Shopify Collective

The only complaint I have is that the return process is clunky. When a customer submits a return - it needs to go back to the brand (not our store). It doesn't require the brand to upload a return label immediately. Therefore I have customers contacting me for the label- and I sound awful telling them that I, as the store owner, can't upload it. Then they are left skeptical because the customer doesn't (and honestly shouldn't) have to know how we are working as a drop ship business through Collective. I think it should be set up to force a return label to be created on the spot. I have to reach out to the brand and bug them to upload the labels for my customers in most cases.

Love the app, it allows me to run the online store of my dreams. Could use some fixes to sorting products to import. Too many suppliers have 0 stock items listed and shifting through them is frustrating.

Some suppliers are not reliable. I hope you guys filtered your collective suppliers thoroughly.

so far so good. The only thing I hate is not being able to pay my providers with a Credit Card. That makes the process really complicated in most cases

I've had several problems with shipping on the collective. Please don't sell if you can't supply your product.

Shopify Collective is a great tool overall and makes it easier to connect with suppliers. However, there are some limitations that make it a bit frustrating. For cross-border stores, automatic payments aren’t supported, which really limits the ability to sell in the U.S. Some suppliers either don’t accept alternative payment methods or don’t understand how to work around this issue, which slows things down.

Also, when searching for suppliers, the platform mostly shows local options. It would be much more useful if there was a simple way to filter or select suppliers by country or region, especially when you’re looking to expand internationally.

Love it overall. But more functions are needed. It would be nice if there was a feature to filter out listings that have no inventory.

Overall it's been great but some of my requests to vendors have gone unanswered for months making me wonder if Shopify is doing enough to actually get vendors to accept new storefronts. Nothing I can do on my end either short of reaching out to the vendor directly which negates a lot of the convenience of the platform.

It's great. Wish there were a way to nudge vendors who have not responded to requests.

Shopify Collective is a good app if you want to complement your store with products from other stores, as it simplifies cross-store integration. However, the risk for retailers is often much higher than the actual benefits.
Retailers can face chargebacks for mistakes made by suppliers, which feels unfair since these issues are outside of their control.

Additionally, some suppliers offer very low margins—sometimes even less than what they’d pay out for referrals—making it difficult to justify the effort.
Retailers also end up handling a large volume of customer inquiries and negative reviews caused by factors such as slow fulfillment and delayed dispatch, even though these problems originate directly from the suppliers.

Overall, while the app has potential, the imbalance of responsibility between retailers and suppliers makes it a challenging tool to use profitably.