One of the most common challenges in dropshipping relationships is maintaining accurate inventory levels for all the products available on your site. Every e-commerce entrepreneur’s worst nightmare is selling a product that is no longer available. Such an experience can easily deter a customer from ever purchasing from your site again.
We recognize that keeping up to date with all your suppliers is time consuming and cumbersome. So on Modalyst we have automated the process so our retailers can spend more time selling their products and less on updating inventory levels.
Suppliers are expected to update their inventory levels regularly. We make it easy for them to do so through a bulk uploading tool that will import an excel / CSV directly into their Item Manager with updated stock levels.
Once the inventory is imported, the stock is automatically updated on Modalyst as it is sold. For example if there are 30 items available when they add an item and they sell 2 of those products through Modalyst retailers the next day, the stock level will automatically decrease to 28 on their account as well on your Shopify store. This means you will not have to manually update – this is automatic and ensures that your inventory levels are accurate.
When an item sells out on Modalyst (Inventory level = 0), the item will immediately be marked as Out Of Stock (OOS) on your Shopify store. When you search for that item on Modalyst, it will show as OOS.
In some cases the supplier will be re-stocking the item and therefore will keep it as OOS until new inventory is available. Once available, they can update their inventory and it will automatically be updated on your Shopify store to show as available once again.
For items / suppliers that are no longer being offered for dropshipping (as opposed to OOS), we have added a section under My Dropshipping > Un-Published.
As opposed to the OOS items on Modalyst, these products are not listed in the Modalyst marketplace and can no longer be added to any stores. You will only be able to see these items in your Un-Published section.
When an item is no longer available, the supplier will remove this item from the dropshipping marketplace. The item will immediately be removed from the Modalyst marketplace, but will remain in your Shopify store for 30 days but marked as “0” available.
In this case, the supplier does NOT plan to re-stock the item and it should eventually be removed from your store. These items will remain in your Un-Published list (but not in the marketplace) until you decide to remove them. We will mark them as OOS for as long as 30 days so you have time to halt any marketing campaigns or social media outreach that may feature that product. After 30 days, the item will be automatically removed from your site. If you want to remove that item before the 30 days is up, you can do so directly in Shopify.
When a supplier is no longer dropshipping with Modalyst, all items are immediately removed from Modalyst marketplace but will remain in your Shopify store for 30 days but marked as “0” available.
If a supplier decides he / she is no longer interested in dropshipping their collection, they can remove their profile / products from Modalyst. Again, these items will remain in your Un-Published list and we offer 30 days for you to gracefully remove the items however you see fit before we automatically remove them from your site. During this time period the products will not be available for purchase because the inventory will be marked as 0.
Sometimes suppliers are re-organizing their production and need a few weeks to “pause” their account. When they re-join the dropshipping marketplace, their items will automatically appear back in your store (as long as you did not remove them). They must re-join within a 30 day period for that to take place.
If you are a non-Shopify user, you can use this list to update your e-commerce store daily by exporting the CSV file and importing it into your site.
Just as you export / import your Inventory List daily to update inventory levels for the products on your site, you will export / import your Un-Published list to mark all items as “0” quantity available. Just to be clear, this will NOT remove the items from your site on purpose to allow you time to gradually remove them as you see fit. When you are ready to remove them entirely from your site, you will need to manually delete them from your store.
**All updates made in the last 24 hrs will be summarized in your Daily Digest**
Have questions? Send me an email and I would be happy to clarify! lillian@modalyst.co
