A merchant wants to offer VIP customers early access to a sale collection one day before the public launch. The challenge: products should appear discounted only to VIPs accessing via a special link, while remaining full price for regular site visitors during that period.
Initial suggestions:
Duplicate the sale collection and apply discount codes via URL parameters
This approach proved impractical due to varying discounts across products and the complexity of hiding duplicate items from search/navigation
Working solution:
The merchant resolved the issue using the Locksmith app, which enables:
Password-protected private collections
Products and collections hidden from search and site navigation
Requires duplicating products into the hidden collection
Alternative tools mentioned:
Shoplock app (similar functionality to Locksmith)
Hype app (allows VIP links showing discounted prices only to link visitors, without product duplication; supports different discounts per product and market)
The discussion demonstrates a solved problem with multiple viable approaches depending on technical requirements and workflow preferences.
Summarized with AI on October 29.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
I would like to offer a VIP early access code to a pre-sale one day early. I am trying to figure out how to make the products in the hidden Sale collection show up as discounted ONLY in that sale collection. To other people on the website, for that one day, they would still be full price on the website. The VIP clients would access the hidden sale collection via an emailed link.
Is this possible? Has anyone figured out a work-around/app that is similar?
Also open to alternative ideas if anyone ran into this problem and decided to go in another direction, thank you!
Hi Kani, thanks, that’s a very cool feature I didn’t know existed! Unfortunately there are different discounts for various products in the collection, so I don’t think that would work. Without that function, it seems like a lot of work to make a duplicate collection, hide those duplicate products from showing up in searches, and removing them from the “all” collection.
Seems like I may have to figure out a different VIP promo
UPDATE: Problem solved! Using the Locksmith app, it allows me to create a private password-protected collection. They have an option to make the products within, and the collection itself, not show up in searches or site navigation. It’ll be some work to duplicate all the products to put into the hidden collection, but it’s a solution!
This is a tricky problem and I know I’m late — we actually built Hype just for this.
With Hype, you can create a VIP link that shows discounted prices only to customers who visit from that link, while everyone else on your store still sees the regular prices. No need to duplicate products or collections. It also supports different discounts per product and market.
