I want to manage payments to marketplace sellers

Shopify Discussion
1

I want to use Shopify to create an Amazon-like marketplace.

In the relationship between me (the operator) and the marketplace participants (sellers), please tell me the following two points

  1. do sellers need to have a Shopify account?
    Can it be linked to my own e-commerce or other e-commerce services, for example?

  2. can the operator retrieve information about the seller’s products purchased by customers on the marketplace?
    The operator would like to collect a commission from the seller of a few percent of the price of the products purchased via the marketplace.

Best regards.

2

  1. No. If you want them to be able to manage their own products, then yes, unless you use an app or create a custom app for them to interact only with their products.

  2. If you are the operator, you can see all the data that happens on the store. It’s your store, you have admin access.

Here’s a basic way you can test your concept without investing too much:

  1. Set up your Shopify store and work with a couple sellers to list their products on your site (they would send you the product images and details, you put them up on your site.

  2. When new orders come in, forward the order email to the seller (you can automate this later, but the volume will most likely be very low to start, so you can do it manually to fine tune the system).

  3. They ship the product, then give you the tracking number, you update the tracking in your system, that triggers the email to the customer with the shipping info (this can be automated later as well).

  4. You pay them (you and the seller will determine the terms, for example maybe after they ship, or once a week square up, etc).

As that gets going, you can look for an app that can allow vendors to edit their own products and see their orders, outside of Shopify. If an app doesn’t exist, then you can create one (the Shopify API allows you to create all kinds of custom functionality).

3

Thank you for your very detailed advice.
I understand it very well.

I also think that the test method you presented is the best for us, as we don’t have many sellers and products to participate at first.

I will try it out when I have a marketplace discussion with a potential seller.

Incidentally, do you know of any potential candidates for an app that allows you to edit product pages from outside shopify?

My quick research found some chat support and customer information sharing apps, but I haven’t found any editing apps yet.

4

I don’t know of any apps. My company built a custom Shopify app for someone a few years ago, it was a webapp where their suppliers could log in, create products, update products, etc on their own. At that time the client said there were no apps that existed like that.

I don’t remember the details but going custom like this will likely cost a couple thousand dollars or more, depending on how complex the functionality should be. Was a great solution though, they were happy and it turned out to be a great tool for their business, long term it saved them money from having to manually manage all the supplier’s products.

5

Thank you for your response.

It is unfortunate that such an app was not available at the time, but certainly with that made app as we expand the marketplace, we will be able to recoup the initial cost of several thousand dollars very quickly.

It was very helpful, and I will be sure to keep it in mind as I continue to expand the marketplace. Thank you very much.