Shopify Collective

We think Shopify Collective is a fantastic initiative and we're really looking forward to using it more across our store. The ability to connect directly with suppliers and streamline inventory, ordering and fulfilment within Shopify has a lot of potential and could save retailers a significant amount of time. One feature we would really love to see added is the ability to link or map a supplier's Collective product and variants to an existing product/PDP already established on the retailer's store, rather than having to import it as an entirely new product. For established retailers, this is incredibly important. We may already have a product page that has been live for a long time with its own URL, SEO history, Google indexing, customer reviews, analytics, custom content, imagery, bundles, upsells and conversion optimisation. It can also have a major impact on currently running paid advertising. For example, we may have established Meta/Facebook and Instagram campaigns sending traffic directly to an existing product URL, with substantial historical performance data behind those campaigns. Having to replace that product with a newly imported Collective listing and potentially a new URL can disrupt those campaigns and creates unnecessary risk for retailers transitioning an existing successful product into Collective. The same applies to Google Shopping feeds, email campaigns, backlinks and other channels that may already reference the existing product. Ideally, retailers could select an existing Shopify product and simply map the supplier's Collective product variants/SKUs to their corresponding existing variants. Collective could then manage inventory syncing, supplier ordering and fulfilment in the background while allowing the retailer to keep their existing customer-facing PDP, URL and marketing infrastructure intact. This would be particularly valuable for businesses like ours that already have established supplier relationships and existing products, and simply want to transition the operational side of those relationships into Shopify Collective. Overall, we think Collective is a great initiative and we're excited to use it. Adding the ability to connect Collective supplier products to existing retailer products would remove a significant barrier to adoption and make an already promising platform considerably more useful for established Shopify merchants.

So far, I am liking the selection of products. However, I need to be able to rely on picking only products shipped from warehouses from the United States and that inventory. Right now, I can't search for venders who ship from the United States that have warehouses here. Some overseas vendors will lie about where they ship from, purchase American shipping labels, ship from overseas, then it gets sorted again here. Then still claim to be shipping from the United States. That is dishonest, can seriously delay shipping, and hurt your brand reputation. Shopify needs to be active in cracking down on suppliers who violate trust like this. Not only does it impact our business, but it impacts Shopify and its' reputation too.

Everything is great except the shipping costs need to be passed on to the brands and need to be able to partner with interantionally brands that are on shopify

Overall experience with shopify Collective is good. But it should protect retailers from unfair practices from suppliers. Should have proper policy in place to take action on suppliers , provision option to file charge back or remove them from collective so supplier should be held responsible for unfair practices., force them to follow same default return polices, tracking verification, timely refunds.

its hard to communicate with suppliers directly

Overall my experience with Shopify Collective is positive. However, there needs to be a much stronger mode of communication between retailers and the suppliers as far as connection requests, no abrupt store disconnections, clearer requirements for shipping and returns, etc.

Great way to scale up product offerings and increase revenue. Wish there were more granular ways to control pricing, but overall this has been great for us.

Overall it is great and simplifies product research. Only issue is many products you have to ask for margins and permission to add to your store, though small price to pay for the ease.

Good app. Would be better if it was easier and find to sort products before import.

A bit difficult to navigate to find the products you want but worth it to find big suppliers with nice margins.

It's great, but it needs some work on product categories and on making communication links between the collective and the collective supplier easier.

This app is great overall and has helped us increase sales with new products that we otherwise would never have been able to sell. But there is a massive bug in this app that FORCES products to enable "sell when out of stock". Even though suppliers are sending 0 in stock for items, this app allows customers to still purchase!! It's incredibly frustrating to not give us the option to turn this off for Collective products!

Too many useless connections and products.

We rely heavily on Collective to curate the right pieces for our Shopify store. We appreciate the Discovery options that allow us to collaborate with and support other small business owners while maintaining our brand aesthetic. It is a pleasure to network with other creatives and expand brand awareness for both our store and our suppliers. One area for improvement involves the customer experience during fulfillment. It would be very helpful if, when a customer purchases an imported product from our store, the supplier could include a thank you card or other recognition from our brand. This would help prevent customer confusion regarding the shipment's origin and encourage repeat business for our store. Also to note, when products are imported to our store and the supplier is "not eligible" to use Collective, it creates a sudden need to draft or refund orders for products that customers have placed. This does not give our customers confidence to return as repeat customers. Overall, we truly enjoy and appreciate the option to participate in Collective and plan to expand our brand in the Collective community.

Love it! However, beware that if you add several brands you will quickly run out of media file storage and images will stop showing up. We've also been using an image compression app which helped a little but now we've hit their limit. It doesn't quite make sense that as a Shopify app, only connecting Shopify stores where the brands' images are hosted on their own site that it would affect our media limits. It seems like a huge area for improvement on Shopify to correct this. Otherwise, it's an amazing app and possibly the new wholesale procurement route - seamless and beneficial to all.

Some integrations missing, but definitely makes dropshipping easy.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Good. Would love the ability to sort imported products i.e. newest to oldest or low to high

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 unfortunate that suppliers don't take in account that retailers have to take responsibility for payment processing fee's on the total order, when determining the commission fee for selling their products. Because the commission fee is only given on the item total, not the total order. In most cases retailers are losing money when a product is sold, especially when shipping cost is added! We have had to delete many suppliers for this reason alone. Payment processing fee should be added automatically to the commission. This is suppose to be a win/win for both parties and it's not. RETAILERS BEWARE OF THIS!

We are loving Collective at The Mayfair Hall. Suggestions: -Be able to sort products that are available to import from current vendors (new to old for example).

We need the ability to modify retails (like with Synclogic). Collective has room for improvement - need to be able to better sort items to import especially from larger catalogs. It would also be great if the Shopify tags would import over, too.