I have another suggestion to this problem which may simplify things alot.
Regarding multi-store the problem is in most cases defined as below:
A company has an collection of products,they are targeting different markets/channels:
- regional markets
- different channels (B2C, B2B)
- vertical markets
Each market/channel ideally may require its own marketing, content, domain, payment options, shipment options.
Consider an outlet store for consumers, it may require that the store has no references to the company's name but is just called [productname]-outlet.com. The outlet store may require different discount eventhough when products is sold in another webshop of the company (for an higher price!).
Another example would be for B2B store, more specifically a store for the company's brand resellers.
Not every physically store can buy the company's products at reseller prices, so registrations must be approved.
The checkout proces most likely must be far quiker, in most cases the payment option could be skipped because all customer pay per invoice or the credit is checked manually afterward.
Last example let's say the company is form the EU and want's to open a store outside the EU. A lot of things will be different: template, topics (content!), payments, regulation (tax, eu cookie law,..), hosting will preferably also be outside EU. The company might conclude that its better to hire capacity at a local warehouse, meaning different stock values per store.
To make a long story short, in long term an "enterprise" company will require almost all aspects of the store to be configurable per store. My concern is that this will greatly make the nopcommerce more complex, heavier than it already is.
Also do all plugins have to consider to support multi store or not, how does this effect the availablity of plugins?
We are even considering moving to Magento because of the large amount of plugins available (integration, B2B, ect)
The most important thing for us is to share product and iventory information.
Why not make the product information centraly manageble by an external service (asp.net Web API?) which can be easily connected to several nopcommerce stores (by plugin). Store owner must have the option to override the default values.
Even better, make this service easy to connect to back-end systems (ERP, inventory, Amamzon Fullfillment, ect).
This way nopcommerce, all plugins and themes doesn't have to be adjusted to multi-store. Only the companies who really need multi-store can simply install a centralized service for a example on Azure and can connect each store with a plugin.
I understand this is not a solution where you want to share carts or customers, also multi-vendor is another subject but can be mainly done by ACL?
Like to hear what you think...