Shopify Collective

I love the opportunity to add more product options for my customers. It really fills the gaps of products that I am not able to carry myself especially high value and consumable products. I am on both sides of collective as a vendor and user. However collective needs to hold the suppliers responsible more. I have run into this issue a few times now and just had a big one with one of the suppliers who had thousands of products listed that I added to my store. These were all products that my customers were very interested in and I spent over a week adding all the products, featuring them on my website and creating collections for them. I started selling them and the vendor filled the first order and then rapidly refused to fulfill several orders in a row. I messaged them and they basically said they didn't want to be on collective any more (the brand was still available but did eventually get removed). I then had to message multiple customers the reason why their orders were cancelled and I had to pay the credit card processing fees.
I strongly feel that if a brand chooses to be a part of collective they should be required to fulfill all orders (unless they run out of product) and should be required to pay any and all fees when they cancel an order on their end. I would also love to see a little accountability where they sign on to be a part of collective for a set amount of time. I spent so much time integrating things on my site and it was beyond frustrating that a week after I added them I had to delete everything.
I also had a customer try to do a return and collective gave me two different instructions as to how the return was handled and I ended up having to google search it because the instructions were not correct and I gave the customer a refund (because collective said it was approved and that was the next step) not realizing it was my responsibility to contact the vendor to request a refund and then I was responsible for forwarding a shipping label email to the customer.
As a vendor on collective I have had a few sales, but nothing too exciting. A lot of random fake stores add your products and then are closed shortly after.

process is fairly simple. Biggest problem is it takes many suppliers way too long to ship. We are up against super fast shipping from many sites.

As a long time user, Many features are clearly experimental with varying degrees of performance or function.

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.

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.

It would be super help to be able to narrow down suppliers with a filter for instant import.

Better searching.

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.

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.