Proposal: Multi Vendor module

Posted by smoothify on December 11, 2007 at 1:49am

I posted a job advert earlier today and got some good responses from people willing to do the actual work, but also from people who are looking for something similar for their own projects.

Since my project isn't for a client it doesn't have an urgent turnaround, and so i'd prefer to get the system right rather than rush things. I'd also like the final result to be a useful module for others to use too, rather than something limited to my use case.

So since there seems to be interest for this kind of thing here, i thought it might be useful to post here and see what kind of things people are looking for and whether there are others interested in contributing to or co-sponsoring such a module.

Also since there have been several attempts at this before on previous versions of eCommerce it would be cool to collate what has been learnt about the different approaches and how the way forward should be.

For my project i will need the following:

Each client has their own login which allows them to create and maintain their own store front. So they need to be able to manage their products as well as view their own orders.

All their own products are shown in their own mini-store, ideally using a subdomain e.g. mystore.example.com. The main portal itself lists products from all the different stores. The subdomain part will be handled outside of ecommerce - most likely by something like the domain access module

For the checkout process it should probably be a single combined checkout, where payment is taken by the portal and then distributed to the individual store owners. I believe the ec_commissions module may help with this part.

However a single checkout does have complications for tangible products since they may be located in different places and we need to be clear on how to calculate shipping and taxes. I've been looking at the commercial X-Cart Pro shopping cart system which handles multi-vendors and i believe they break the order down into the different stores and create separate invoices with the appropriate shipping and tax charges.

For downloadable products this would be easier since there is no such shipping issues with these. If the store was only downloads then it might be possible to use user_points instead of real currency.

Once the order is complete, then there needs to be a way to pay the seller's of the products minus a configurable commission. This needs to have good reporting so both the portal owner and the store owner can see the figures.

I'm sure there are things i've forgotten, or not thought of so i'll add to this if i remember - but i'd like to hear others thoughts on this.

Ben

Comments

All ears!

Posted by niklp on December 11, 2007 at 2:21am

Subscribing for interest and great potential :)

Kineta Systems - Web Development in Nottingham, UK

Web Development in Nottingham, UK by Kineta Systems / Follow me on Twitter! @NikLP

I wrote ec_mvmg:

Posted by suydam on December 11, 2007 at 2:42am

I wrote ec_mvmg: http://drupal.org/project/ec_mvmg
It's out there...it's a big hack, but it does much of what you're describing.

The idea for the client I was working with was to split up payment at the customer end.

We kept the shopping cart together...you could put as many products in it as you wanted.

When you go to pay, your transaction was split into multiple "sub-transactions" (1 per vendor).

The payment screen then required you to go through payment for each store you'd shopped from.

I didn't like that solution, but the client demanded our solution work with Paypal Website Payments Standard, which meant you had to go to Paypal.com to pay...that meant 1 visit to paypal.com for every purchase. Our hands were a little tied on that.

At any rate, it works...it's been working, and they're selling plenty of product.

Another "gotcha" is that it relies on Paypal IPN to notify us of when payments happen. That seems to work about 90% of the time, but we occasionally get transactions that don't post back on the main site.

So that's how my module works. It's not pretty, but I certainly understand the concepts of what you're proposing. It's no small feat.

thanks for taking the initiative

Posted by esadot on December 11, 2007 at 3:54am

radiantflow - thanks for taking the initiative. My interest lies around downloadable products, and I believe your requirements capture the essence. I'd like to add one point though, I believe the store-admin should be offered a way to upload and manage his files, it might not be tightly coupled to EC, say maybe utilizing other module like Web File Manager, but I believe it needs to be on our radar.

suydam@drupal.org - I'm wondering, do you plan to consolidate all transaction to one payment? as opposed to split into multiple "sub-transactions" (1 per vendor)?

Regards,

Esadot - I haven't even

Posted by suydam on December 11, 2007 at 1:33pm

Esadot - I haven't even continued development on the ec_mvmg module. It was getting incredibly proprietary as we moved along. I wasn't able to stay with the standard payment gateways from the EC modules because of the requirement that we split transactions into multiple payments. The reason we had to split transactions into multiple payments was that Paypal issue I highlighted above.

Once we got to the point where we were running multiple payments per "transaction" the entire module became (for me at least) nothing more than a one-off job. I haven't touched it since we launched the site in May (June? I forget).

I will say this: The project was a good learning experience for me. :) I know the ins and outs of why this multi-vendor payment project is going to be pretty large and complex. I even have some great ideas for how to make it work correctly (instead of the hack that is ec_mvmg).

Things to think about:

Does every vendor set up their own paypal/authorize.net settings and Drupal splits transactions in the background?
...or, do you want to handle that manually from the site administrator's paypal/authorize/whatever account?

Do you want the user to know they're buying from multiple vendors or do you want the illusion of a single storefront?
Go shopping on Amazon.com and then later on Etsy.com or Gozabo.com...the difference is startling. Amazon's many vendors are all payed by Amazon after you checkout. Etsy and Gozabo both split your transaction and have you pay once for each vendor. This is obviously easier from a programmer's perspective, and more flexible from a vendor's perspective (C.O.D. payments are even an option!)...but it's more annoying from a customer's perspective.

can you tell us the URL?

Posted by mpaler on July 27, 2008 at 10:52pm

Hi Suydam,

Any chance you could tell us the url of your multivendor project? No judgments will be cast.

Thanks,Michael

Posted by flex_vixen on December 16, 2007 at 7:12pm

Would Be Extremely Useful!

Posted by tubbie on January 23, 2008 at 11:19pm

This would be a great feature to have.

I'm fairly new to Drupal and I have plans to create a multi-vendor site. I was hoping this feature is already available, but I guess not.

Does anyone know if X-Cart will work with a Drupal site?

x-cart

Posted by tony@hsiehs.com.cn on June 18, 2008 at 11:44am

Hi,

Wanted to know if you have found people who has used x-cart with the drupal site?

Convenient Truths

Feature request

Posted by webdzinez on February 12, 2008 at 9:05pm

It would be great if this module also have something where the site owner gets a cut out of vendor sales

Count Us In

Posted by bramface on March 25, 2008 at 2:14am

I am also looking to develop something like this - with the added
challenge of the ability to earn user points by contributing to one
sub-domain's catalog and applying those user points towards purchases
(converted to cash value) in another catalog. I'm leaning towards Ubercart
at the moment

Bram Moreinis, Principal
Game Face Web Design, LLC
http://www.gamefacewebdesign.com
(w) 845-750-6204

http://gamefacewebdesign.com

Interesting

Posted by Macronomicus on March 29, 2008 at 2:57am

This is sort of close to what we are seeking, well sort of in reverse ... we need to incorporate many vendors (which have their own xml api for integration and booking) These are mostly resorts, hotels, tickets, and travel stuff and have insane availability, seasonality, and rate calculations so we want to use their stuff for that, and simply return the price results to ubercart and stack them seamlessly, with one payment to rule them all; with subsequent actions triggered for each of our external vendors involved in the transaction. It's a bit more complicated as userpoints are the main currency in our site along with minor cash fees.

I'm still mapping everything out, but surely we'll be sponsoring a great deal of module work to get us there.

Posted by mpaler on July 27, 2008 at 10:46pm

Ubercart Marketplace

Posted by smoothify on July 27, 2008 at 11:39pm

This project has been on pause for me for a while as i've been busy on other work.

However, I have noticed an ubercart based module that looks very promising

its called Ubercart Marketplace
http://drupal.org/project/ubercart_marketplace

Discussion of it is here

I haven't tested it out myself but it on my list of things to do soon.

I have recently worked on my first ubercart site and I have to say I really like it, and it went very smoothly, and I will definitely be using it for future projects.

Progress

Posted by svogel on November 7, 2008 at 10:59am

Is there any progress regarding multiple vendor?
I would be interested in that module, too.

Ubercart Marketplace looks like a good start. But as far as I can see you can only have one shop-configuration (one shop-name, ...).

Any news ?

Posted by benone on November 17, 2008 at 3:25pm

Hi,
I am looking for that possibility also. Any news to this topic ?

any updates?

Posted by doniking on September 23, 2009 at 1:53pm

Hi,

i'm also looking for this