Context: We own two Shopify stores that represent two brands, both selling retro games and consoles but with a different focus (and prices in some cases). One brand is specialized in playstation products and the other one in nintendo products. one is also selling retro-only while the other one also sells new switch 2 games and Pokémon cards.
Recently Shopify Collective became available in our country and we are now wondering if we could profit from the plattform by providing products from brand A in the store of brand B, if it’s a product that is usually not available in both stores (say brand A has PS1 games, brand B does not).
Question: Can someone tell us, if its problematic to use Shopify Collective to cross-sell between two brands that are owned by the same parent company in terms of the guidelines? In addition, since we use Goolge Ads and Goolge Merchant Center for both stores, we are concerned about Google’s Unfair Advantage / Double Serving policy. Does anyone have knowledge and experience if this scenario would be considered a violation of any terms and guidelines from both Shopify and Google?
To be clear: Both brands may sell the same product (as in: product with the same name like “Super Mario 64”) but since we sell used retro games, every game is “unique” in terms of condition. In short, both stores have truly separate inventories but share some product names.
Shopify Collective is inherently at risk of misrepresentation flags in Google Merchant Center. Even if the product comes from you, Google still sees it as a dropshipping product i.e. not yours i.e. not your inventory.
The brands/stores have separate inventory, visual identity/branding (modern vs. neon-retro) and in some cases different pricing. The stores look different and have a different collection and content structure. The audiences cross over but are separated by product focus and age (young, families buying nintendo games and pokémon cards vs. older collectors who buy playstation games and collector items). we have customers buying in both our shops, sometimes they buy a console in one shop and then accessories in the other because of the price or because they know the owner (both brands are owned by the same company but both brands have different managers that often are in direct personal contact with customers).
In terms of google ads, yes in theory the same product could appear at the same time although as I said, it’s never actually the same product since they are “unique” used products and in the 2 years we’ve been using google ads, we never got flagged. But we’re wondering if this could change due to interactions with Shopify Collective. Do products from a collective partner get added to the Google & YouTube sales channel and therefore could get advertised twice in Google Ads?
In general, apart from the product name we do not mirror anything. Both stores have different product descriptions, product photos, metafields for infos about condition and we have different meta-titles/descriptions. Also, if this wasn’t clear, we would only cross-sell products via the collective that so far are NOT available in the other store (for example, only brand A has PlayStation 1 games, so we would sell the whole PS1 collection from brand A at brand B).
I get the feeling our scenario is a bit of a niche/special case…? We just don’t want to risk any bans/violations, but we see a huge benefit if we can cover inventory gaps without having to create new products and physically shift inventory between the two brands locations.
Shopify Collective functions as a dropshipping app, and syncs products to your store. It really doesn’t matter if your other store is the source. Google doesn’t know that. It only sees the placeholder and flags it for misrepresentation automatically. I’ve seen it over and over. Not only that, but you’re essentially relying on a inventory sync that is known to have issues. Probably not a good idea and could land both stores in hot water. If you want to run a special on one store for a few products from your other store, there’s nothing wrong with creating products for that, and keeping track of inventory manually or through a third party app. But trying to sync through Collective is probably going to do more harm than good.
Thank you for this straightforward and detailed answer. I appreciate it. We might think about some sort of “Available at our partner store” widget with simple product links instead.
If I may, another thought that came up: What about the buy button channel? Is it possible to sell products/collections of one shopify store in another shopify store via buy button embed?
Sharing Shopify Collective between sister brands is legitimate, as long as each store “has its own look and feel,” and the products are complementary and not mirrors. Think of Collective like wholesale, not duplicated listings. For Google, don’t run the same ads on the same queries from competing accounts where they can overlap, have separate feeds, separate pricing, separate positioning. One-of-a-kind used gear and a different branding usually make you compliant there.