Shopify Collective: Supplier

The app is great overall, but there a a few things that could be improved:
1) If you use a third party app to calculate shipping rates, you cannot pass the shipping prices to your retailers' stores.

2) Because our shipping rates are not passed to the retailer's store, we charge that after the order has been sent to us. We aren't able to edit Collective orders so we handle this outside of Shopify.

3) If you have products set to "continue selling when out of stock" like we do, the retailer will also have that enabled and they won't be able to change it. They'll need to find some other way to notify customers about the actual product status. Our products are Made to Order when they are out of stock, so we have them set to "continue selling when out of stock" but this is not ideal for some retailers.

We make sure our retailers are aware of this before we approve them on Collective.

This is mostly great. The problems are as follows:

- Being able to limit ship from locations by retailer (we have a Canadian and USA warehouse and don't want to cross-border ship)
- product offering able to be selected down to the variant level

It's half done. The shipping has to be figured out. I just got the order and now I am supposed to chase after the other business for shipping cost. Send invoices and such, make sure what setting they have. And you find out everything after your first order with that business. You can choose "calculated shipping" but it does absolutely nothing!!!! Why even bother

We installed this App several months ago with public price lists so other merchants can list our products.
However no other merchants - apart from 1-2 - have ever applied to list our products, and so what is the point?
This is not the universal marketplace promised by Shopify, and yet it could be a major driver of sales if developed to optimise sales.

I'm loving the ease of connecting with retailers. There's a bit of a learning curve, but I'm finding it to be a real asset to my business. As a small business owner, every little bit of help is invaluable to me. Collective Supplier is like a partner who helps lesson my work load as I endeavor to scale my systems.

When I update my listing, that information is not pushed to partners pages. This causes confusion and for the listings to be incorrect on their end.

Missing some key details that hopefully can be released in the near future. There is no option to map over notes or custom metafields from the seller to the supplier. Ex. if a gift card message is left on the original order, the supplier has no way of seeing the message because notes are not transferred over. This is crucial for our business model of selling gifts.

I have to stop using it because I cannot choose which location to share the inventory with my retailers from! I only found out after multiple oversold orders, because there was stock for those SKUs in my European location. I ship to the USA from my US location only, using the setting "show fulfilable inventory" under the shipping settings. You really need to fix this, so that we can choose which location(s) you should take the stock from!

It would be great if I actually got paid when others placed orders, even when they are on automatic payments, payment still pending a month later and they have already received the merchandise. No one seems to care or help retreive the money that it suppose to be debited automatically.

If you're a Shopify merchant looking to scale your store without the headaches of managing extra inventory, Shopify Collective is honestly one of the best tools available right now — and the fact that it's completely free makes it a no-brainer.

The ability to curate products from supplier catalogs in seconds and give customers more of what they want without risky inventory investments is something I didn't know I needed until I had it. Setting everything up was surprisingly painless — within days, our store had a noticeably expanded catalog without a single new SKU sitting in a warehouse.

What really sets Collective apart is how seamlessly it integrates into the Shopify ecosystem you're already using. Orders are fulfilled directly by suppliers, payments are automatically processed when they ship, and returns are handled without extra friction — it genuinely removes the operational weight that usually comes with scaling up product offerings.

The real-time inventory syncing is a standout feature — product updates push ultrafast, which means zero risk of overselling even during a flash sale. For anyone who's ever had to manually apologize to a customer for an out-of-stock order, that peace of mind alone is worth it.

As a supplier, the experience is equally strong. You can create custom price lists for retailers with margins you control, and get paid automatically when you ship — no setup fees, no high commissions.

Whether you're a retailer looking to diversify your store or a supplier trying to tap into new audiences, Shopify Collective puts control into the hands of both sides of the equation. It's collaborative commerce done right.

Highly recommend giving it a try if your store is eligible. It's rare to find a tool this powerful that costs absolutely nothing. Best of Luck!