Multichannel ecommerce software for wholesalers

Shopify
Woocommerce
Magento
BigCommerce

Before I begin, you need to know our overriding objective is to guide you to the solution that has the best cost-benefit achievable for your budget and operational efficiency.

Short answer: if you have an existing shopping cart like Shopify or Woocommerce, you can try and buy a connector that will import orders from the marketplace and send back the requisite information.

Because you can connect shopping carts that integrate with Salesorder, you can immediately install the connecting (proxy app) in your cart and try a test order. Salesorder will process the resulting order, and you can carry out the pick pack and ship it inside our system.

Our system will send back the requisite status and tracking numbers to your cart. It will also update your stock.

Which connector? I hear you ask. You need to study the ‘Long answer’ below.

Before you do this, you might want to take the shortcut and talk to the developer or agency that created your website or store and ask them.

Long answer: there are things you need to know.

Established marketplaces, because of their scale and the number of buyers and sellers, have attracted the attention of dozens of software developers. As a result, there is a broad selection of ‘integration solutions’.

Mainstream shopping carts are not expensive. Most often, they cost tens of dollars a month to use. These popular shopping carts like Shopify and Woocommerce have substantial developer communities that offer solutions to connect your shopping cart to a marketplace.

These ‘proxy’ solutions, like the carts they work with, are low-cost. Because these solutions are the primary income for the developer, and because of the small income they receive from each instance of their solution, they have hundreds of users. They are battle tested. And because of the focus of the developer, they evolve in line with the marketplace features.

For economic and reliability reasons, whilst we recommend these as the best solutions, it’s important you try these out before you commit, even if you have to pay tens or a few hundred dollars to test their solution.

Which marketplace we can connect to depends upon which cart you choose or have chosen. Each mainstream shopping cart has an app store. In each vendor app store, for example, the Shopify app store has solutions to connect your Shopify cart to Faire, it also has multiple connectors to ETSY.

Finding a WordPress Woocommerce to marketplace ‘proxy’ is not as straightforward as Shopify. The current curation of the thousands of apps available for Woocommerce is like reading a book through a straw.

I do know (and you probably do too) there is a connector for Woocommerce to Faire. I couldn’t find it in any of the obvious places.

Whilst Woocommerce has an extensions store here, as you’ll see, it displays confusing results.

So here are my suggestions:

Search Google for Woocommerce ‘marketplace name’, i.e., Wayfair. You find multiple solutions. Or email Judd at brightvessel.com. Judd has been working with WordPress and Woocommerce for 10+ years. He is super helpful.

Other stores?

I’ve given you two examples above on how to proceed. If you can speak to your store developer, ask for their advice first. If you cannot, then look for the cart vendor app store or search Cart name Marketplace on Google.

Remember what I said? Salesorder integrates with these four carts:
Shopify
Woocommerce
Magento
BigCommerce

If you have another type of cart, then get in touch with support@salesorder.com, and we’ll try to figure out a way to get you sorted. We are here to help, with no obligation, the more you share with us, we’ll share with you.

One more thing,

There are other integration solutions for marketplaces, however, they are much higher costs. They will significantly elongate and complicate your journey.

We can make these work for you. We are software engineers.

Direct integration with order and inventory management software (OMS). This means the OMS vendor has invested in creating a module in their application that directly connects to the Marketplace.

Pros:

Less technology in your stack. Like the proxy app software developers, they probably have volumes of users.

But in truth, this is most often not the case. So do this, ask for a reference. Before you get into a ‘scope of work’ discussion with the OMS vendor (their primary objective, unlike Salesorder, is to suck an upfront fee for their professional services from your bank account) do this. Speak to the reference and ask them about the entire journey from initiation to the current time.

This is such an important step, as selling is your most important activity right? Get the costs and the dirt out in the open, before you do anything with the rest of their technology. I do know from personal experience in talking to my customers that third-party connectivity by its very nature is treacherous.

Just to underline this, my data shows these vendors only know their own product well and don’t have the depth of experience or interest in how well their product works and stays up to date with the marketplace feature evolutions.

Cons:
Expensive and complex, and probably not mature.

IPAAS – Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) is a suite of cloud services enabling the development, execution, and governance of integration flows connecting any combination of on-premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications, and data within individuals or across multiple organizations.

What does that mean, Google (where I got the explanation)?

It’s basically one connector to a platform application that services many endpoints, some of which are marketplaces.

The problem we’ve seen time and time again is what I call a rudimentary connection to the endpoint (marketplace), they have done the bare minimum on most of the endpoint connections just to help market their solution.

Similar to the OMS and ERP vendors, they focus on where the majority of their customers express a need for more comprehensive connectivity. There is no merit in breadth, you need to be sure they have the depth and functionality, and expertise.

Dig deep, try it, and tread carefully.

Just to give you some comfort, the integration of an IPAAS with Salesorder is short and simple. However, we’ll ask the same question of the software vendor, “Explain and prove how (well) the endpoint works. What can and can’t it do? We know what hard questions to ask, but you don’t. Save yourself the time and pain, talk to us!

We have an EDI solution common to most wholesaler-to-retailer connections. The typical requirement is for the following documents to be exchanged.

850 Purchase Order
855 Purchase Order Acknowledgement
856 Advance Ship Notice
810 Invoice

We can work with an EDI gateway provider, e.g. SPS Commerce.

We also have EDI connectivity for third-party logistics operations (3PL). Each 3PL has different requirements because they have either their own private EDI network or use an EDI Gateway like SPS commerce, or True Commerce.

Read this help with Salesorder.com article for more guidance.

Salesorder.com can be learned and deployed in days with zero costs. If you have an existing Shopify store. You can connect your Shopify store to your Salesorder system and import your Item catalog in less than an hour.

See our pricing page here, but to summarize, one-third of one percent of your previous month’s revenue (0.33%). This sum is payable in arrears. We reach out to you on a monthly basis and ask you to tell us your revenue. We’ll time this action with your month-end close.