Everyone Scott Austin here. In this week's episode, we have a guest, Kate Latham from Modern Hoopla. Welcome, Kate.

Nice to be here, Scott.

Kate is been using for a period of time Shopify Collective, and I wanted to bring her on because she's using it both as the supplier and as the seller side. So she knows both sides of the equation. And I want to help you learn from her how your brand can be using Shopify Collective in growing your business. So Kate can you start off tell us a little bit about Modern Hoopla or what it is that you're selling?

I would love to. Modern hoopla is a brainchild of mine from about seven years ago. I, invented a wooden frame, like a picture frame, but it fits over top of an embroidery hoop, which hadn't really existed before that. And what an incredibly tiny niche of a product. But I ran with it, and we now sell a wide variety of frames and other accessories for the craft and needle arts industries.

In addition to that, I started on a Squarespace website, but then I switched over to Shopify in late 2024. And one of the reasons that I did that was the Shopify collective capabilities.

Yeah. So Shopify Collective came out in 2023, I think. So you saw that early on that feature, and that was enough to motivate you to move off of the mistake known as Squarespace? Yes. Get on to a real e-commerce platform for.

Many reasons, but I had been looking for a dropshipping like, capability, and Squarespace certainly wasn't going to have that. And but if you understand anything about the craft industry or the product that I've described, it is so niche. It really needs to fit with embroidery or an embroidery kit that that someone has. So being able to pair my product up with others was going to be really powerful.

Yeah, that makes total sense to me. And to explain to people, you know, because I'm look at your website right now and I've hovered over your circle frames and I like that your second image is the backside of it. So if anybody knows how needlepoint works, you got it. Usually a round hoop that makes your material or cloth, whatever you call it, taut so that you can do your stitching in it, and then your frame fits right over that hoop so the material stays taut and they don't have to like remounted or anything like that.

So the back side of the frame has some notches etched out for the screws that tighten the hoop go in. Is that is that the unique part of your product?

Exactly right. Leaving leaving the space for the screw tensioner. It was the innovation. That way you can leave your stitching in a hoop, which is really the perfect tool to keep the the fabric taut. And everything's centered and in good shape.

And the hoop suppliers probably don't mind that either, because these are more hoops.

That's right.

You wanted to get in the Shopify Collective because you wanted to be on the receiving end as a retailer, or on the supply end as a supplier.

Well, I really wanted to be on the supply end because I wanted to be able to pair my frames, you know, with an embroidery kit that someone was buying. And and the tricky part is to get the size right. So to be able to match my frame up and my listing to a specific size hoop already, so that, like all of that guesswork is taken out of the equation, was going to be that was the goal.

And that and also so that because I offer so many sizes and then all of them in five different colors, a store's ability to stock that kind of breadth of product is difficult and and bulky, frankly, especially for the embroidery market. They're already used to things that, you know, you can slip in a little mailing envelope and a frame throws a monkey wrench into that.

So to be able to supply someone with the exact right product, but without them having to buy it wholesale, stock it, or fulfill it was huge.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Now, for those in the audience who don't understand Shopify Collective yet. Can you explain a little bit what the Shopify Collective app does for brands?

Sure. Like that's probably the best place to start is if you're looking in the apps in Shopify Collective, there is one specifically for a retailer. And basically what that does is it gives you the ability to go, you know, browse other Shopify stores and find product that you might want to also sell. But Shopify then handles the connection between the two stores.

They handle all of the details of a listing, so you basically can publish a listing into someone else's store, obviously not without their input. And but you publish it to a retailer and then they can pull it into their store and offer it for sale. And in the background, Shopify handles all of the money, the money transfer between the two stores, all of the shipping, all of the inventory, anything like that in the background so that it's seamless to the customer and there's no intermediary transfer of the product.

It just goes from the supplier straight to the customer.

Yeah. And this is one of those beautiful things because Shopify has been so successful for so long. Right? There's like 5 million plus stores on Shopify now that they have so many brands out there, and they're all in the same tools that they can start doing things like this. It's one of those no brainers. If you every store's in the same platform, you would do this stuff.

But it took Shopify so many years to get so many brands on the platform to make this make sense. But like the inventory thing you just mentioned and like the shipping calculations, you couldn't do that between different platforms. It's only because everybody's on Shopify that this actually can work, and because there's so many brands, you can get onto that collective marketplace and find all sorts of products that you can add to your inventory.

Absolutely. I definitely recommend anyone with a Shopify store at least downloading the app, the retailer app, to to browse around and see what's available. There's no downside. And I will mention at this point there's no fee from Shopify. Who knows if that will change as things get adopted as they do, but at this point, it's just an agreement between the two stores and you as a supplier.

You set a margin or a commission and as a retailer then you agree to that. So like there are certain pretty small set of policies that the two stores need to kind of work through, share the details of, and then it's very seamless.

Yeah. So I'm going to go on a little side rant for a second because you said, all right, now Shopify has no fees. And like it it annoys me on Shopify, as I mentioned, they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I see them leveraging that power more and more. And I'm not I'm not happy about that. Right.

The biggest one that pisses me off is like last year, whenever the the base level plan, which was the $29 a month plan, which is now $39 a month, has no staff accounts anymore, like they took the feature two staff accounts away. They're just nickel and diming people. And it really annoys me because they actually do make a fee in all of this.

It's a credit card transaction fee, right? So you're selling more products, whether it's through your channel or other other brand stores. They're making money doing that. So I think they should focus more on just making all businesses grow without increasing fees, because they make it at the transaction level. But I'm not a Shopify exact. They're not listening to me about these things.

Rant over. Let's let's talk a bit about Shopify Collective, like how you got started. Did you start as a retailer or as a supplier?

I started as a supplier. I do think it's easier to understand from the retailer side though.

All right. Let's talk about the retailer side then. How would you start, you know, a small brand getting started. They want to sell other people's products. How would they go about doing that.

I would start with just downloading the app. And then they call it the discovery section. So you're in there. You're looking for partners. If you're if you're used to buying wholesale or you know, anything like that, it's the same kind of evaluation process you're finding, you're finding a partner that you're going to buy this additional product from.

And you once you find someone, there's a button. It's basically like something about an invitation. That's what kickstarts the communication between the two companies.

Does that mean it's like double opt in? You have to choose them and they have to accept you?

Yeah. You find a company that you like, you initiate communication between the two, and then there's probably some some email like, you know, messaging back and forth. You have to a supplier then is going to send you a product list each like again from the supplier side. That product list can be specific to each retailer. Or you could have a generic one of you know, these 20 products I offer.

Here's this is the margin. This is what my shipping policy is. This is what my return policy is. And have at it. Once you get through that communication about policies, and we can go back to that. If you want to talk about that more, you basically then import a product list from the supplier. Then those products, those 20 products that were on their product list, show up in your product list in Shopify.

I have it set that new things come in just marked as draft so that there's, you know, I get the chance to evaluate modify, but it's going to act just like any other product in your product list. So you can then go in and add collections. You can adjust the order of how things show up. You can adjust the text, you can change the photos.

You can, do whatever you need to do to make that listing merge into your store. But in the background, Shopify is keeping that connection between the two stores so that the inventory is all still tracked and the money is all still handled. And whatever the transact went as the transactions happen, that's all going to be handled seamlessly.

Yep. Now when you pick a supplier, do they dictate the terms or is there any negotiation or is it just say, hey, here's the price, it's fixed, you're going to get this kind of margin? Or is there a discussion that happens?

Oh, well, there can be a discussion. I'm sure that's really up to the two companies. I, I have a policy that I offer my products with a 20% margin, and that's what my collective partners and I have come to pretty industry wide as far as like, again, the needle works, you know, craft industry, that's what we all seem to be doing.

But I have seen margins range from, you know, 10% up to 45%. So that that is up to the supplier. And then whatever negotiation happens.

So when you say margin, there's there's two things that are happening there. One is so correct me if I'm wrong in this, the supplier is dictating the price that the retailer sells it to their customers at, and the supplier dictates the price that the retailer pays the wholesale price. Like, it sounds to me like the supplier is setting the price to the consumer and the price to the retailer.

Is that correct?

Kind of. As a supplier, you're definitely setting your margin. But if I said and margin is Shopify's term, I think of it more as a commission. So if I have a $10 product and I'm going to give you 20%, then you're going to keep $2 of my $10 product. But once it gets pulled in to to my site to sell to my customers, I, I'm pretty sure I can change the price.

Okay, so they're setting a wholesale price then of $8, right. And you get to choose how you if you sell it for 11, you're making three. If you sell for nine, you're making one.

Exactly.

So it is a more of a wholesale type model. Okay.

Right.

And you know, when you started looking at this, you know, looking at suppliers to add to your inventory or you're selling hoops for free, you know, or frames for, for hoops, what sort of products would you look at to augment your inventory?

Well, I was looking at two things. I was at the like. The first things that I looked at were I had some partnerships with different, you know, industry friends, where we were collaborating on some things. And so for those, I clearly wanted to have them on my site as well as, you know, my part of it on their site.

And then I also was looking at kind of expanding the, you know, those little add ons that people buy that like additional notions and other things like that. So, you know, just to be offering your customer, well, while you're shopping in my store, you might as what you might like this to like you're you're like, you're curating a set of products for them to buy.

And in my case, like, I was fine. I was finding cool things that I wanted to sell that I didn't make. So that just enhanced what they could buy while they were shopping with me.

Can you give me a couple examples of what those cool things were?

Oh, sure. There, I said, if you want to open one of the links that I sent you, the floss accessories page here, that so the, you know, top two rows are probably mostly my own products. But then towards the bottom of the page, you'll see some peg bobbins and some acrylic bobbins that my friend Jenny at Lucky Jonquil makes.

And I was making floss organizing tools that fit with those products. So that way I've pulled her product in from her Shopify store, offering it for sale online. Maybe they need to resupply, buy more bobbins than what came with their original purchase or that sort of thing. And then you'll also see some examples of some needle minders that I pulled in from the, another Shopify partner of Leah.

And, you know, it's just, another fun stitching accessory. And so I'm saying to my customers, I like the quality and design of this product. You may want to purchase it right here without having to, you know, leave my site and go to theirs.

That the important thing that I want to point out here that you're doing that I love is you're amassing a community of customers that are passionate about a particular thing. Right. So the needle point here, right. And you're selling the frames. What you're trying to do is augment your needle point inventory or catalog, not sell baby diapers. Right.

It's very focused on your interest, what your brand's about. Like, you know, what brands should be thinking about right now as they're listening is like, what type of audience am I bringing together? What do they need for that passion that brings that audience together that I'm missing in my store? So don't don't be selling, you know, vegetables and then try to sell cotton candy.

So you want you want to keep it true to your brand. And that's what you know, this, you know, page of lost Accessories is totally true to your brand and helps people with this one passion. It's about their needle point, displaying it and making it know all that good stuff which which makes total sense.

So I have another example. I want to show you. And now this one's more this is maybe a little more advanced, but I love this especially for my for my, business. If you flip over to the kits page, what I've done here is I've imported a product from Junebug and Darling, which is a kit, an embroidery kit maker.

And I've bundled it in the background with one of my frames into a bundled product listing. So you're not buying the individual product that just. That's sitting in draft form in my product list. But I've bundled it with the bundles app. So now in one purchase, they're buying two products from two stores.

That's absolute genius because your frames right is obvious to you, of course. When to say this just just because it's so it's so awesome. Your frames are just a piece of a bigger picture and you're giving them the whole picture, right? Right. Literally and figuratively.

For my frames, it's actually easier to sell them in some cases with with the thing that comes in the middle already packaged with it.

Yes, absolutely. Another example is, you know, I've gone to Home Depot before to buy like a bolt for a specific whatever thing the bolt fell off of. Right. And if you buy the bolt, that's guaranteed to work with this thing, it's five bucks. If you go to the rack of bolts and you have to pick out the right one, it's $0.45, right?

And you're willing to pay the five bucks because you know, it works.

Because you know it fits. Yes.

Right. And that's what you're doing here is like, these all work together. It's a complete solution. You don't have to figure out the variables and all the little details. We've done all that hard work for you. Here's your curated time. You know, here's a curated experience to save you time. Yeah, I love these, sets and kits. They're beautiful.

So as a retailer looking at suppliers through Shopify Collective, what are some of the things that you think people should be cautionary about? Like are there bad apples out there or they're bad deals or whatever? And what are some of the the positive, you know, things that you do best, practices you've learned along the way?

You know, I approach, these partnerships, just like I would evaluating someone that I wanted to wholesale with or maybe even with a little bit more consideration. This is a it's a business partnership. So you want to know or, and trust the other party that you're linking up with? For my business, maybe I'm more conservative. I'm not just going to willy nilly sign up with anyone, and I'm not going to let my products appear on sites.

So you always have that choice. And I think you should always have, you know, that step of the consideration of, is this a partnership that I want to have and that my customers are going to, benefit from?

It sounds to me like you're actually interviewing your partners. Like, do you actually have conversations with them, you know, on an online meeting or over the phone? Do you actually talk to them?

Probably half of my partners are people that I know from just Instagram, being in business trade shows, you know, people we've collaborated before. So there's that, but not all of them. It's most likely, or it's most typically email or, you know, just text communication that. But there's still a step of evaluation. You still have to discuss. You know, that commission or margin level and see that you're both comfortable there.

You want to know how fast they do fulfillment. If, for instance, one of my partners also has an Etsy store, then it's easy to get a glimpse into their rating on the Etsy store to make sure that they're, like, fulfilling on time. And there aren't other customer service issues you might want to know how, package is presented.

Is it just thrown in a bag and and shipped out the door, or is there some presentation to it? You know, depending on the industry that maybe are important or not, you have to cover who's going to cover the shipping. Some stores are probably have probably built, you know, free shipping into their products and others haven't. So how's that going to work?

How do you both handle returns? Shopify does handle the money and you know, the transfer even for returns. But you still have to make sure that your return policies are in sync or that it's clear and transparent on whoever's got the listing for the public, this is what's going to happen. So on my listings, for instance, I try to include some sort of partnership language that makes it clear, oh, your order is going to be coming from two locations.

Oh, you have a collaboration details. Accordion on your product page. We partnered with trusted and creative designers for this product. Yep. So you're very transparent about this, and you also are very clear with your policies to your customers, to avoid any confusion down the road.

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Have there been any bad experiences you've had in this or as it must have been, pretty good?

Oh, it's been great. Yeah, it's been really great. And it's really it's really great. As a supplier, when you get partnered up with, like a new audience who doesn't necessarily know about you, and then the new store does some promotion around it and you get this a lot of orders coming in with new audience who are excited about your product.

Yeah, that is awesome. The way to extend your reach on on the the retail side of it. Just the last question for you here is you're bringing all these these products together. Now you have you know, you're offering more. Have you seen a revenue growth from that. Is it because you have new customers on your store, or is it you're getting more revenue from your existing customers?

How's that work for you?

Yeah, no, I've definitely seen increased revenue. I love to watch the stats of just seeing which collective products are selling on my site and seeing, I mean, to me, I consider that as just gravy. Like, I think my base sales are constant or improved. And then on top of that is the sales from the collective listings. And to me, I'm doing almost nothing.

I'm pleasing my customers by offering them more robust offering, and I'm keeping a commission.

I can see how you'd see it that way, but I would say it differently. Right? I think you've done so much work and every brand. This is true, right? You do so much work building your brand, building your audience, establishing trust. Right? That's all the work you did. This is just the financial benefit of that work. Because you've built a brand.

You have the trust, you have the taste. You know, you're, you know, making sure all the partners are the right ones. You're offering a great service to your customers, and they're more than willing to pay you for it. I don't think it's free money. I just think it seems like free money because you did all this foundational work beforehand.

Well, that's a nice way to say it. I, you know.

I think it's important to point out for our audience, right. Because I could see some people are like, all right, I'm just going to build a store and I'm going to aggregate all these suppliers and I'm going to make tons of money, do nothing like, no, you don't have a brand, you don't have an audience. Right? It's not going to work.

It is true. And I do discount that. But I spent many, many years now, building my building up an audience and educating people about, like, these frames even exist. So, you know, yeah, they are already expecting kind of a level of innovation and quality from me. And I'm only adding products that meet that.

Yes, yes. So let's switch gears and talk about the supplier side of things. Right. What sort of brand do you think should be a supplier who should be thinking about, oh, maybe I should be the supplier side?

Well, for me, you know, I wanted to be that supplier because I wanted to for the same reason that I'm wholesaling. I wanted to broaden my reach to put my products in front of more eyeballs. And so this is a great tool to put it into audiences that are already kind of intact and grown by other people, you know?

So where I fit well is, you know, is going to be putting modern hoopla things into their line of sight. If you're making your own products and you have a kind of well defined audience, and you can find other Shopify users that have, overlap with your audience, then that's going to be a good fit.

Yeah, I think that's the key. When you just said there is if you're making your own products, right. If you're reselling somebody else's product, it probably doesn't make sense to be the supplier because there's margins upon margins, upon margins and that kind of stuff. So when you started out in collective as a supplier, did you already have partners in mind?

And this was just a tool that you guys brought together because you already had the relationship, or did you use collective to find retailers for you?

Well, at the start it was people that I knew. It was people who I was already kind of wholesaling with. And and we were alleviating the pain of that, you know, packing the physically packing bulk frames up and shipping them. So now that now they can sell them without ever touching them. So that was the kind of immediate benefit for the first handful of people that I was a supplier for it.

So you already had a wholesale relationship with them and you just went from wholesale to dropship it basically. Yeah, yeah. Did that did the margins change when you did that?

Yes. When I wholesale it's more of a typical kind of 50%. And then when I'm doing the fulfilling and I'm doing the I'm storing them, I'm keeping the inventory, you know, in place. I'm doing all those things. Then that's why we, we then shifted the margin to 20%. And to me that seems fair so far. Everyone's you know, that's how we're all operating.

It's totally fair, right? Because as you know, in the wholesale side, you take on the risk when you buy that inventory, you now put out, you know, capital and that you're now holding that inventory and you have to sell it where this there's no risk, right? Right. If the products don't sell.

Then all you do is delete the listing.

Yep. A lot less friction there. And so I think it's because of the reduced risk they get reduced margin. Now is that 20%. Do you think that's like an industry standard kind of happened organically in your space or.

Yeah, it's hard to tell for me because I'm I'm only in my industry. So it's been pretty consistent. But I, I've seen like when you add for the supplier side, you're adding basically a sales channel. So it shows up in your dashboard in a different spot. You're going to you're adding the collective sales channel. And there's the same kind of discovery tools where you can go out and find other stores, you know, from that perspective versus the retailer side.

But there are also a few different tools then. So once you either invite someone that you already know or that you think might be a good fit, or you have and receive invitations from them, you know, either way. And then there's that point of accepting the invitation and the initial discussions of this is my policy, what's your policy?

Let's make sure we're a good fit, blah, blah, blah. And then what you do as a supplier is you publish a price list, and that price list could be kind of I think I said this already, but like a generic like these are my best seller products. You can start here. There. It's the same listing shared across multiple partners, possibly the same listing that I'm selling live on my website.

That's kind of like a basic price list, but what I've done a little bit more advanced step is I've published a price list. That's the cific to the retailer, and I go to the trouble of making a. So rather than like my full square frames listing that has square frames that are from three inches all the way up to 14in, and all the colors, this supplier might want only the six XL size in walnut.

And so I make a version of that listing in my own product list, and I share that with them in their price list when they're importing it, they they don't have all of the excess details. I also go to the trouble, when possible of changing the photos to show their embroidery or cross-stitch or, you know, those kinds of things in the photos in my frames.

So do you set up a product in your store? Unique for them, and then you just have that is inactive or something?

Yeah. Just stays in draft okay. And then that's the thing I just I publish that listing to them through the collective links. And then that's what shows up on their website.

How do you handle inventory in that situation where that has the same skew as another product in your catalog?

Well, that is my current conundrum. There are some inventory tools that I've been looking at that are going to solve that. But for me, right now, because I'm making all of these, I don't really have a hard and fast inventory number. I have, you know, when something runs out in the background, I just make more.

You have what I call the visual inventory system. Oh, we're low on walnut, six inch. Go make some more.

Yeah. The weekly, like, check, in my head, like, oh, we need to go cut more of those. Yeah. So but they're there with, more of sophisticated inventory tool than the basic Shopify one that would be resolved.

Yeah. And you would need a third party tool where you could have one skew across multiple products and all that kind of stuff. Absolutely. Yes. But you don't need that right now because your visual inventory system is good enough for you, which is nice.

But it's it has it stays.

Yes, yes it does. Especially when you forget to look in that corner of the warehouse where the six inch walnuts were stored. Right. Have you gone out or do you still do you go find proactively retailers for your supply side of the business? Are you looking for people in trying to grow your business proactively, or are you just waiting for them to come in?

I'm proactive because like I do, once or twice a year, I do, some wholesale trade shows, and that has been a great, you know, extra selling point for some of the people that I'm talking to in person that are considering placing a wholesale order, I'm like, if you have Shopify, we could set it up through collective instead.

And then you don't have to buy anything. You don't have to stock anything. And I handle all the fulfillment.

Is there a downside for the customer on Shopify Collective? Not not to say that we shouldn't use Shopify Collective, but I would it be better for the customer if it was a wholesale experience because of shipping costs and policies and that kind of stuff? We're really just it all washes out in the end. It ends up being the same price, the same service kind of thing.

The customer at the end customer is probably going to, depending on the Shopify Collective partners shipping policies, they might end up paying more in shipping, but they're gaining convenience and and also that, you know, having a set of products that's already been cultivated.

Well, they might they might be gaining access to products that would not have gotten otherwise, even if there's a little bit more of a premium. But on the shipping side, that wouldn't have been in the store had it been a wholesale model.

Right? Yeah. And the convenience certainly of, you know, they're making one order. They might then they might be paying a couple bucks more in shipping because there's, it's shipping from two locations. But so is that just a convenience fee.

I think so I think the because are getting the access.

Depends on the customer. Some customers are going to complain about any shipping.

Yes, yes. Well customers will complain about anything. It's the way I see it. So let's talk about a couple of your retailers on your supply side. And you know, have they done anything unique with your products that are interesting for people to look at?

Well, let's see, I sent you a couple links. There's, the the basic one is the of Leia folk embroidery. Yeah. She has, on the embroidery kits page, you have to scroll down a bit and then suddenly you'll see something that doesn't really match the rest of the pictures. Oh, yeah. But it's there. And that's an example where I did, kind of a subset listing for her, where she's, she only wants that one size and has a preference on the finishes.

And so that's, you know, that's a specific of Leia folk embroidery listing.

Now I see on her website, is she the supplier for you of the medallions or seas? Wherever you call them?

Yes.

Supplying each other.

Playing each other. Yes. Oh that's.

Awesome. That's awesome.

Yeah. And the same thing for the next example I gave you, Junebug and Darling is another cross stitch kit maker. And she and her supplies and accessories has. She actually has quite a range of my products and they are a mixed bag. You can't tell from looking at the listing, but it's a mix. She has some things she prefers to buy wholesale and have it in stock, because she's doing some in-person selling and wants to be able to sell them the like the physical product, and then others of these listings are Shopify Collective listings that it's going to ship from me.

That is awesome. Now she's also copying what are they doing? The bundles like you're doing or I think the of Leia wasn't doing the bundle, but it looks like Junebug is doing the bundling on their side. Correct.

I don't know that she's. I don't think so. She's updated some of the photography to show her own product in the photos.

Do they want to do the bundle side of things or they just haven't thought that far ahead yet?

Yeah, I don't I don't know.

Genius of your model was the bundles you made, right?

I really love the bundles because you know that that way I'm selling their product and I'm for sure also selling my own. Then the third example I gave you was Lindy Stitches. And she's got she's got modern hoopla all on. She's even given us our own page in her product listings.

And she gives you brand recognition there.

Yes she does. Yeah. So this this is and this is the example I was talking about earlier where I got hooked up with Lindy Stitches, and then they did a initial promotion and added everything to their website. And it was just kind of boom out, you know, out of the woodwork. All kinds of sales came in over the first probably two weeks.

So that was very exciting. When that works.

Great problem to have, right? If you find a partner who's got an audience and and the demand for your cool, unique products, do you have fear that in these things you're going to teach these competitors who are also your partners, right. And they might start stealing your ideas? I don't think those things happen, but have you seen anything like that where, you know, someone uses someone else's supplier, sees the man other than Amazon who does that all the time?

Of course. Right, right. You know, and then take that product over themselves.

That could happen. Although for my specific products, it's unlikely because my product involves some pretty specific woodworking tools that are not very common.

Are you doing CNC routers on your frames?

I have I have a CNC router and it's a large one. And so if you don't have that sort of tool, you're not going to be making my product. China, on the other hand, they've got plenty of CNC routers.

But yours are also made in America, which is, you know, usually a selling value prop kind of thing. How many, retailers are using you as a supplier now, and is that number grow over time, or do you have you hit like a steady state?

I think I have about 20, part retail partnerships right now, and I haven't been I, I, I did kind of a push back in maybe October before Christmas to try to get some new accounts set up, and then I kind of let it rest for a while, you know, focus on other things. And, but a couple points during the year, I'll kind of go back through a new kind of collective, round of tasks on my task list.

And in fact, today, prepping to talk to you, I, I logged in and noticed that Shopify has, you know, they are continuing to develop this capability and they've added new discovery tools kind of for both retailer and supplier that are getting better every time I log in.

Yeah, I was just about to ask the question of can you search for companies that are in Needle Point? Yes. So you can identify in the whole Shopify ecosystem. All right. Is it everybody in the ecosystem or everybody who's downloaded Shopify Collective.

That I don't I don't think it's I don't think it's people who have downloaded. When I signed up for collective, there were some requirements at that point. It was like they were still it was almost really beta, and they were still doing it by invitation and that kind of thing. So there are some things that you need to do to be qualified to be on Shopify Collective.

I believe it's only for the U.S. and Canada. I think your store has to be dollar based. You have to have Shopify payments on and then I don't know if it's still accurate, but I don't believe you're allowed to sell digital products through collective.

Oh, interesting. And my good friend ChatGPT just told me the international expand expansion began in 2025 beyond us. So, you know, as Shopify does, they keep rolling out to new markets every six months or what to do with their different services. But the Shopify payments is a key one. Also for a lot of things in Shopify.

Yes, Shopify Payments being on because they want to know, for instance, I had one partner last week who was switching banks, and so when she switched banks, Shopify put like a hold for three days on her account. And I it was flooded with all these messages of this partner is no longer on Shopify Collective. And but it resolved itself.

Yep, yep. Now when one of your retailers has a sale and they have an order pop up in their queue, you get an order in your queue also for just your product, right? You don't see the whole thing, it's just your products. And then you fulfill it. And I assume that sends a notification to their Shopify store. And when their whole order is fulfilled, then the customer notification goes out about order fulfilled and those kind of things.

Yes. And I don't like if I'm fulfilling. So the order comes to me, the order, it has the customer's information in it because obviously I'm shipping to them. But the order, in my view, the the purchaser, the buyer in my view is actually the other store. And so that was something that I, you know, even on my, you know, when I'm printing out a, you know, sales receipt or that kind of thing to go in the package, it actually says the the other retailer or the retailer rather than the person's name.

Now you get that customer information, though, don't you.

I do.

Are they opting into emails from you when they opt in on the other side. Okay. So you're not allowed to market to them kind of thing.

I don't know if I'm not allowed but it's not, it's not like the seamless like when they check the box at checkout, they don't go on my, my mailing list automatically.

Now do you see, because you're doing this and your brand is out there in other stores, does that increase the traffic to your store and increase your brand awareness?

Also, I assume it does. I haven't tracked that specifically, but I definitely, you know, I'm getting orders. Everyone that I'm working with does name the product as Modern Hoopla. So there's that.

Yeah, it'd be hard to track that. But you know, anecdotally you would see that as you bring on a new supplier, you know, and you're doing a lot of sales and their store, you also see a slight uptick in organic traffic to your store, right, kind of thing. Because people see that you know that name and make the connection.

Do a little search in those those types of stuff. But it definitely wouldn't be, a hard and fast, you know, connection in data there. This is fabulous. I, I have no clients that are using Shopify Collective today.

I highly recommend it.

Yeah, I've got quite a few who make their own products. And I'm like thinking this is just something they at least have to try, right?

And it's such an easy start because they're like, there's no extra fee. There's no like there's no expense to it. If you find someone who's a good partner, you can try with one product.

Yes. Well, what I was thinking is, is not only just one product. The idea I have in my head right now is, you know, I have a client, makes their own product and they're doing quite well and they're in the reptile care space. Imagine. So they sell substrate coconut substrate that goes on the bottom of the tank. Imagine if they, you know, got a supplier who did food for snakes.

Snakes is one of their pets. Well, they can just do a one time campaign, an email and klaviyo. Right. They do a klaviyo campaign. None. Stocking on the store all the time. You say, hey, we just partnered with X, Y and Z Food snakes.com and we're going to give you a one time deal. You know, come in, do this flash sale kind of thing.

And you see if there's demand in your store with your customers for that type of stuff. And then you do a few of those, you start seeing what kind of products they like and want to buy for you, and then you can turn those into regular products in your store. And I would try the flash sale side of things to just see if you can get a hit from it and also create that temporary sense of urgency, limited time offer, those type of calls to action.

Are there any downsides that you've experienced so far? You know, so far it's been a win win win win win win. Like what are the what are the not? And if not downsize. What are the gotchas people got to think about. And one of the ones I heard you say a lot was have conversations, understand your policies, make sure they're in sync.

What other things should people be looking out for?

Not all of the other business owners that I've approached about this are into the idea. Some of them are just, oh, that's too confusing, and I'm just going to stick with wholesale and I'll just buy what I want and resell it on my site, which is fine. I mean, I'm more of an early adopter type, so I understand that you have to convince people over time.

Yes. You know, that's what these conversations are about, right? And the more people that do it, you know, the more people you know will find successes here from their friends. Oh, it worked for me and that kind of stuff. Because it sounds like a fabulous tool.

When I first started Shopify, even the health information was not very informative. And they're they're getting much better with their new discovery tools and with better explanations around what policy decisions you have. What controls you have, what you know, the ways that you can sign up for like different ways to charge shipping or not charge shipping, or the different ways you can handle returns or anything like that.

As the Shopify tools get better and then more trustworthy, I think particular problem will go away.

Yep, yep. Would you recommend that everybody just try it out? Yes. Every brand, just give it a try in knowing their situation for sure. If they want to be a supplier or a retailer or both kind of thing. But it sounds like one of those. Give it a try. There's no cost, there's no friction, there's time and energy, which is very valuable.

There's a lot to be gained there.

It's a pretty low time cost for entry. You can, but then you can take it to different levels, which I hope I was able to illustrate both on the retailer and the supplier side. There are basic ways to set this up, and then there are the more advanced ways. It's a great tool. I don't see a downside. I would say be specific, like find a partner who is really a good fit for your customer base, something else they're gonna really want or for.

If you're on the supplier side for someone else's customer base that you're a really good fit with. Like be specific, not just kind of a generic like, let's add new categories of products to sell. I think it's going to be more successful kind of the more your connection makes sense.

The way you started out as an established brand, you already had those connections. And I would say most established brands do have industry connections. They know those people. And odds are if you know these brands, you know, it's probably 70 to 80%. They're on Shopify. Very few people that aren't anymore. So, you know, maybe you start with the existing brands, you know, and say, hey, let's let's do some partnership.

Perfect place to start. Yes. Yep. Yeah. I really think that that if you're making your own product and you're already wholesaling, I think that's also a great place to start is to kind of approach some of your wholesale partners with this idea, and maybe you're going to approach them with an, a product that they're not already buying, maybe just because of the limitations of, you know, however, they're currently wholesaling, like you're offering this to them as a way to expand without capital outlay, you know.

Do you do, seasonal specials on your products or are they just the same products throughout the year?

Oh, yes, I do. I have, seasonal colors. So I'll go through and I'll do a batch of, you know, like green for spring or, you know, that kind of thing. So I do seasonal colors and then, you know, other kind of holiday ish themed. I have some frames, for instance, that are hearts for Valentine's Day or an egg shape, which is funny for Easter.

So I yeah, I, I do the holiday ish special things too.

Because that's a great example of what you're talking about with the the limited inventory, why someone who has a wholesale relationship might use the Shopify collective side of it, the dropship side for those limited inventories or limited time ones because of not having to deal with the logistics of getting them in time, having an X amount of inventory and going through it all, it just reduces all that risk and confusion.

Great example. Yes.

Well, thank you for your time on this today, K, this is very insightful.

Absolutely. I love talking about this. I really think it's a great tool.

Well, I agree with you. And I'm going to I'm going to be lobbying my clients on it very soon. Thanks for your time today.

Okay. Thanks.