Shopify Collective guide 2025: How to connect, sell, and grow

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What if you could expand your product offering overnight — without increasing inventory costs? This is what Shopify Collective makes possible. This free tool connects your Shopify store with others, so you can sell each other’s products directly on your storefronts.

For retailers, it means instantly expanding your offerings without extra inventory costs. For suppliers, it’s a valuable way to share price lists and get discovered by new retail partners.

Even better, your business can operate as both a supplier and a retailer, doubling the potential for growth. There are no minimum sales requirements, and it’s included on all paid Shopify plans.

Join us below for a complete guide to Shopify Collective. You’ll learn what it is, who it’s for, how it works, and strategies for increasing sales.

What is Shopify Collective, and who’s it for?

Shopify Collective connects your store to authorized suppliers’ products and lets you sell them without holding inventory. Retailers import products from suppliers within the network, while suppliers sell their items on those storefronts.

Unlike traditional dropshipping with unknown suppliers, Collective only includes verified Shopify brands. Both parties set terms directly, and payments are automatic when orders ship. The connection happens via invitations or the Discovery feature within the network.

Here’s an illustration of the Shopify Collective workflow:

Shopify Collective smarter alternative to traditional dropshipping

Collective is a marketplace within Shopify where stores trade products. It’s not another dropshipping app with foreign suppliers, but a network of verified Shopify merchants working together on one platform.

It’s more streamlined than traditional dropshipping due to a single integration that connects your store to multiple Shopify Collective suppliers. Management and order information lives centrally within the Shopify admin for a cohesive experience.

Is Shopify Collective right for your business?

Shopify Collective fits your ecommerce strategy if you want to import products from top Shopify brands without holding inventory and only pay when you sell.

Here’s who Shopify Collective suits:

• Ideal retailers: Curated brands looking to expand product lines without inventory, boutiques wanting items from trusted suppliers, and stores with strong customer bases who can cross-sell related products from other Shopify brands
• Ideal suppliers: Established Shopify brands seeking new distribution channels, companies with excess inventory or capacity, and businesses wanting to scale with other stores’ marketing efforts without increased customer acquisition costs
• Ideal joint users: Businesses wanting to import products and supply their catalog to other merchants, stores seeking to create selling relationships with complementary brands, and merchants looking to maximize revenue on both sides of the marketplace

Official eligibility requirements for 2025

Collective access depends on whether your store meets eligibility criteria. Here’s everything you need to know about Shopify Collective requirements:

Core setup needs: location, currency, and Shopify Payments

Before accessing Shopify Collective, your store must meet these requirements:

• Compliance with Collective’s Terms of Service, Shopify’s Terms of Service, and the Acceptable Use Policy
• Business location in the United States or Canada with matching store currency (USD, CAD)
• Complete Shopify Payments activation — no alternative payment processors allowed
• Active paid Shopify plan (trials and development versions don’t qualify)
• Complete verification of your Shopify Payments account, including all setup steps

A banner on your Overview page will alert you if you don’t meet these requirements. Click Check requirements to see what needs fixing before you can sell.

Shopify periodically runs automated eligibility checks on all approved stores, so maintaining compliance isn’t just a requirement for initial approval. If you lose eligibility, imported products will stop selling immediately until you fix the violations.

Myth-busting the $50k sales rule

Some articles wrongly claim Shopify Collective requires $50,000 in annual sales. This rule doesn’t exist in Shopify’s official documentation, and this page states, “There is no minimum store sales requirement for using Shopify Collective.”

The confusion stems from mixing Collective with other programs like Shopify Plus or certain payment features. If you go through the Collective setup process, you’ll realize there isn’t a requirement for minimum sales or revenue.

Asking Shopify’s AI assistant reveals the correct answer:

Can Canadian stores use Shopify Collective?

Canadian stores can use Shopify Collective with CAD as the store’s currency. They must also have a Canadian business address and bank account for Shopify Payments approval.

One key difference between Canadian retailers’ and US-only transactions is that both parties must handle taxes separately when they work with Canadian suppliers. You collect taxes from customers and then pay taxes to suppliers on wholesale purchases.

Where to check: Links to Shopify’s official docs

Always verify requirements at Shopify’s official Collective documentation for suppliers and retailers, and the Shop app requirements page (for Shopify Collective suppliers).

These three sources provide definitive answers about your store’s eligibility for Collective participation. The requirements can change, so bookmark both pages for the latest information.

How Shopify Collective works: Step-by-step

Your Shopify store connects to Collective with an app. You can then discover and receive invites from suppliers, import products with set margins, and make sales.

How does Shopify Collective work exactly? Here’s a step-by-step:

The basics: How two Shopify stores connect

Both retailers and suppliers can access Shopify Collective through an app. Suppliers also require the Shop sales channel for products to appear in Discovery.

As a retailer, you discover suppliers with Collective’s built-in search or send invitations. Suppliers receive email notifications when retailers want to connect. You can view each other’s profiles before agreeing to partnerships, making connections intentional rather than random.

The retailer journey

• App installation: Installing the retailer app happens from Apps and Sales Channels in your Shopify admin. Complete the onboarding checklist, including reviewing policies for product display, shipping rates, and return handling.
• Supplier discovery: You’ll then find suppliers, choosing between manual invites and the Discovery page for US-based stores (the Discover feature is available only to businesses based in the United States, and to certain product categories).
• Adding products: Adding products and syncing inventory starts after suppliers accept your connection and share their price lists. Browse their available products and import what you want to sell. Products sync automatically — when suppliers update inventory levels, your store reflects those changes.
• Handling customer orders: Fulfillment is the easiest part. When customers purchase Collective products, their orders automatically route to suppliers, who fulfill and ship directly to your customers.
• Managing post-purchase flows: You handle the post-purchase experience, including order confirmations and updates. After customers receive their orders, you can add them to marketing lists and nurture relationships using email marketing apps like Omnisend.

The supplier journey

• App installation: The first step is to install the supplier app by navigating to Sales Channels in your admin and adding the Collective: Supplier channel.
• Profile configuration: The next step is to configure your supplier profile. The Overview page guides setup tasks like profile creation and pricing configuration. Fill out brand descriptions, social media links, shipping locations, and product categories that help retailers understand your business.
• Creating and managing pricing: Once your profile is ready, you can create and manage price lists for retailers. Build price lists that group products for different retailer partnerships, then activate them to start sharing with connected stores.
• Partner/order management: Managing partnerships and orders happens from your Collective dashboard, where you view connected retailers and monitor imported products. When retailers sell your products, orders appear in your admin.
• Payments and payouts: Payments and payouts work automatically after fulfillment. You receive payment from Shopify as Shopify Collective Credit in your payouts, not directly from retailers, to simplify accounting and ensure fast, reliable payments without chasing invoices.

Benefits for your business

Shopify Collective lets you source and resell products from other Shopify merchants. As a supplier, you’ll be feeding those sales.

The benefits for your business include new revenue opportunities, automated fulfillment, no inventory costs, direct retailer-supplier relationships, and centralized sales/order information built right into the Shopify dashboard.

Why retailers love it: No inventory, curated catalogs

Retailers who join Collective immediately gain expansion capabilities without traditional inventory investment, creating opportunities to test new categories and products without integrating third-party dropshipping apps.

Here’s why you should become a Shopify Collective retailer:

• Test new products: Import promising items from established brands before investing in your stock
• Expand categories: Fill product gaps your customers want without developing new product lines
• Attract new customers: Introduce high-quality products from other brands to bring in shoppers outside your current audience
• Reduce complexity: No warehousing, packaging, or shipping required for Collective products
• Preserve cash flow: You only pay suppliers after items sell, keeping capital free for marketing and growth
• Create targeted marketing: Use Omnisend to announce new Collective products to customer segments most likely to purchase them
• Build curated collections: Mix your products with third-party items from suppliers for complete shopping experiences

Why suppliers use it: New channels, brand control

Suppliers find immediate distribution via Collective without sacrificing the brand standards and quality control that typically make expansion challenging.

Here’s why you should become a Shopify Collective supplier:

• Reach new customers: Expand distribution via trusted storefronts and ready-made audiences without heavy marketing investment
• Maintain standards: You control which retailers sell your products and approve pricing
• Fulfillment control: Ship your packaging and quality standards directly to customers
• Get automatic payments: Receive funds from Shopify after fulfilling orders
• Stay connected: Keep retailers informed about new products and inventory within Shopify and email tools like Omnisend
• Trusted network: Shopify Collective connects you to retailers rather than anonymous overseas suppliers or marketplaces

Pricing and costs

Shopify Collective is free with a paid Shopify plan. There are no setup, management, or subscription fees, but there are a few things to consider:

What’s free

• The Shopify Collective app
• Access to the Shopify Collective marketplace

What’s not free

• A paid Shopify plan — starting from $39/month
• Transaction fees per Shopify plan when using Shopify Payments — these range from 2.4% + $0.30 to 2.9% + $0.30/transaction
• Shipping costs (as a retailer, you pay your supplier for the cost of shipping)

Supplier payments

One cost aspect of Shopify Collective as a retailer is the payments you make to suppliers. Orders placed in your store bring in the full payment amount. You’ll then forward the product cost and shipping fees to your supplier, keeping the remainder as your profit margin.

Things to consider before starting

Before launching with Shopify Collective, consider how it fits your business model, customer expectations, and operational capabilities. The following considerations will help you determine if it’s a good match:

Tech and API limitations

Shopify Collective lacks API support for sending and accepting invitations between merchants, so connections must be established using Collective apps.

When webhooks return more than 100 records, those records omit variant details, requiring additional productVariants queries. Additionally, price lists are only editable in the Shopify Collective UI, not programmatically.

If you have high-volume sales, consider that Shopify Collective’s overselling protection works only with standard checkout and won’t function with manual order creation.

Supplier–retailer communication gaps

Collective provides the connection but lacks built-in messaging between partners. Suppliers can’t notify retailers about inventory changes or product updates within the platform, and retailers can’t ask follow-up questions about invitations.

You can communicate with suppliers and retailers outside Shopify Collective, but you’ll need to keep records to protect your business in the event of any contract issues.

Inflexible pricing and discounts

Price lists cannot set individual product margins (one retailer margin applies to all products within a single price list). While suppliers can create unlimited price lists, each must use the same margin percentage for all included products.

Additionally, custom metafields and tags don’t sync to retailers, and product information updates (except price and inventory) require removing and re-adding products to the price list to update retailers.

Inventory and data sync issues

Inventory modifications take 30 seconds to five minutes to propagate between connected stores, creating potential inventory discrepancies during high-volume sales periods.

Product content updates (descriptions, images, etc.) don’t automatically sync unless manually removed and re-added to price lists.

Location changes break synchronization entirely, so the entire product-retailer connection can fail if suppliers modify their inventory location settings.

Shipping setup quirks

Supplier shipping rates automatically appear in your checkout. You can customize how these rates display in shipping policies or override them with custom profiles (while still paying suppliers their original fees).

With split shipping enabled, customers see the lowest shipping costs or individual shipment rates for multi-supplier orders.

Control over product pages (PDP)

You determine whether imports appear as draft or active and which sales channels they are published to. Price, inventory, and compare-at prices sync automatically, but you select which additional details (title, description, media, SKUs) sync.

You can zero inventory, set them as drafts, or delete unavailable products. When you update your policy settings, watch for manual edits overriding during synchronization.

Payments, fulfillment, and invoicing issues

Suppliers receive funds after fulfilling orders with automatic payments. Payment pending indicates funds awaiting debit, while Paid means money is ready after fulfillment. Without automatic payments, you’ll need custom invoicing arrangements with retailers.

Retailers are automatically charged from their Shopify Payments balance when suppliers fulfill orders. Insufficient funds often occur with alternative payment methods or frequent payouts. To prevent delays, consider adjusting your payout schedules or using Shopify Payments exclusively.

Taxes, duties, and tariffs

Duties, taxes, and tariffs remain your responsibility as a retailer and don’t transfer automatically to suppliers in Shopify Collective.

Both parties must handle these financial obligations separately outside Shopify. For instance, if you meet Shopify’s requirements, you can add duties and import taxes at checkout.

Performance with big catalogs

Shopify Collective only handles up to 100 product variants, with synchronization issues possible beyond this limit. Only online inventory syncs between stores, excluding POS levels. Products require SKUs but won’t import collections, tags, or meta fields from suppliers.

It’s best practice to avoid duplicating imported products, as this breaks supplier connections. For discounting, Shopify recommends third-party apps that can exclude Collective items.

Managing returns and disputes

The Shopify Collective app handles returns between retailers and suppliers with automated workflows, customizable policies, and integrated refund processing. If you’re a retailer, you set the returns policies, and suppliers follow them.

How to set retailer return policies

Create custom policies in the Collective app that align with your brand’s expectations. Choose who creates return labels, set processing timeframes, and define return windows (typically 30 days).

Decide if suppliers pay restocking fees and what happens when they decline returns. Third-party apps like Loop integrate smoothly while preserving your workflow.

How suppliers handle returns

To maintain retailer relationships, fulfill orders promptly when marked Paid. In your admin, you’ll receive automated return requests with customer-provided reasons.

Process returns according to retailer policies — create shipping labels if required and handle refunds with automatic payments or manual transfers. Collective syncs the return status between both stores.

Fees, declines, and dispute resolution

Return policies determine who bears financial responsibility for labels and restocking. When returns are declined, the system either cancels them automatically or flags them for retailer review. Partial returns remain open until all items have been resolved.

For mixed-cart situations, Collective and non-collective items follow parallel processes. For situations outside the automated system, communicate directly with your partner.

App compatibility

Shopify Collective works with most apps and features, though there are important exceptions to consider before building your workflow around this sales channel.

Apps that don’t work

Shopify Collective doesn’t support Managed Markets, preventing multi-currency selling across international storefronts. While you can add Collective products to your POS channel, customers can’t physically purchase them in-store as suppliers ship directly to customer addresses.

Store pickup options are not available for supplier-fulfilled items, and custom meta fields don’t transfer from supplier products, limiting the display of advanced product information.

Apps that do work

You can use product bundle apps with your supplier’s items to increase average order value, and subscription apps work well with Collective products for recurring revenue streams.

Shopify Flow lets you create automations that trigger based on Collective orders, inventory changes, or supplier connections. Most standard Shopify functionality remains available, but always test compatibility with apps in your particular setup.

Shopify Collective vs. other models

Shopify Collective creates direct supplier-retailer relationships within the Shopify ecosystem, offering advantages over traditional third-party marketplaces and simplifying logistics compared to standard wholesale.

Shopify Collective vs. dropshipping

With Collective, you build direct connections to established brands instead of sourcing on intermediary dropshipping platforms.

Products ship in original manufacturer packaging, maintaining brand integrity and customer experience quality. Shopify automatically syncs inventory between you and suppliers, preventing stockouts and customer disappointment.

Shopify Collective vs. wholesale marketplaces

Collective eliminates the need for upfront inventory purchases and the warehouse space typically required in wholesale models.

You pay suppliers only after customers place orders, improving cash flow. Your business stays entirely within the Shopify ecosystem without external marketplace fees.

Direct store-to-store relationships provide better communication and negotiation opportunities than third-party marketplace arrangements.

Shopify Collective vs. ghost commerce

Ghost commerce refers to rebranding products under your own brand and label, while Shopify Collective keeps the original manufacturer branding. Your customers can see who made their products and who curated them. 

Transparency positions your store as a trusted retailer of established brands rather than hiding product origins. You focus on selection and experience rather than pretending to manufacture everything yourself.

Advanced strategies

Consider these strategies and examples to inspire your Shopify Collective efforts:

Beyond cross-selling

Partner with your best suppliers to develop exclusive products just for your store. Ask for custom colors or limited runs that shoppers won’t find elsewhere. Your suppliers will gain guaranteed sales, while you’ll get unique merchandise.

Create ready-made bundles combining products from multiple suppliers that solve customer problems, such as complete home office setups or starter kits for new hobbies.

Creating curated marketplaces

Carefully select products from multiple suppliers to build a collection your competitors can’t copy. Skip organizing by brand name — instead, arrange everything by how customers shop (by room, occasion, or problem to solve).

Keep things fresh with new featured collections tied to seasons or trends. Help customers discover items they’ll love, like pairing a cutting board with specialty knives and gourmet ingredients for the perfect cooking gift.

Grow faster with Shopify Collective and marketing automation

Use Omnisend’s marketing automation features to accelerate growth with Shopify Collective:

• Welcome flows: Introduce new customers to your curated brands based on their first purchase
• Customer segmentation: Group shoppers who purchase supplier products for targeted recommendations
• Cross-selling campaigns: Automatically suggest recommended items from different suppliers
• Back-in-stock alerts: Notify interested customers when popular Collective items return to inventory
• Supplier communication: Share product updates and promotional opportunities with all retail partners simultaneously
• Performance reporting: Track which supplier products drive the highest engagement and conversion rates

These automated workflows can increase sales volume for you and your suppliers without requiring manual intervention for each message.

Brand examples using Shopify Collective

These brands all expanded their product offerings without investing in inventory, attracted a significant number of new customers, maintained control of their brand experience, and created unique shopping destinations within their existing stores:

1. Cozy Earth

Cozy Earth used Collective to cross-sell products with its sister brand, Fount Society, without duplicating SKUs. It drove 46% of Fount Society’s revenue while maintaining separate analytics and automating payments between stores.

2. Ten Thousand

Ten Thousand used Shopify Collective to power its collaboration with GORUCK, syncing inventory and orders in real-time without developer resources. The partnership achieved a 46% increase in average order value, with 16% of sales coming from new customers.

3. Larroude 

Larroude created a luxury shopping destination called Colléct featuring products from 17 partner brands across six new categories. Within one month of launch, it saw a 21% revenue increase, with 82% of Collective sales coming from first-time customers.

4. Bala

Bala created The Movement Store on its website by connecting with eight complementary fitness brands via Shopify Collective. It synced selected products in one day without investing in inventory, attracting new customers that generated 45% of sales.

5. Paceline

Paceline replaced gift cards with physical products using Collective partnerships. It launched 150 brand relationships with 3,000 products, increasing year-over-year sales by 262% and capturing 185% more new customers.

Is Shopify Collective the right strategy for your store?

Shopify Collective makes sense if you want to expand your product offering without inventory or if you’re looking to reach new customers with brand partnerships.

Here are the pros and cons of becoming a Shopify Collective retailer and/or supplier:

Pros

• No upfront inventory investment required
• Real-time inventory syncing prevents overselling
• Automatic payment routing between connected stores
• Integrated returns management with customizable policies
• Simplified supplier communications within Shopify

Cons

• Limited to US and Canadian stores using Shopify Payments
• Cannot sell supplier products with POS or in-person channels
• Incompatible with Multi-Currency/Managed Markets features
• Split shipping can complicate the customer experience
• Some supplier policies may conflict with your store standards

Begin with one partner whose products complement yours and establish clear expectations about shipping, returns, and customer service before adding more suppliers. Track new vs. existing customer purchases to measure business impact.

Tools like Omnisend help you target the right buyers with new product offerings. Create segments based on purchase behavior and automate cross-selling emails and SMS to increase your customer retention rate and grow sales.

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