part of the processes which is needed for marketplace. For examply payments is one of those areas which will be one of the biggest chalenges. marketplaces usually allows sellers to sell same item and offers of each seller will be visible on PPD (it’s not possible to achieve that on shopify).
No need to mention that shopify starts limiting new products creation to 1k variants /day once number of variants reach 50k (only shopify plus do not have this restriction).

I am actually shopify app called Feeds Bridge developer, my app covers multi vendor catalog management and orders fulfillments tasks, you can grant access for your vendors and create orders fulfillments so they can fulfill those orders by themselves, so it partially covers markeplace tasks, but I wouldn’t say that my app allows you to create a markeplace, it’s more like a vendors portal where you can split the tasks between you and your vendor (you will need to pay for vendor fulfilled items outside of the app, you can do is upload payment prove and set item as paid). Also since new items are gitting created from data feeds, only operator can set up new vendors catalog feeds and upload new products, vendors can only edit existing ones on their vendor portal. In general it’s more focused on bulk products upload from your vendors, than allowing vendors to manage their catalog by themselves.

So in short, Feeds Bridge would cover part of your requirements (even if it’s not an app for creating a marketplace), like catalog onboarding, orders fulfillment (on vendors portal), pricing management, data validation.
But it doesn’t cover any storefront related adjustments you will need to create whole storefront with marketplace required features. It may be that there are apps which generates vendor pages you need to take a look at shopify store. But if you have some custom made storefront theme, it’s a good question if any of those apps (which turns your storefront into marketplace) would be helpfull.

Hope this will answer at least some of your questions.

1 Like
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Thank you @simon-skrod , for answering my question. I continued to explore Shopify’s features and it seems you are correct.