Shopify Collective

Limited reporting. No way to rate suppliers. Documents don't show where order originated, so it causes confusion for the customer. Suppliers can break connection with no warning, even if there are transactions pending, shipping, payment, etc...I could go on but not enough time. We have over 300 suppliers in collective, and have used it since early availability. We have encountered every problem that can be imagined. I would love to talk to someone on the team and give feedback. While collective is a very valuable tool it could be improved. So if anyone wants to reach out to us I am open to a conversation.

Our primary concern with Shopify Collective is the lack of stability and fairness it creates for retailers. Vendors can remove a retailer instantly, without notice, which can immediately break live product pages, collections, and customer-facing experiences. This creates operational risk that no serious business can absorb. There should be a mandatory 48-hour removal period with a clear system notice stating that the vendor has chosen to discontinue the relationship, allowing retailers time to remove products cleanly and protect their storefront and customers.

Additionally, the margin structure on Collective is fundamentally misaligned with standard retail economics. Margins in the 10–20% range are not feasible. In traditional wholesale and dropship models, retailers operate at 30–50% margins, sometimes paired with a dropship or handling fee. Retailers are responsible for customer acquisition, marketing spend, customer service, chargebacks, returns, and brand reputation. Vendors benefit from reduced operational burden and expanded reach, yet Collective enables pricing structures that shift nearly all risk to the retailer.

Collective has undeniably made distribution easier for suppliers, but ease of operation should not come at the expense of retailer sustainability. Making fulfillment and exposure easier while simultaneously eroding retailer margins is not a viable or ethical long-term model. There should be enforced minimum margin standards (at least 30–50%) for vendors on Collective, or those vendors should not be eligible to participate.

Without protections around sudden removal and without realistic margin requirements, Collective disproportionately benefits suppliers while undermining the businesses that actually interact with and support the end customer.

Get app... it is working well... the only issue I have is a shopify Design issue and I don't know how to change it.
When customers place orders, many suppliers have marketing programs that follow up with customers on the order and on future marketing. Because the order is through our store, all of those emails come to us... they don't go to the actual customer, and our inbox gets stuffed with basically junk emails... Not sure if/how this cna be stopped, or if there's a way to pass it through to the actual customer. But it would be greatly appreciated. I know there would be a lot of moving parts ( so to speak) to make this happen, but I can't be the only person dealing with it.

Thanks for the Reply... Maybe Shopify could send out info to those participating in the Collective and tell/ask them not to market to Collective orders... I think it would carry more weight coming from Shopify.

It would be great if you could figure out a way to let different currencies collaborate. Canada has a very limited amount of suppliers compared to other world regions and I feel like we are missing out extensively on great partnership potentials through such an easy way to collaborate.

Additionally, it would be nice if suppliers had to give a reason before removing you. I have had a couple just randomly delete and it really leaves you scrambling. In these instances I can't even pinpoint why it happened either and its good to be able to get feedback.

The app has been easy to work with, however, my very first sale went badly. They need to hold their suppliers accountable. The very first supplier that I had a sale with dropped me after I asked a few questions about my order tracking number not working for 3 days, after all of the time and energy invested into this supplier.

As a retailer, we'd love to be able to change prices!

Could also use more support from Shopify, as sometimes we have questions that are hard to get answers to.

Otherwise, it's an amazing collaborative platform and we love it!

UPDATE after Shopify fix: Finally we are making some profit now, thank you. It would have been nice to sort the profits retrospectively though, or at least refund the Shopify fees for those orders we've lost money on.
There is still an issue with UK suppliers that sell to both businesses and consumers, in which case they'll have the prices without VAT included and this is added at the checkout. Well, in those cases with Shopify Collective although our shop is setup to include taxes, the products from respective suppliers are imported without tax and that's what it is shown to our customers. In fact, somebody just bought a product from us today and we've only realised that the supplier don't include VAT as this is calculated at checkout on their website. Well, our customer paid for the order without VAT being included which resulted again in a loss for us (now we need to remove the supplier and products).
So, although we had great progress, this still needs some work.

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UPDATE after 20 sales: Shopify Collective is gravely flawed for UK and European retailers, giving misleading margins that ultimately result in losses.

The app defaults to treating supplier prices as excluding VAT even when those prices already include VAT. This was confirmed by a Shopify Support Advisor after I provided an example of a supplier product priced at £115 with a supposed 10% margin (£11.50 profit) - the price is clearly VAT-inclusive on the supplier’s website, yet Collective treats it as tax-exclusive:

“The most important point is that Shopify Collective treats all B2B prices from suppliers as tax-exclusive, regardless of how the supplier lists prices on their own website.

So, just as you calculated, when Collective imports the product at £115 (listed as excl. tax), it calculates your cost first (which is £115 minus your 10% margin, so £103.50). Then, it adds the 20% B2B VAT on top of that cost. This results in the £124.20 total cost to you, which, as you correctly identified, can lead to a loss if you sell the item at the £115 price.”

I honestly do not know how this is even legal.

Like many retailers, we offer a 10% newsletter-signup discount. All our chosen suppliers offer margins of 20% and above, so we assumed we were safe. In reality, we made a loss on every sale with a supposed margin below 28%, and even above that threshold the profit was marginal.

To give a real-world example of a “positive” case:
A £479.99 VAT-inclusive item from a supplier offering a 30% margin. Collective displayed: Retail £479.99 excl. tax (although the price already includes VAT), Cost £335.99 excl. tax, Profit £144.00.
The customer used a 10% discount and paid £432. Shopify Payments fees were £13.64, giving us a payout of £418.36.

However, Shopify Collective charged us £335.99 (their margin-calculated cost) plus 20% VAT (£67.20), debiting £403.19 to pay the supplier — leaving us with a profit of just £15.17 on a £432 order.

Other sellers have reported the same issue, for example here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/490734433258832/posts/974975578168046/

Shopify Collective could be a great tool, and perhaps it works as intended in the US. But in the UK, where retail prices are VAT-inclusive, the current model is essentially unworkable — and borders on being a scam.

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INITIAL 3-star review: Interesting so far and I look forward to seeing results.

I would like to see a few improvements (if anyone from Shopify is reading...):
- The "excl. tax" is confusing as looking on the supplier website the same price is advertised to the public, including taxes.
- It would be very useful to be able to sort products by Inventory during import (that's particularly important with large inventories).
- Sorting by Retail price or Profit would be great too.
- For suppliers with multiple margins, would be very useful to filter out products with margins below X amount.
- The Recommendations on the Discovery page should exclude my existing Suppliers - also, would be good to be able to filter these by ratings

The layout seems to change regularly, and not for the better. Originally, relevant suppliers were displayed by default with instant downloads front & centre. Now those seem to be almost impossible to find, with the focus moved to individual products, which, for me, is less than useless, especially when none of those products appear to be available on Collective anyway. It seems that Shopify now want retailers to do their marketing for them by seemingly expecting retailers to chase potential suppliers to get involved with Collective. Tail wagging dog springs to mind. It all feels a bit half-baked, as though somebody had a good idea but failed to develop it before launch.

How to return the item to the supplier if the customer wants refund or return? Where the supplier shares the return label with the retailer, so it can be sent to the customer?

Does anyone else have the app crash when browsing on their phones?