How can I add new vendors in the Minimal theme?

Technical Q&A
1

Hi everyone

I’m using minimal theme as an art store and am selling art on behalf of other people. I would ideally like to add new vendors so that I know whose art is selling and make it easier for me to distribute money directly to each individual. I currently use the minimal theme and really like the styling, but unfortunately, you can’t amend the vendor or add new ones. I would like each individual artist to be able to have access to the back end of the website as well (like a partner access) so that they can view their own accounts.

It’s driving me nuts trying to figure out a way of doing this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jonty

2

Hey, @jonty !

I’m Helen from Shopify Support, here to help you today.

Adding new vendors and assigning them to a product is done from within your Shopify admin. To do this, please click on Products on the left hand side of your admin dashboard. Once on the product page, the vendor is found in the Organization section on the right side of the page.

To add a new vendor, simply type the vendor name in the box, and click ‘Add’, as seen in the screenshot below. Don’t forget to click SAVE before navigating away from the page!

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If you would like the vendor to show on the product page of your storefront, this can be enabled from within your Minimal theme. To do so, please navigate to your theme editor by going to ‘Online Store > Themes > Customize > Product Pages,’ and put a check mark in the ‘Show product vendor’ box. It looks like this:

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Showing the vendor name is an option that you can enable on the Collection pages within your theme too.

Allowing your vendors access to their own account to track the sales and payouts for their items is not a feature native to the platform, but it can be accomplished by using the Vendor Consignment app. This app creates individual vendor profiles and allows you to pay your artists directly via Paypal. It is beneficial if you are selling the products on behalf of the artists.

Alternatively, if your business model is more of a marketplace where vendors have their own space on your site to sell their work, the Multi Vendor Marketplace app is the one to use.

Both apps are developed by a third party, so if you have any questions about their features or functionality please contact the developer directly.

Both apps also have free trial periods associated with them. I recommend that you install them on your store, and use the trial time to determine which is right for you. Once you’ve made a decision, uninstall any apps you do not want to use before the trial period is over, to ensure you are not charged for it.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

1 Like
3

Amazing. Thank you so much. That has been driving me nuts for weeks!

4

My pleasure, @jonty !

If you have questions or concerns about anything else, let me know. I’m here to help.

5

Hi Helen,

I do not have that button available. I only see a list of all current vendors. I was not the one that set up the website originally, so I am not sure how the current vendors were added. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot this?

6

Hey, @AshleyPosh !

Thanks for reaching out. Are you referring to the ‘Add’ button on the product page in your Shopify admin?

If you are creating a new product, it will automatically propagate once you begin typing a new vendor name into the vendor box.

However, if you are trying to add a new vendor name to an already existing product, and it doesn’t automatically show once you begin typing a new name, please try clicking on the arrows to the right of the vendor box once you’ve typed the new vendor name, to get it to show. For example:

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Hope this helps! Let me know if you need any further clarification or assistance.

7

Hello,

So I added a new vendor on the list but when I try to choose this vendor for another product I cannot find it on the list..

8

Hi, @achoti . Welcome to the Community, and thanks for reaching out about this!

Does the new vendor not show in the list even if you type the name into the Vendor box, instead of just viewing the list?

Either way, as a first step towards troubleshooting this, please try logging out of your account, clearing the cache on your browser, then logging back in to see if the vendor list has updated. Please let me know if this helps or not, and we’ll proceed from there.

Thanks!

9

Hi Helen,

After I add a new vendor and click save, I notice it doesn’t update when I try filtering by “product vendor.”

For example, under Analytics > Reports > Percent of Inventory Sold, I proceed to Edit Columns > Product Vendor.

When I filter by Product Vendor, the newly added vendor isn’t an option. And when I search the product by name, the old vendor is still associated with it.

I would like to add many products under one vendor name making it easier to filter by vendor.

Does that make sense?

Thanks for any help.

10

Just as an update, I can filter by vendor when searching products, and the newly added vendor does work. However, under the reports, the vendor isn’t syncing up with the product.

11

Thanks for your question, and for following up with the update, @Globalteahut . What you are experiencing does make sense, and actually is expected behaviour! Let me explain.

Reports capture the details of an order at the time of the sale. Therefore, if you change any product details, such as assigning a new vendor to an existing product, then both the original product details and the new details appear in a report.

So for your situation, since your products were associated with the old vendor at the time they were sold, pulling a Percent of inventory sold report for the date range during which the old vendor name was used will still associate those products with that vendor. Moving forward, your Percent of inventory sold report will show the same product twice (once for each vendor) when the date range spans from before and after the change was made. Does that make sense?

There’s more of an explanation of this in the section titled Changes to product details in our Sales reports Help Doc. Let me know if this helps!

1 Like
12

Yes, that makes perfect sense. Thank you for clarifying, Helen.

Regards,

13

My pleasure, @Globalteahut ! I’m happy it was helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

14

Good morning Helen,

Almost 1 year after this answer, would you have some more tips or advices to deal with multi-vendors on an existing Shopify webstore ?

Could you precise the differences between the Vendor Consignment app and the Multi Vendor Marketplace app ?

The Multi Vendor Marketplace seems to have too much features, and most of them are available only with a price increase.

Vendor Consignment app seems more easy to use. I would prefer to have less features, but solid, reliable and easy to use features, both for my vendors and for me.

I don’t have any physical store, only an e-commerce store.
Basically, I am searching for a serious, user-friendly, and reliable tool to :

  • onboard my vendors,
  • notify them when they have an order to fulfill
  • let them consult anytime their orders and amounts to be transferred,
  • configure and process the money transfers
    At the beginning, if this tool doesn’t allow to let the vendors do it, I could add myself the products on the store, and assign each of them to a vendor as you described in the Shopify admin.

Do you think I could I use Vendor Consignment app for this kind of utilisation ?

Finally, would you have any other apps/tools to advice ?

Many thanks in advance for your help,

Best regards,

Thomas

15

Hi, @ThomasZ ! Thanks for reaching out. I completely understand your concerns.

Honestly, I am not familiar first hand with these apps since they are created by third party developers. But I reviewed their listing in the Shopify App Store, and highlighted the features that you’ve expressed are the most important to you. I also found another option that I have included below, so hopefully this helps you decide which way you’d like to proceed:

Vendor Consignment - appears to puts more control in the hands of the Shopify store owner

  • Products to be set up by store owner, not the vendor
  • Vendor login to track their orders
  • Calculates vendor commissions
  • Payouts sent to vendors in the app via Paypal (except for in Canada)

Multi Vendor Marketplace - seems to allow the vendor to operate more independently

  • Vendors can upload their own products
  • Customers can ask questions directly to the vendor
  • Automatic Order reminders to the vendor
  • Invoice initiated via the app
  • Payouts - unclear as to how this happens, please contact the app developer to learn more

Multi Vendor Reporting

  • Real time notifications to vendors
  • Vendor login
  • Commission calculations
  • Vendors can upload their own products
  • Payouts - unclear as to how this happens, please contact the app developer to learn more

If you think any of these apps may be best suited for your needs, feel free to install it on your store and take a look at it directly; They all have free trial time, so you can do just that. (If it doesn’t end up being what you want, please remember to uninstall it before the trial time ends though, so that you aren’t charged for it).

Additionally, the app developers tend to be very helpful and have a wealth of information in regards to their product, and so I encourage you to contact them directly to discuss any of theses apps further. They can go over all of the features with you, help with the setup and installation, and answer any other questions or concerns you may have.

Let me know which one you decide to go with!

1 Like
16

I will have to think more about it to make a choice.

Anyway, thank you very much Helen for your detailed answer !

17

My pleasure! I hope it helps with making your choice.

How’s the rest of your store set up going? What types of products will your vendors be selling through your store?

18

The rest is going well thanks.

The vendors will sell handmade jewelry and fashion accessories, with a lot of colors :slightly_smiling_face:

19

That’s great to hear it’s going well for you so far, @ThomasZ !

Have you given any thought to how you’re going to market and promote your store yet? An online store full of colorful handmade items will be very visual, which would make it a great fit for using Instagram as a marketing tool. The Shopify Blog has a ton of informative articles about this! Check them out here.

Let me know if I can help with anything else.

1 Like
20

Hi Helen,

I’m having trouble finding the “Organization” section on my “Products” page?

Megan