Hello community,
we are facing a technical problem and don’t know yet how to solve it. So we thought we’d just ask here, maybe someone here has a creative solution or a hint that will put us on the right track.
We are a multi-channel retailer with about 100 stores. We run our online store out of Germany, which is also where our central warehouse is located from where we ship all of our online orders.
Before switching to Shopify, we were running a mix of pick-from-store and ship-to-store in our old online store, which we would also like to implement in Shopify.
Our idea would be this:
All items that a customer can buy in our online store, he can also have delivered free of charge to a store and pick up there. To do this, he selects the “Pickup” option in the checkout, whereupon he sees a list of all stores and selects the store here where he would like to pick up the goods. The package is then packed in our warehouse and brought to the corresponding store with the next delivery of goods, where the customer can then pick it up.
In Shopify, however, we face a problem here, because we cannot implement this in this way. The “Pickup” checkout option requires that we create all stores as a location and flag them with the “Fulfill online orders from this location” flag. This is not a problem either. What gets tricky is the fact that you can then only select this store in the checkout if all items in the cart also have inventory in the selected store. Shopify simply assumes that for a pickup, the store’s inventory is used. But since we also ship such orders from our warehouse, the stock in the store does not matter.
Now you could say “Then deposit a fictitious inventory”, but this would result in the fictitious inventory being included in the total inventory as well, due to the “Fulfill online orders from this location” flag.
Example:
Our actual inventory is 99 pieces
Now each of our 100 stores gets a fictitious inventory of 15 pieces, so that the store is displayed in the checkout for the item.
But that would result in a fictitious inventory of 1500 pieces being added to the actual inventory of 99 pieces, which means that customers could order 1599 pieces in the online store even though we only have 99 pieces.
But without an inventory at the location, it cannot be selected in the checkout.
I hope it has become clear what our problem is.
Our idea would be:
- A list of all pickup locations in checkout regardless of whether the items in the cart are in the store or not.
- When a pickup location is selected, shipping is automatically free of charge
Maybe someone here has a creative idea - we appreciate any suggestions.
Best regards,
Timo
