Multi-vendor roadmap. Let's discuss (UPDATE: done)

Hi,

As you already may know multi-store support is already added in the upcoming version 3.00 (you can discuss the entire roadmap here). Now it's time to discuss what multi-vendor support should include and how it should be implemented.

Of course, there could be a lot of multi-vendor support implementations. And as it was already told there is not such a concept as a "standard" multi-vendor situation. In each case it all depends on the stores business model. So let's choose the one which could be used by the most of store owners. Here are some points that should be considered/done:

1. Multiple vendors, single store. Products from multiple independent vendors appear in the common product catalog and your website visitors do shop at one web store even if your products are supplied by hundred of different vendors from all over the world.

2. Products from multiple vendors in one order. Your customers' shopping cart can contain products from several vendors, but they will still place one order and pay only once. Should a customer know whether his order contains product from several vendors? I personally think, no. A customer will see only one order. For proper tracking such order should be then automatically divided into several ones (sub-orders) depending on the number of vendors supplying the purchased goods – one order per each vendor. But I'm not sure whether it's possible to implement. Maybe, it'll always be one single order, and a vendor will have access to it, but he'll see only his products and shipments.

3. What can vendors do and see? Each vendor is provided with an admin panel access to manage products, see sales reports and order details with his products. Vendors will not interfere with each other's activity. Should a vendor see customer (order) details? Some store owners could say "no" because vendors could use customer (order) details to sell next time themselves. But vendors will know it anyway because they'll have to ship purchased products to customers.

4. Payment processing. The money goes to the merchant account of the root store administrator who then manually distributes funds among the vendors according to the history of orders, which is tracked and managed separately for each provider. This way the customer would only see one charge from the main company. Any other implementation will be too complex right now.

5. Shipping options and rates. It would be good if each vendor can configure own shipping methods (options) and buyers whose orders contains items from several vendors could select vendor-specific shipping options at checkout. Maybe, it's better to implement warehouse support. This way a store owner could have several warehouse (and more accurate shipping rates) even when he does not have any vendors configured (a separate feature not related to vendor). But it could be quite complex to implement it right now. Most probably only a store owner will manage shipping options and rates in the first edition of multi-vendor support.

6. Email notification to vendor. When an order is placed, an email should be sent to the supplier of each product in the order. The email will include the order details.

7. Vendor login/registration. I think the easiest way will be to use the standard customer workflow. Just create a new "Vendor" entity and a new "Vendor" customer role for vendors. This way we'll be able to use the standard ACL support to grant/deny access to some admin area pages. Also a store owner will have to manually create a vendor record, assign some customer records to it (vendor managers) and add these customer records to the "Vendor" customer role.

Anything else? Your thoughts, ideas, suggestions?


UPDATE (Mar 26th): Done. Please see this post of mine

I know this says Multi-vendor roadmap, but in Codeplex it also includes drop-shipping. Are we discussing that here as well?

1. Multiple vendors, single store.
>agree

2. Products from multiple vendors in one order.
> customer should see only one order indeed! (at least in my humble opinion)

3. What can vendors do and see?
> agree

4. Payment processing.
>totally agree, customer pays in one transaction, order is then manually distributed by store owner
splitting customer order in multiple transaction is a definite No-Go because of transaction fees and customer drop out during payment process
maybe we could add a custom report that exports the daily total of fund that needs to be paid to each vendor (store owner could import this in his banking software to do payment run)

5. Shipping options and rates.
> agree in keeping this simple in first release

6. Email notification to vendor.
> agree, maybe it would be nice to have some webhooks or subscribe to events so we can inform vendors?
again, maybe just use simple email in first version

7. Vendor login/registration
totally agree!

Maybe we could use http://nop3vendor.codeplex.com/ as a starting point?

SilhouetteBS wrote:
Let me quote wikipedia: "Drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer."

So the answer is "Yes". These tasks (multi-vendor and drop shipping) are very related to each other. Vendors will manage products (stocks) and ship items to customer.

1. Multiple vendors, single store : could work. but what if we need to split the very large catalog in multiple stores like :
electronics.site.com and home.site.com ... this could be very usefull.

2. Products from multiple vendors in one order : absolutely. each vendor sees his own order only. it could be usefull to inform him that is it is a "Split Order" however ...

3. What can vendors do and see ? : his own products, catalog, orders and his own customers .

4. Payment processing. : absolutely agree . one central account with tracking is the way to go.

5. Shipping options and rates : the warehouse idea is great. i would suggest linking a shipping method to the warehouse . a scenario could be : a warehouse holds large and heavy products that can be shipped only by a specific provider while another warehouse can have small products that anybody can handle ... if a warehouse has all kind of products then one or more providers can be linked to it. after all collection will be from warehouses and not other places.
this way, each order will know wich shipping to use and if more hten one option is available then probably a selection is displayed for the user to choose.

6. Email notification to vendor : great.

7. Vendor login/registration : your idea of using the customer workflow is not bad. however, i think it should be extended to allow document uploads and go through an approval process ... must have one or more logins associated, can have different addresses (billing and mailing as a business ), can be a subsidiary of an existing vendor ....




some other thoughts :

1 - will a vendor be able to manage his own campaigns and discounts ?
2 - can a vendor add a category if it does not exist
3 - can a vendor have his own theme ?
4 - can a vendor purchase extra features he wishes to have ? like : make product a featured product on home page or add a banner on home page or category page ... things that will make him more visible then other vendors should be paid ....


thank you .

sch09 wrote:
Multi-store is already implemented. Hence it can be easily achieved without any additional coding. A vendor will be able to decide in which store(s) a product will appear (in case we have several stores)


sch09 wrote:
1. No
2. No. But he can contact a store owner and ask to do it for him
3. No
4. No. But he can contact a store owner and ask to do it for him

1. Multiple vendors, single store- Great. An ability to create store per Vendor or apply custom theme would be great in future.

2. Products from multiple vendors in one order - Seems to be fine. But as you say, needs an investigation how to implement this.

3. What can vendors do and see? - Vendor should not be able to see all customers, but can see orders and customers's details for delivery. Moreover, it will be great if one vendor can have multiple user account association.

4. Payment processing - Agreed. I only think that some kind of reporting should be provided to make it easy to distribute fund.

5. Shipping options and rates - Idea of implementing a warehouse is much better. But agreed on keeping it simple in first edition.

6. Email notification to vendor - Good. An event should be provided to make it easier to extend this using SMS gateway or RSS Feeds for Orders.

7. Vendor login/registration - Agreed. But I think Vendor can have more than one login associated with his vendor account.

jariwalakrunal wrote:
Agree. I already wrote about it: "...assign some customer records to it (vendor managers)"

a.m. wrote:

Great!