Is Shopify Markets the Answer?

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Topic summary

Issue: Configure Shopify so inventory and fulfillment are restricted by warehouse/market, preventing Australian orders from pulling stock from the US when AU inventory is zero.

Context:

  • Previously fulfilled all orders from a US warehouse, with two markets: US and Rest of World, tied to shipping zones (free shipping in US via negotiated rates).
  • New Australian warehouse aims to mirror US approach, ideally offering free domestic shipping within Australia.

Needs:

  • Limit stock availability and purchasing by customer location for the same product (e.g., AU market should show out-of-stock if AU warehouse has none, even if US has stock).
  • Ensure fulfillment routing does not pull from other warehouses for that market.

Tried/Constraints:

  • “Advanced Store Localization” app yielded mixed results.
  • Unclear whether Shopify Markets can natively restrict inventory by location; documentation found is murky.

Status:

  • Seeking concrete setup guidance; no resolution yet.
Summarized with AI on December 21. AI used: gpt-5.
1

We are opening a warehouse in Australia. Until now, we’ve serviced our customers worldwide from our US warehouse. We have now shipped products to the Australia location and are still trying to get an idea as to how to make sure that if stock sells out of the Australia warehouse, it becomes unavailable to customers in that zone.

Our original setup was to set up two markets for our one warehouse: US and the rest of the world. We did this to use with shipping zones – within the US, we’ve got negotiated rates that allow us to do free shipping, but internationally isn’t as cost-effective.

One of our goals in creating the Australia store is to see if we can do the same thing in Australia – eventually offer free shipping within that zone from that warehouse.

So. My question – I know I can limit what products people see by “location”. How do I limit the STOCK for the same product by location?

For example, if we have an electron microscope product and we have 40 in stock in our US warehouse but stock in the Australia warehouse is gone – how do prevent Shopify from plucking items from the US store to fulfill? We’ve tried the “Advanced Store Localization” app with mixed results.

I know the Markets now can customize the templates to a market. And I could swear I read someplace that Markets can also restrict by location – but it seemed pretty murky.

Any help will be appreciated. I haven’t found much in the way of information via Google – most of it deals with setting up markets OR setting up locations but not how to get them to interact.

Thanks in advance!

Scott

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