What is the status of being able to support multiple vendors (in any way, shape or form) on the latest release?
For others who are looking http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=90898.msg298173#msg298173
Okay, well, this answer to someone's problem is as clear as mud to me on the actual status of multi-vendor:
QuoteYou dont need to choose the vendor anylonger. Look in the config first tab, you can see all that stuff, when you enable multivendor. Which is not supported. Depending on which kind of multivendor it can be useful already.
A filter for the media list will follow.
Can I get a straight-forward answer?
Some MV functionality is doable? If so, what? Nothing is supported? If not, is there a road map?
We will use multivendor very soon for our own shop. But come on, surprise me, what do you understand with multivendor? We call it multi-x, because there are so many different things possible. The main difference is who controlls the cash flow and the wares.
virtuemart 2 is prepared to have categories, shoppergroups, products, paymentmethods, shipmentmethods, media, manufactuerers and so on for each vendor.
When you controll the shippping and the payment, multivendor is mostly just calculating the amounts and this is just a report filter. The other problem is if you have vendors which you generally trust, or if you allow anyone to be vendor. There are 2 small structural things left, which could make a multivendor shop for anymous vendors unsecure. One thing is that we allow to overwrite the automatic generated urls in the media handler. This is absolutly no problem usually, because only admins atm allow to use it. Atm vendors without admin rights just may not allowed to upload images (blocked by the system). So it absolutly depends what you want.
Quote from: Milbo on September 14, 2011, 12:11:36 PM
But come on, surprise me, what do you understand with multivendor?
You know, I'm just a long-time VirtueMart user on multiple sites that needs Multi-Vendor capability. I'm not here to challenge anyone. I'm just trying to find a dang solution to my situation right now.
I've invested in another Multi-Vendor solution only to determine that it's just not going to work for me. I've also just wasted a boatload of time trying to get joobi.co's jMarket and jAffiliate application configured.
I'm currently doing a very healthy business with one vendor on one of my sites right now with VM1.1.5. I expect our revenue to triple over the next 12 months. I earn a small percentage of that business. I get paid after the fact, on a monthly basis. I have another similar vendor *waiting* for me to get this multi-vendor store thing done so that I can host their store and sales as well. I have a variety of other smaller vendors waiting. I expect this revenue to be well over 7 figures within the next 12 months.
So, here's my business model. I want to be able to have the vendors manage (or I will help the unsophisticated) their own products, orders, shipping, and payments. I want to globally provide payment processors for several that I will set up that they can choose from.
I do NOT want the customers to be able to order across multiple vendors on one order. It would be pie-in-the-sky nice if they could put 6 different items in their cart from 3 different vendors and then have the system create 3 different orders and 3 different payments for them, nicely presented, but I really do NOT care about that at all. I am fine with having the customer order 3 different times for each vendor.
It is critically important from a customer service point of view that each vendor gets their own order and their own payment. They collect the payment, fulfill the order, manage most customer service questions, handle RMAs and refunds, deal with their shippers, etc.
A big requirement I have is the ability for each vendor to choose their own shipping integration. Previously, I had pay to enhance the Fedex/Virtuemart integration because it couldn't handle our boxing requirements. I hope that's fixed in the newer releases.
I need to see the orders and transactions as well as the vendors can, just like I do with my one vendor now. Based on their monthly revenue, I bill them for my commission. I'd love it fancier than that, but bottomline, it seems like keeping it simple, keeps it doable with less room for bugs and errors.
Also, I use my wonderful 'contact enhanced' add-on for managing customer feedback. It works so wonderfully. I get an email copy of all customer service questions and issues, so I know how the vendors are doing, if and where issues come up that need to be managed, or technical support or usability issues need to be addressed.
I want the vendor to be able to choose which payment processor they want to use from my authorized list. I will try to insist that they signup for a merchant version beyond basic paypal, but the ability to take credit cards up front over paypal is huge for me. Our sales jumped three-fold when we switched.
The jMarket solution (sounded promising and interesting, which needs to be combined with their jAffiliate solution) from joobi.com I'm finding to be inadequate in a lot of ways. But the bugs are just overwhelming. For me, it's not ready for prime-time.
So, here I am, back at VirtueMart. Reading a lot of threads about MV, a lot of promises many months ago that it would be here by this version. And a lot of vague posts without a lot of specifics.
I'm currently without a solution again for MV, after a LOT of money and time invested.
So, maybe I don't understand multi-vendor, but this is what I need. AFTER I get it set up, if I ever do, then I also want to provide my own affiliate program. Will probably use iDevAffiliate for that.
In the meantime, I guess I'm just stuck providing vendor listings in my directory and charging a monthly fee. I am missing out big time and DESPERATE for a solution.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
So, here's my business model. I want to be able to have the vendors manage (or I will help the unsophisticated) their own products, orders, shipping, and payments. I want to globally provide payment processors for several that I will set up that they can choose from.
This "works" already. Every product, order, shipment- and paymentmethod has its own virtuemart_vendor_id. You can even share things like payment and shipment methods ( for exampel cash on delivery) and also categories. You can controll the useable payment and shipment METHODS by installing the payment PLUGINS. So you have absolutly controll over that (just unpublish the plugin, all paymentmethods related to it are disabled).
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
I do NOT want the customers to be able to order across multiple vendors on one order.
This also makes not really sense, when every vendor controlls its own payment, a cart already belongs to a vendor and you can set (okey we removed it, but 5 minuts to bring it back) how many vendors are allowed to use one cart. In other case the user gets the response that he has to finish the order first, before buying from another vendor. And the legal point is much more complex, ...
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
It would be pie-in-the-sky nice if they could put 6 different items in their cart from 3 different vendors and then have the system create 3 different orders and 3 different payments for them, nicely presented,
As I said just a filtering in reports.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
It is critically important from a customer service point of view that each vendor gets their own order and their own payment. They collect the payment, fulfill the order, manage most customer service questions, handle RMAs and refunds, deal with their shippers, etc.
Done that way. There are just some lose ends to connect.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
A big requirement I have is the ability for each vendor to choose their own shipping integration. Previously, I had pay to enhance the Fedex/Virtuemart integration because it couldn't handle our boxing requirements. I hope that's fixed in the newer releases.
We need to rewrite the plugin, but the main point is that the config is stored in the db and so every vendor can have its own config.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
I need to see the orders and transactions as well as the vendors can, just like I do with my one vendor now.
Almost or already done. Afaik already, but not well tested.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
Based on their monthly revenue, I bill them for my commission.
You can even use the PMargine to automatically calculate your commissoin amount.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
Also, I use my wonderful 'contact enhanced' add-on for managing customer feedback.
commercial extension for this is planned.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
So, maybe I don't understand multi-vendor, but this is what I need.
Oh you understood your part quite well.
Quote from: Milbo on September 14, 2011, 12:11:36 PM
There are 2 small structural things left, which could make a multivendor shop for anymous vendors unsecure. One thing is that we allow to overwrite the automatic generated urls in the media handler. This is absolutly no problem usually, because only admins atm allow to use it. Atm vendors without admin rights just may not allowed to upload images (blocked by the system).
Btw, I fixed that today, lol. It was secure before, because only admins were allowed to use it, but now it should work more secure and should now also work secure for non admins
when will this multi vendor be released?
it IS released. It IS in every VM2. You just need a bit more brain to use it. It is not working out of the box.
so when will the working out the box release be coming?
Is there any instruction out there for using the multi venfor?
Quote from: Milbo on September 30, 2011, 09:34:02 AM
You just need a bit more brain to use it.
LOL XD
I would say that about most aspects of VirteMart integration and tweaking.
I have been using VM 1.1.8 in a 25,000 + product store(heavily hacked). I am hoping to me able to transition to VM2 soon :) however the customizations that i have made will have to be rolled over and that is my big task on the horizon. Looking forward to VM2 stable!!!
BTW Thanks Milbo! Lots of hard work and coding have gone into VM2. You guys get a bit +1 for epicness.
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
Quote from: Milbo on September 14, 2011, 12:11:36 PM
But come on, surprise me, what do you understand with multivendor?
You know, I'm just a long-time VirtueMart user on multiple sites that needs Multi-Vendor capability. I'm not here to challenge anyone. I'm just trying to find a dang solution to my situation right now.
I've invested in another Multi-Vendor solution only to determine that it's just not going to work for me. I've also just wasted a boatload of time trying to get joobi.co's jMarket and jAffiliate application configured.
I'm currently doing a very healthy business with one vendor on one of my sites right now with VM1.1.5. I expect our revenue to triple over the next 12 months. I earn a small percentage of that business. I get paid after the fact, on a monthly basis. I have another similar vendor *waiting* for me to get this multi-vendor store thing done so that I can host their store and sales as well. I have a variety of other smaller vendors waiting. I expect this revenue to be well over 7 figures within the next 12 months.
So, here's my business model. I want to be able to have the vendors manage (or I will help the unsophisticated) their own products, orders, shipping, and payments. I want to globally provide payment processors for several that I will set up that they can choose from.
I do NOT want the customers to be able to order across multiple vendors on one order. It would be pie-in-the-sky nice if they could put 6 different items in their cart from 3 different vendors and then have the system create 3 different orders and 3 different payments for them, nicely presented, but I really do NOT care about that at all. I am fine with having the customer order 3 different times for each vendor.
It is critically important from a customer service point of view that each vendor gets their own order and their own payment. They collect the payment, fulfill the order, manage most customer service questions, handle RMAs and refunds, deal with their shippers, etc.
A big requirement I have is the ability for each vendor to choose their own shipping integration. Previously, I had pay to enhance the Fedex/Virtuemart integration because it couldn't handle our boxing requirements. I hope that's fixed in the newer releases.
I need to see the orders and transactions as well as the vendors can, just like I do with my one vendor now. Based on their monthly revenue, I bill them for my commission. I'd love it fancier than that, but bottomline, it seems like keeping it simple, keeps it doable with less room for bugs and errors.
Also, I use my wonderful 'contact enhanced' add-on for managing customer feedback. It works so wonderfully. I get an email copy of all customer service questions and issues, so I know how the vendors are doing, if and where issues come up that need to be managed, or technical support or usability issues need to be addressed.
I want the vendor to be able to choose which payment processor they want to use from my authorized list. I will try to insist that they signup for a merchant version beyond basic paypal, but the ability to take credit cards up front over paypal is huge for me. Our sales jumped three-fold when we switched.
The jMarket solution (sounded promising and interesting, which needs to be combined with their jAffiliate solution) from joobi.com I'm finding to be inadequate in a lot of ways. But the bugs are just overwhelming. For me, it's not ready for prime-time.
So, here I am, back at VirtueMart. Reading a lot of threads about MV, a lot of promises many months ago that it would be here by this version. And a lot of vague posts without a lot of specifics.
I'm currently without a solution again for MV, after a LOT of money and time invested.
So, maybe I don't understand multi-vendor, but this is what I need. AFTER I get it set up, if I ever do, then I also want to provide my own affiliate program. Will probably use iDevAffiliate for that.
In the meantime, I guess I'm just stuck providing vendor listings in my directory and charging a monthly fee. I am missing out big time and DESPERATE for a solution.
I have a client also looking for multi-vendor and at this stage VM is too far off to meet true multi-vendor needs. We have chosen rather to go with a premium solution. If your expected income is really 7 figures and your not just making it up to make yourself sound important then the $1495 for the multi-vendor suite will be no problem to you, have a look http://www.ixxocart.com/ixxo-cart-multi-vendor. You can view their live demo or request a 15 day hosted demo.
Vendors will be able to register frot he front end and gain access to their own shopping area and have full control over everything they sell with no access to any other users products, this comes bubdled with a full set of payment gateways as well as facebook store allowing you to list the products of all the vendors within facebook and just have the checkout completed on your site.
The $1495 is for your first license, another $169 for branding removal and from $250 per additional store you want to create, seeing as you expect to make 7 figures over the next year this should be nothing more than pocket change for you, Good Luck...
Quote from: CranialBlaze on November 29, 2011, 05:52:54 AM
Quote from: CavySpirit on September 14, 2011, 20:13:21 PM
Quote from: Milbo on September 14, 2011, 12:11:36 PM
But come on, surprise me, what do you understand with multivendor?
I have a client also looking for multi-vendor and at this stage VM is too far off to meet true multi-vendor needs. We have chosen rather to go with a premium solution. If your expected income is really 7 figures and your not just making it up to make yourself sound important then the $1495 for the multi-vendor suite will be no problem to you, have a look http://www.ixxocart.com/ixxo-cart-multi-vendor. You can view their live demo or request a 15 day hosted demo.
Vendors will be able to register frot he front end and gain access to their own shopping area and have full control over everything they sell with no access to any other users products, this comes bubdled with a full set of payment gateways as well as facebook store allowing you to list the products of all the vendors within facebook and just have the checkout completed on your site.
The $1495 is for your first license, another $169 for branding removal and from $250 per additional store you want to create, seeing as you expect to make 7 figures over the next year this should be nothing more than pocket change for you, Good Luck...
Hi CranialBlaze,
Good luck indeed. These little slams to one's intelligence and experience on this forum are starting to get to me.
Out of respect to the IXXO developers, I actually edited out a huge portion of my original post in which I detailed exactly why IXXO multi-vendor is not ready for prime-time in the US market--at least for my modest business model.
And as far as my personal income goes, I believe I mentioned that I get a 'small percentage' of my main vendor's income. So, I'm not exactly filthy rich.
Nonetheless, I did in fact fork out $1500 for the IXXO Multi-vendor solution earlier this year. I thought it was most definitely going to be the great solution that I needed and was happy to make the investment--although for me, it was a LOT of money. Well, it was $1500 out the door with no return.
The IXXO model assumes that when you make a purchase across multiple vendors, the purchases all go in ONE cart, on ONE order with ONE financial transaction. They rely on Paypal Adaptive to split out payments and commissions. I've had multiple back and forth with Paypal about this. Paypal Adaptive, unlike Paypal Pro, will NOT allow you to take credit cards up front. That in and of itself knocks out 50% or more of our sales--not acceptable. But it gets to be more fun the deeper you go in IXXO. And because the configuration is pretty intense (fine by me), you don't really realize what's happening until you start to try to process orders.
They assume that the administrator of the site is going to finalize each and every order by actually confirming with the customer that they indeed got their shipment. And the money goes to the administrator and must then be distributed to the vendors later.
One order = one TOS. Let's say I order a large, bulky product from vendor A in California for $100 and a small, lightweight product from vendor B in Florida for $10. This goes on ONE order. One financial transaction. I'm not going to bother to detail out all the problems, because I'm assuming that you are intelligent and get it.
Another problem, let's say I have 3 vendors who sell a somewhat similar product, but they are all a bit different.
I do my shopping and choose a product from each vendor. Because they are on one order, I see three different shipping line items presented. One shipping cost might be 3 times the price of another--for whatever reason. IF I had purchased them separately, I would probably have just bought them, no problem. However, seeing the disparity in shipping, causes people to stop in their tracks and reassess their purchase decision. I know. I did it. I tried every IXXO actual store site I could find (not many). AND I actually went through a real purchase just to validate.
More important is the financial model. I DO NOT want the IRS headache of taking in all the income and distributing it back to the vendors. Why on earth do I need to inflate my reportable income? I surely don't. The IXXO model assumes that YOU, the administrator is receiving in all the income and then at some later agreed upon time, you then pay your vendors. Me holding my vendor's money and paying them later is NOT a selling point for my vendors. Not to mention you have to factor in the added transaction fees for getting them their money electronically. What I THOUGHT I was going to be able to do is have my vendors manage their store--their payment processor from a chosen list that I provide, their shipping, their orders, their customer support (for the most part). I had no intention (and still don't) of being the middle man. I'm marketing and tech support. I want to provide a MALL experience. At a mall, you don't go into one store, pick out some products, go to another store, pick out some more products, and then go to some giant central mall checkout and pay. That is not what I wanted. If I'm in Macy's, I'll pay Macy's. If I'm in Sears, I'll pay Sears. I want to know what commissions are due to me. I want the vendors managing their own business. I don't want to be involved in managing their logistics or customers. I was willing to compromise on getting paid later (my commission payments due to the constraints on paypal adaptive), but I don't want the liability for all of their transactions.
IXXO has not offered to return any money to me. There was a statement in one support post that they would develop the functionality I need, but I've heard nothing about it and had no other communication or responses.
I looked in detail at other IXXO sites and actually spoke with another frustrated IXXO client. I wish I could have made it work, and I tried very very hard to do so. Believe me, that $1500 was hard-earned. I spent a lot of time on support tickets articulating what's needed and why.
And here I am. If you know anything different, I'm happy to hear about it. Unlike VM, the vast majority of their support is through private tickets (a virtually dead forum), so you don't get the added view into what others are doing or experiencing. (A software vendor's model that I do not appreciate--although I'm sure it's easier and more profitable--for them.)
So, Cranial, good luck to you with the IXXO premium solution. Been there, done that, can't afford the T-Shirt.
Teresa
Very interesting CavySpirit. Yeah you mean it serious.
Most people do not understand exactly this little differences. VM2 is planned to work exactly as you want it. One checkout per vendor. The biggest problem atm is for you that there is no frontend access to product editing and things like this.
The customers have to pay you directly and at the end of the month you make an invoice for each vendor with your commission. Basicly customers pay you and you pay the vendors.
At least I think thats the legal way of doing it.
And of course customers should be able to buy different products for different vendors on the same order, how to deal with that, no idea but you can't just limit customers to choose a product for one vendor.
So you say most of this is already implemented, but for what I read we as admins have to manually enter the details for each product etc and manage all orders.
The idea of a multivendor site is to asign rights to those vendors to enter their own information, upload images, products, confirm orders.
As you already known front end editing is basic for these to work. I don't want vendors on the backend administration.
QuoteAnd of course customers should be able to buy different products for different vendors on the same order, how to deal with that, no idea but you can't just limit customers to choose a product for one vendor.
It all depends on the cash and the wares flow. When you take all the money and distribute it to the vendors, you have from legal point a singlevendor store. Then you can have different vendors in one checkout.
Quote from: lindapowers on December 09, 2011, 06:53:09 AM
The customers have to pay you directly and at the end of the month you make an invoice for each vendor with your commission. Basicly customers pay you and you pay the vendors.
As Milbo has said, that makes you a single-vendor really. You end up with all the headaches. You end up with a customer service nightmare. You end up with reportable income to the IRS of every dollar and then must make sure you have 1099's filed on everyone and detailed on your tax returns. IF you don't pay your vendors by snail mail via a check (more paperwork for you and them), then you will pay them electronically. How? Typically Paypal. For free? Heck no. You now need to factor in more expense, say 3%. That 3% has to come from somewhere. Product price (increased cost to customer) or expense to Vendor or expense to You. So, in addition to whatever commission you are charging, AND the commission to the payment processing the first time on the sale of the goods, you are paying another 3% on top of that. I would never expect my vendors --who are making and delivering the products-- to wait a month to get their money from me. So, now you've got at least a 6% cost of doing business BEFORE any commissions. Let's say you charge a conservative 5% commission. Cost of doing business on your site is now 11%. More if you charge more. That's before any gross margin the vendor hopes to get. Times are tight and tough. I think we need to be smarter, leaner and more competitive.
I can wait a month for my commission. I'm not the one out there buying inventory, supplies, labor, etc. And if I want, I can use my Freshbooks account (www.freshbooks.com) to bill my vendors (because it makes sense for me to have a freshbooks account). When I send my vendors a Freshbooks invoice, I only have to pay a 50-cent fee if they use paypal--no matter how much money we are talking about. A great deal currently only found on Freshbooks as far as I know. So, that saves the whole 3% coming out of someone's pocket, AND a FB invoice is a very professional way to go. (US only, unfortunately.)
Quote from: lindapowers on December 09, 2011, 06:53:09 AM
And of course customers should be able to buy different products for different vendors on the same order, how to deal with that, no idea but you can't just limit customers to choose a product for one vendor.
I don't think it's an "of course." Not, if you think about the implications of what "One Order" means. I see no reason why you can't limit customers to purchasing from one vendor at a time. I think the ability to have a logical overlay of one cart is a big 'nice-to-have' but by no means mission-critical in the shopping experience.
Quote from: lindapowers on December 09, 2011, 06:53:09 AM
The idea of a multivendor site is to asign rights to those vendors to enter their own information, upload images, products, confirm orders.
As you already known front end editing is basic for these to work. I don't want vendors on the backend administration.
I agree. But, it seems like a huge additional level of effort if not done via the backend. For those reading this thread interested in the other solutions, the IXXO way actually gives vendors very controlled access to the back-end, but only for store management. IXXO also does some encrypting of the joomla index.php file in /administrator to prevent hacking.
I also hope that something can be done to facilitate a vendor's experience to accomplish this.
Well yes, you are right in that sense, you do all the customer service but you have 0 responsability in legal terms.
example: If a customer get's intoxicated by one of our products the commission agency has 0 responsibility and is legally covered in that case and the vendor has to deal with that.
We have worked with many sites that way and we as producers and vendors have to do most of the work and the commision agency just have to deal with the customer service (which in most cases will be just telling the customer to contact the producer as they can't solve the issue) and take the money.
The price is not increased for the customer as you as commisionist take 20%, 15% or 10% over the original price per product, you "steal" from the vendor and not from the customer.
Maybe I didn't explain it correctly, customers pay the commission agency directly, and then, the vendors are payed each month reducing the 20% or whatever but each vendor has to make an invoice for the customer, that way commission agency is legally covered.
Paying the vendors each month is something usual and normal in my country and thats how it works.
I can understand multi-vendor for VM is something complicated to deal with, cause there are many scenarios and different ways to work on those sites, what may seem normal in the USA has nothing to do usually with how we work on Europe and the same for each country.
PD: Please don't tell me about customer service nightmate, any producer as me will jump on you directly, you do nothing, you just take the money from the producers and vendors doing all the work, dealing with the customers, product quality, transport system sending the products, having the store etc, my god you don't even see the product, it is send from vendor to customer directly, your cost is what? a website with 2 it technicians doing seo work and advertisements ;D
The nightmare is for the producers and vendors, thats why we want to become one of those commission agencies or "white globe thiefs" as we call them here.
Lindapowers, in the US, I would have more than zero legal responsibility with that flow. I can appreciate that business models and income tax accountability are different in Europe (and other countries, of course). They must be, as IXXO is based in Europe and has developed their process along the lines that you've indicated. But, it just doesn't work that well for the US. If I were you, I would absolutely be going with IXXO. They sound like a perfect fit for you. If I could make the model work for me, I'd probably still be using them.
The only thing I would disagree with is the notion that you are taking your commissions from the vendor and not the customer. In the end, it's still the customer. The vendor must raise the price or has already raised the price in order to cover the commissions (regardless of when and how the commissions are paid). Therefore, the customer pays. Otherwise, it would be a non-profit company and the fees could ultimately come from the investors or contributors. That was my point. The price of the products (overall and generally) must cover all of the expenses as well as the profit margins to the vendor. Margins matter. So, reducing unnecessary expenses (money flow) is important to me. I want the prices of products on my site to be as competitive as possible.
I have learned that there is a major issue with communication between developers and business people a lot of the time.
I, not being a "developer", am still intelligent enough to know when my questions are either being misunderstood or not answered 100%.
That does not mean I consider the developer lacking intelligence, it simply means I'm not understanding the lingo, the concept etc.. from the "DEVELOPERS" point of view.
Perhaps I'm not asking a question in a way that makes sense to a developer, but if I'm trying to use a product that someone has developed...which is the entire reason why the developer would create the product in the first place.... then I would expect even more time would be shown on the developer's part to be sure that the person who was asking the questions were getting the answers they are trying to get. *takes breath*
With all that being said....
I gather that the newest/latest version of VirtueMart has the Multi Vendor capability, but it requires additional "DEVELOPER" work to make it function the way that is required for the site owner's individual needs - correct?
So, how does it "WORK" as it is, out of the box as of now?
Does it function at all? OR does it require, in any case of use, the additional support, knowledge etc.. of a DEVELOPER?
If I install the latest version of VirtueMart as a brand new install, without any expectations other than how it works as is, does the Multi Vendor feature work the way that VirtueMart intends for it to be used?
How does VirtueMart intend it to work? Perhaps if I understood what VM's take on MV is, then I would better understand what to expect from it.
To me, as a site owner, MV would mean that I could run a website where multiple people could sign up and have their own profile/account to sell items, control their own shipping, manage their own sales etc... then as the site owner/admin I could then charge a percentage of each of their sales or charge a monthly fee etc...
So, how does MV work right now out of the box with a brand new install?
Would anyone who wants to use the MV functionality of VM HAVE to hire a developer in order to get it to work - period?
or would it just be tailoring if the site owner's needs fall "outside" of the normal use the VM has it currently set up to work.
I'm trying really hard to convey my question in hopes someone will do the same courtesy in return with an answer that I can understand, again, I'm NOT a developer.
Thanks :-)
Quote from: ibelieve on December 30, 2011, 18:43:44 PM
Would anyone who wants to use the MV functionality of VM HAVE to hire a developer in order to get it to work - period?
or would it just be tailoring if the site owner's needs fall "outside" of the normal use the VM has it currently set up to work.
There is no tailering done. There is no frontend for the vendors, they must be allowed to have backend access. and yes you need almost always a developer. There exists one case you can do it almost without.
Thanks... :o
I'm assuming there is probably way more to this than what your reply states.
I either missed the bulk of it, which seems to be scattered a little here and a little there throughout the entire forum over many months and years of discussion regarding the multi vendor concept, or you have just chosen to give the most simplified answer possible... thus leaving a lot of grey area.
I'm not sure what you mean by first saying there is "no tailoring" then you say you "almost always need a developer...."
Well, if you need a developer to get something to work...to me that is considered tailoring.
Something either works as it is intended, or it simply does not.
So if the "intent" of the multi vendor feature is to hire a developer to use it, then so be it.
What I guess I'm sorta looking for here is someone to say, 'The Multi Vendor function available in the current release of VM is still in BETA, it works, but not to where it is conducive to use in a live site where an administrator can have multiple vendors or "sellers" log in and conduct their own sales from there OWN separate admin area. In order to do that you will need to hire a developer.'
Then, it would be lovely if someone would then say.... 'VM plans to develop the Multi Vendor feature further so that it can eventually serve as a true solution, out of the box, for site admins/owners to run their own "Virtual Mall" type website.' Because ultimately....that is what a multi vendor site IS, a Virtual Mall.
But of course, I'd only want someone to say this if it were actually TRUE. If it is NOT, then I'd love to hear that as well.
My point being.... it either works as a true multi vendor concept as most of the people interested in it needs it to work "out of the box" or it does not, in which case you would need to have it tailored to your specific needs thus by hiring a developer.
This part of the VM project has been one of the most confusing things I've ever tried to wrap my head around and honestly it's because I've never heard a straight forward answer about it - EVER. It is not my lack of intelligence causing my confusion, it is lack of properly conveyed information from the source. And that comment is not meant to be taken personally, it is simply some constructive criticism.
For years now, I've listened to the faint chirping of a multi vendor capability for this shopping cart system and from what I'm gathering from all the vague and somewhat even foreign replies, this probably will never be something that VM can actually do, at least not without many more years of experience and funding...at least that is what it appears. And that is perfectly fine, you have a great cart system and it's free, not too many can complain based on that fact alone.
I'm just irritated to the extreme and confused to boot with the replies that I've seen to some very valid questions asked by users of VM in this forum.
If there is no front end for vendors, only back-end access...then this really can't be called a Multi Vendor anything at this point.
And your last sentence didn't make any sense to me at all, sorry.
I seriously doubt anyone's goal is to allow back-end access to multiple sellers...so from what your saying, this is NOT a feature that is ready for any real "use" as it is.
It is something that you are allowing to be part of the VM cart for TAILORING "if" someone really wants or needs to use it, thus the need for the developer.
I honestly appreciate your attempt at clarifying things.
Thanks.
You did not read correctly, I said, there is no tailering done, so you need a developer todo this.
and your post sees not to consider that I gave already this answers in this thread http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=90892.msg298360#msg298360 .
And as Cavyspirit and lindapowers already discussing, there exists a lot of different multivendor solutions and a lot of them are NOT a mall.
You must differ who takes care of the cash and wares flow. Then you can differ if people are allowed to have backend or frontend access. You can also differ if the customer should notice that there exists different vendors. Sounds not reasonable for you? Some examples.
You can use the vendors just internally for your employes. You can use multivendor for a strong partnership/affiliate program. For example the tires store in the car store (exists already with vm1.1 ! ). Another idea is that a manufacturer or distributor is adding his products himself and the merchant is just doing marketing/delivery/support and infrastructure. Then additionally to that you can have things like dawanda, ebay or amazon. Consider here also that there exists for ideas like dawanda, but only with approved vendors.
This are the main multivendor things and not a mall. The mall is the most uninteresting, because you can solve all of that with server/maintaining scripts. Another idea with multivendor is also to have 2 shops with simular but not the same content, running on the same db. This concept is surprisingly, after the dawanda model the most asked one.
No, I read what it said quite clearly. The definition of tailoring is still going outside of the boxed application and using a developer to obtain the desired end result which your saying is needed if you want to use the multi vendor feature.
Just the same as when the "large" man tries to wear the "tiny" suit, a tailor is required to get it to fit, unless it doesn't work at all in which case...why is it even there?
And my post did consider that there might be posts out there in this forum that may provide further detail, I'm pretty sure I said this exactly, perhaps you missed that?
So thank you for providing the link so I didn't have to go wondering about looking for it aimlessly.
Those still all seem just variables to what most consider a virtual mall...and when you look for "multi vendor" applications, mall scripts is what pops up and to the majority I'm pretty sure that is what they expect it to be able to do.
I'm sure someone could take this and go in any direction they'd like so long as it was actually within the means of VM and they have the funding to pay a developer to tailor it for them.
What my major issue is that there appears to be no documentation that clearly states what the multi vendor feature in VM does out of the box as it is right now and from what I'm gathering it does nothing at all without a developer which means it's basically a useless feature unless someone brings in a developer.
....okey so I just looked at the post you referred me too... she is describing a virtual mall... that is what the virtual mall concept is, exactly what she is asking for, and the same thing I'm looking for. Just to clarify that part....
I don't think VM is capable of answering this question whatsoever, not at least without making sense or being sarcastic. I've been waiting for an answer to this for several years now and every time I inquire about it, it's the same incoherent responses tainted with belittling and rude comments from someone who obviously doesn't have any real answers. I'm done LOL.
What is your definition of Multi Vendor? it has taken me ages to get my head around this, but it does work, it's mainly i was unsure how to set it up and how to wrap my brain around the concept and what i actually need.
I am well to dumbass to hack, so use an out of the box version.
I have needed to install several versions on 1.5 and 1.7 and will now produce a site for live use.
I have added this only because i really get humped off when people write here saying can't, it don't, and other negative comments.
These guys have regularly helped many business collect the money that drips off the Internet daily, they are to me hero's
Thanks for VM 1 and now the new VM2
I have keeping a low profile until now here, but as a contributor and heavy user of the MultiVendor hack for the original Joomla 1.0.* series must add my 2 cents here.
Yea, MultiVendor can mean a lot of things. Is not that simple to give a definition of "true MultiVendor" solution, and is even harder to implement it. On surface everything looks simple, but if you are getting deeper, things are looking not so simple anymore.
Here are some simple issues need to be answered.
For example: who is doing the shipping? Each vendor for his/her own location? Or shipments will be made from a central warehouse? This alone is a huge difference between two potential MultiVendor Shops. Also how the money are collected? who pays where? Each vendor is directly paid to his/her PayPal account? Or each vendor has different payment processors?
Can a shopper buy in one shopping session - with one cart/checkout goods sold by any number of vendors or in cart can be goods sold by a single vendor?
These are crucial questions. And I only scratched the surface.
Come on, boys. This is a very complex issue. You must have some really clearly drawn scenarios in your mind BEFORE you began to deploy a MultiVendor shop. Think before you are asking questions.
One size fits all is something in-existing when comes about MultiVendor shop.
Some possible scenarios can be addressed - and I will be VERY happy if VM 2.0 makes possible one of simplest things:
1. Multiple vendors can register and set up their products, their shipping and payment options
2. All products from all vendors are shown TOGETHER, inside the same category structure
3. Shoppers can browse all products - and buy in one cart products from a single vendor. In case of trying to add product from a second vendor, shopper will be warned, and the product won't be added.
If this will work, will be a huge advance. Will find out myself in the next couple of days - and will share my experience.
Thumbs up for the work already done, regardless to the actual stage of the project. I am aware of the amount and complexity of work needed here.
Heyhoo webgobe,
your dream is really near, I suggest you join us in skype. I built a kind of taskforce. We finally defined the following multivendor scenarios we want to achieve in the next major version:
- single vendor, multi-administrator =>this absolute basic case. This is done in 2.0.0 but only for j1.5, the svn has already all fixes.
- multivendor single cart => different vendors, but same payment and shipment methods for all vendors, all vendors can share one cart.
- multivendor single cart strict => This is the case you mentioned and the case I also had in mind. Some are already working on it. But to sent a warning is a bit odd, so we had the idea to extend it to
- multivendor multicart, which means that you can have different carts, per vendor.
Already in place is that you can share categories, rules, and other stuff, so you can use this with other vendors. So they can have their products in own categories or in shared ones. Al of them need a different level of administration. It is also a security thing, if you wanna allow vendors to upload own images and similar. Write a pn, when you are interested.
Multiple vendors on an eCommerce venue is an extremely difficult problem, not only for logistics as many have stated. That is to say, how vendors get paid, how consumers pay, how vendors access backend management functions. But also from an engineering standpoint is extremely difficult. Its not only the issues noted above, some vendor products have varied features, small, medium, large, some have specific static informational requirements such as say software operating system, memory, video card requirement on and on and vendors dont like keying such stuff in over and over and over. If they are given capability of field creations be they static or live input field creation that opens up a whole different barrel of issues both in the software development but vendors not screwing up.
Do developers understand sales or marketing? Not many. Do vendors understand engineering? No, not many. All three of these areas rarely come in one person (I am fortunate, I do know all three as well as enterprise level development). Thats another matter. Folks here might think, "Well gee, multivendor, I can have 250 or 1000 vendors all with lots of products!". You will quickly find if traffic becomes anything near brisk your webserver will start slowing to snails pace, sure... one can do somethings with PHP/Apache/MySQL to try ease things such as Memcache, better server hardware, more memory in it, distribution of the database to another server. But, in terms of scalability a brick wall does exist and essentially the only ways around that without custom solutions (expensive options) are going with enterprise level and/or at least technologies that can be expanded to enterprise levels in "natural form". What is natural form? Natural form means that the core software has scalability in mind from the word go. For example, Microsoft ASP.NET, MSSQL Server, CommerceServer etc. all are naturally scalable. Java, Oracle etc. all are scalable, Apache, mySQL (to an extent) are scalable but PHP does not scale well nor are most of these open source projects like Joomla etc. built in a way where distributed components are easily done.
Amazon.com is BIG enterprise level. So what type of architecture does an eBay or Amazon or others that have many vendors and considerable traffic do?
They have connections servers located in most states, sheer responsibility is basically handling connections. Amazon appears to be "one site" but in reality Amazon has many "stores" handled by numerous distributed server banks, checkouts, accounting and considerably more. Its all distributed. Thats "Enterprise" level. So lets not confuse terms. I dont think anyone here thinks they are going to become walmart.
But... At the sametime you would be VERY surprised to find out actually how poorly sites that develop high traffic end up performing because they did not pick the right solutions. For example, Joomla is very popular but in comparison to say Liferay (java CMS) as scaling and general performance comes into play its night and day. Essentially the same reasons Walmart or Target etc. use Java to do store SKU pushes on and on. There regional networks pull/push data from servers daily. If they used PHP to do it, it would not be finished by the time the following push/pull need be done. It simply doesnt have the "Umph" or be easily and MAINTAINABLE scaling to do so nor was it or has it been designed to do so where as Java, ASP.NET etc. are. Even though a similar ASP.NET site might perform slower than the same site in PHP when the "brick wall" is hit the ASP.NET platform has solutions, in PHP it comes time to start finding whatever kludges one can come up with to deal with it. The kludges eventually are either a brick wall or spaghetti that becomes difficult to maintain.
There is no "All in one" multi-vendor solution that exists, Magento enterprise (which is PHP) is the best platform in PHP.
But, you wont see enterprise level existing commerce jumping all over it. Magento's people know that. They in a way are seeking to "attract" entrepreneurs who are now developer savvy. Because if just for sake of say a name, "Starbucks" wanted enter into enterprise ecommerce no development firm would say, "Lets use magento" or "joomla". No... Its Java, its C++ or its ASP.net (generally) and custom development. As thats pretty much the only way to ensure scalability, performance, extensibility and keeping COSTS downward long term while ensuring the service can handle what may come at it.
Target.com is run by Amazon.com for example.
Now I dont know how virtuemart 2.0 has been coded up. You see lotsa buzz about terms like MVC with Joomla (Model View Controller) which is now a 30 year old paradigm, there are MUCH more efficient ways to code than MVC. If Amazon used MVC we'd be looking at another $30-$50 million dollars a month and triple that at holiday season in expense of server cycles alone. Amazon is coded in C++ (the lions share of it). eBay, C++ lions share of it. Why?
Because C++ compiled native code will run rings around ByteCode platforms. For example, the software you use that runs Joomla is PHP, Apache Server and mySQL Database server. These were all coded in C++. Benchmarks in performance are night and day. If Joomla was "Pure C++" it'd hold thousands more users online at once .vs. PHP and do so far more efficient and effective.
The enterprise standards are C++, Java and slowly growing ASP.NET as Microsoft is counting on server, bandwidth and such continuing to go faster and faster at lesser and lesser costs and Microsoft is basically the only entity that has a full blown "everything" development platform. That is to say, with Microsofts platform one can make websites, web applications, pc applications, mobile applications, distributed applications on and on using one set of tools. The only other player in this market really is Adobe and their "Web Flagship" product be Flash & Flex is already being counted as "Dead but not yet knowing it" because of the new movements in HTML and CSS. CSS 4 spells the death of flash. HTML 6 spells the death static sites, CSS 5, HTML 7 (I only saw cursory specs of both last year by a friend at W3C) and leveraging cloud based computing spells the end of content management systems, photo buckets and then some. By 2015-2017 most of what seems familiar now will seem as stone age as DOS compared to Windows.
There are that I know of three drag and drop "Content Management Portals" being deployed late 2012 by "real money" that are going to severely injure the "open CMS" applications with capabilities far far in advance of the piecemeal and all of them are to be free, free everything. Two I cant discuss at all, the other I saw prototypes of and thats coming from Yahoo. Its why Yahoo worked several years at "YUI" and all the development that people thought "stopped" did not stop. Instead, its went proprietary and they may be the first to deploy it. Think of it like Joomla, content management with easy to use access controls, modular, drag and drop. You literally have a toolbox of modules (or in joomla terms modules/components) and you can place them anywhere and set properties/restrictions there-of. But, its also a portal, like "multi-vendor"... you can have yours or others "sites" under your site. Now mix in facebook forms of human/business networking to develop, derive and maintain traffic from. All sitting atop enterprise level architecture that maintains everything from load balancing to security. Thats whats coming.
The idea is simple, you dont need to be a guru or developer to create webs that are not only highly effective but MORE effective than the piecemeal out there today. One of the other entities doing this I cant talk about since my brother works for them, but, I did mention their name in the above paragraphs. They will be doing so across global ecommerce which is one of the big reasons they have branched into selling computing resources, created a third party payment system and nearly killed off their affiliate type setup. Essentially they will own eCommerce which is good and bad. Good in that everything ends up regulated, so now nations can make decisions as to what comes in and what is allowed to leave/be sold etc. in their respective nations. Bad in that it ends up regulated so now nations will make decisions that end up with the "little guys" out of business unless they work with the big guys who ultimately will provide all facets of eCommerce. That means from purchase to packing to delivery and the small manufacturer or supplier will get their 70%.
Anyways... none here should think that Virtuemart or any other eCommerce multi-vendor package is going to suit all their needs or future needs. Such things often require custom development. The developers at Virtuemart are no different than developers at CS-Cart or others. It is not the softwares goals to be able to solve every niche needed, its intended to be broad based to service the most vendors it can... Not be a "Well this will service every possible combination possible" as that does not exist nor will it until its provided by both technology advancement and big money involvement to make it a reality.
Completely agree.
If you are lucky enough to make a website where VM or any other e-commerce solution suits your needs for "multi-vendor" perfect.. but in 90% cases you will need a custom development.
Apart from all the mentioned problems you have to add the law issues different for each country which will require custom development too.
Will do. Just let me get out from the swamp (I am overwhelmed wit commercial stuff right now!) , I'm really interested - and I have two prospective jobs needing multi-vendor!!!
Quote from: CavySpirit on December 03, 2011, 01:44:58 AM
Hi CranialBlaze,
Good luck indeed. These little slams to one's intelligence and experience on this forum are starting to get to me.
Out of respect to the IXXO developers, I actually edited out a huge portion of my original post in which I detailed exactly why IXXO multi-vendor is not ready for prime-time in the US market--at least for my modest business model.
And as far as my personal income goes, I believe I mentioned that I get a 'small percentage' of my main vendor's income. So, I'm not exactly filthy rich.
Nonetheless, I did in fact fork out $1500 for the IXXO Multi-vendor solution earlier this year. I thought it was most definitely going to be the great solution that I needed and was happy to make the investment--although for me, it was a LOT of money. Well, it was $1500 out the door with no return.
The IXXO model assumes that when you make a purchase across multiple vendors, the purchases all go in ONE cart, on ONE order with ONE financial transaction. They rely on Paypal Adaptive to split out payments and commissions. I've had multiple back and forth with Paypal about this. Paypal Adaptive, unlike Paypal Pro, will NOT allow you to take credit cards up front. That in and of itself knocks out 50% or more of our sales--not acceptable. But it gets to be more fun the deeper you go in IXXO. And because the configuration is pretty intense (fine by me), you don't really realize what's happening until you start to try to process orders.
They assume that the administrator of the site is going to finalize each and every order by actually confirming with the customer that they indeed got their shipment. And the money goes to the administrator and must then be distributed to the vendors later.
One order = one TOS. Let's say I order a large, bulky product from vendor A in California for $100 and a small, lightweight product from vendor B in Florida for $10. This goes on ONE order. One financial transaction. I'm not going to bother to detail out all the problems, because I'm assuming that you are intelligent and get it.
Another problem, let's say I have 3 vendors who sell a somewhat similar product, but they are all a bit different.
I do my shopping and choose a product from each vendor. Because they are on one order, I see three different shipping line items presented. One shipping cost might be 3 times the price of another--for whatever reason. IF I had purchased them separately, I would probably have just bought them, no problem. However, seeing the disparity in shipping, causes people to stop in their tracks and reassess their purchase decision. I know. I did it. I tried every IXXO actual store site I could find (not many). AND I actually went through a real purchase just to validate.
More important is the financial model. I DO NOT want the IRS headache of taking in all the income and distributing it back to the vendors. Why on earth do I need to inflate my reportable income? I surely don't. The IXXO model assumes that YOU, the administrator is receiving in all the income and then at some later agreed upon time, you then pay your vendors. Me holding my vendor's money and paying them later is NOT a selling point for my vendors. Not to mention you have to factor in the added transaction fees for getting them their money electronically. What I THOUGHT I was going to be able to do is have my vendors manage their store--their payment processor from a chosen list that I provide, their shipping, their orders, their customer support (for the most part). I had no intention (and still don't) of being the middle man. I'm marketing and tech support. I want to provide a MALL experience. At a mall, you don't go into one store, pick out some products, go to another store, pick out some more products, and then go to some giant central mall checkout and pay. That is not what I wanted. If I'm in Macy's, I'll pay Macy's. If I'm in Sears, I'll pay Sears. I want to know what commissions are due to me. I want the vendors managing their own business. I don't want to be involved in managing their logistics or customers. I was willing to compromise on getting paid later (my commission payments due to the constraints on paypal adaptive), but I don't want the liability for all of their transactions.
IXXO has not offered to return any money to me. There was a statement in one support post that they would develop the functionality I need, but I've heard nothing about it and had no other communication or responses.
I looked in detail at other IXXO sites and actually spoke with another frustrated IXXO client. I wish I could have made it work, and I tried very very hard to do so. Believe me, that $1500 was hard-earned. I spent a lot of time on support tickets articulating what's needed and why.
And here I am. If you know anything different, I'm happy to hear about it. Unlike VM, the vast majority of their support is through private tickets (a virtually dead forum), so you don't get the added view into what others are doing or experiencing. (A software vendor's model that I do not appreciate--although I'm sure it's easier and more profitable--for them.)
So, Cranial, good luck to you with the IXXO premium solution. Been there, done that, can't afford the T-Shirt.
Teresa
Thank you so much Teresa for your assessment of the IXXO multi vendor component. While I was waiting (a few years actually) for the long promised "real" multi vendor capability in VM 2.0, I was also leaning towards IXXO for my "Online Mall". I'm just sorry that you had to basically throw your money and time out the window.
After reading this whole thread, I totally respect your opinion, and I feel sorry for you that you couldn't get a straight answer. I was hoping that things would change in this forum when a new team of developers took over the VM project, but sadly nothing has changed. It's a shame that when a simple question is posted in this forum you either don't get an answer for days or weeks, or sometimes never, or you are presented with a non answer, a flame, or belittlement, but as I've come to expect from this forum if you need an answer to something, you pretty much have to answer your own question, literally.
So to answer your, and ibelieve's questions, here is the only documentation I could find on the multi vendor capabilities. In all fairness to the VM team, at least there IS some documentation now. In VM 1.0... there was nothing documented other than a mention that multi vendor was already built in. That was it, nothing more. Anyway, here is the documentation;
http://virtuemart.net/documentation/User_Manual/Vendor_Administration.html
&
http://virtuemart.net/documentation/User_Manual/Vendors.html
There is however a warning that goes along with the instructions which reads "THIS PART OF VirtueMart STILL IS NOT COMPLETE. IT'S NOT RECOMMENDED TO USE THIS FEATURE." There is also a brief mention in the template section of the developers manual which says "vendor_linkThe link to the vendor info page".. That's it.
It won't do any good doing a search in the forum because all you will find will be a lot of old and open ended threads, but by all means, don't take my word for it.
If you want to try and stumble your way through the multi vendor features in your VM install, I have found one place to start on my own; In the configuration options in the VM admin, there is a check box which says "Enable Multivendor (experimental only for developers)" with the following options "None" & "administrated multivendor" When you check the "administrated multivendor" box and go to add a product, you can select the vendor who the product is assigned to. Apparently you can assign a user as a vendor in the shopper group list elsewhere in the VM admin.
That's as far as I got, so then I decided to do a search in the VM forum to see if I could find some more info on how to use the feature and that's how I wound up here. So to try an answer your question, yes VM is able to support multiple vendors "(in any way, shape or form)", but you are going to have to figure out on your own how to use it, and you are most likely going to have to pay a developer to dig through the code and add anything more than basic functionality to it.
I hope this has helped somewhat. It's the least I could do for you, after all, you saved me $1500.00 ;o
Hi All,
Am using J2.5.1 & VM2.0.2. Been using VM1.1 for a while now very happily.
In the VM2 Configuration I've checked "Enable Multivendor".
I have 3 shoppers - admin plus two other I've added. I made the 2 new shoppers (Shopper A and Shopper B) vendors and they appear with their green tick on the vendor column.
BUT when I click on their username and go into their account the "Vendor" tab keeps getting overwritten with the latest info. The other 3 tabs keep their info correctly.
So for example, I went into Shopper A's vendor tab and it had the info that was originally done for admin. I updated this for Shopper A (inc currency etc). Then, went into Shopper B and did the same. BUT when I go back into Shopper A its vendor Tab's info has now changed to Shopper B's info. And if after that I go back to Shopper B it has now has the Shopper A info.
So whatever is the last info added to Vendor tab is what is shown on ALL vendors.
AND when you go to a product, the Vendor drop-down it only has one option (whatever was the latest updated).
This looks like an interface bug? If so what's the likelihood of a fix? What timeline?
Thanks for an otherwise awesome product.
:-)
(Am planning to use multi Vendors as we have 4 sub-stores which dispatch from UK, US, EU, AU each in their own currency at s set price. Hope this is a suitable way to achieve that)
Quote from: Bill Bohn on January 26, 2012, 10:39:42 AM
After reading this whole thread, I totally respect your opinion, and I feel sorry for you that you couldn't get a straight answer. I was hoping that things would change in this forum when a new team of developers took over the VM project, but sadly nothing has changed. It's a shame that when a simple question is posted in this forum you either don't get an answer for days or weeks, or sometimes never, or you are presented with a non answer, a flame, or belittlement, but as I've come to expect from this forum if you need an answer to something, you pretty much have to answer your own question, literally.
VM2 Multi Vendor is being actively worked on, i feel that your comments are unfair, the VM2 team have produced an awesome shopping cart version called VM2 that works and is free, multi vendor is another whole layer of complications THAT ARE ACTIVELY BEING WORKED THROUGH.
Which reminds me to ask,
Q: How long is a piece of string
A:
Multi Vendor is many things to many people, but the holy grail to many.
Before you quote how bad things are, consider the quality of VM2 and consider how many people can't get Multi vendor and tried numerous options.
These guys donate their time and should be commented not moaned at. Sorry that's my rant over ( I should be called Mr Grumpy of Hendon)
Hi there,
I have been looking and waiting for multivendor possibility since long ago and use VM for 3 years now.
I am renewing my webpage J2.5x and VM2 and would like to now use the multivendor option.
Quote from: Milbo on January 02, 2012, 14:29:45 PM
Another idea is that a manufacturer or distributor is adding his products himself and the merchant is just doing marketing/delivery/support and infrastructure.
This is exactly my situation Milbo
Site is multinlingual,
ALL products are the same (this means same name & same sku), one vendor per country who takes care of stocks and shipping...
Payments have to be done to the store manager of the specific country.
Can anyone give me some hints on how to deploy this before I go in the wrong direction?
Many thanks in advance.
I'm using joomla 2.5 and VM2.06 The multi vendor function realy cool but I don't know how can I see another vendors product. Is there a module or Is there a urls each vendor?
I enabled multi vendor, made informations shipment payment and three products. The main Vendor's (Washupito) product showing but how can I change between vendors. If i login as my second vendor I see him products.
Please someone tell me how can I show vendor's products another url or anyway :)
Hi,
I would also like to add my name to the list of people interested in a Joomla multi vendor solution.
Any update you could provide would be appreciated.
Thanks & Great work
DM
I would very much like to contribute to this. I'm just about to give getting MV working to one of my developers
Hello to everyone. I'm new VM too. And payment will be made only where a store. But I need to do a site with multiple sellers. That is. the store will pay the buyer when purchasing a product. But the message should go to the supplier in the place of purchase. I'll take commissions from suppliers. I think you understand. Nail supposed to do. Could you tell?
Meowser,
facebook is written with php and mysql,
Sorry but that shows that you wrote 50% crap. There are also really big stores using virtuemart.
QuoteMagento enterprise (which is PHP) is the best platform in PHP.
Hey man, I am sorry, you say a lot of interesting things, but also a big bunch of shit.
Quote from: Bill Bohn on January 26, 2012, 10:39:42 AM
After reading this whole thread, I totally respect your opinion, and I feel sorry for you that you couldn't get a straight answer. I was hoping that things would change in this forum when a new team of developers took over the VM project, but sadly nothing has changed. It's a shame that when a simple question is posted in this forum you either don't get an answer for days or weeks, or sometimes never, or you are presented with a non answer, a flame, or belittlement, but as I've come to expect from this forum if you need an answer to something, you pretty much have to answer your own question, literally.
yes, it is a shame. The child is asking the parents from where the children come. Hey man simple thing, eh? Yes it is a shame, the question is so simple "Does god exist" it is a shame, no one is giving a simple answer.
lol, simple question does NOT mean that the answer is simple. In fact the complexity of a question has NOTHING todo with the complexity of the answer.
Ok. So after reading all the contributions in this forum about this topic. i decided to do some digging. I am happy to say that, i have been able to achieve Multi Vendor functionality just as Milbo said.
1. Create a new joomla user in joomla user manager.
2. go to Virtuemart admin ---> Orders & Shoppers --> Shoppers.
3. The above gives you a list of all the users in your DB. Now click on the user u just created and make sure you fill all the details then save.
4. Now click the check box beside the user u created. and select IS A VENDOR at the top right of the page. wait for page to reload.
5. Now click the same user again and viola. It turns into a vendor.
I just did this, and i am hoping it is the real thing. i am about to sleep because it about 1:AM here in Ghana - west africa.
if anyone finds another way or another method kindly let me know.
I hope this helps someone. Once again Milbo. Thanks alot.
Administrated multivendor is included in the VM2.0.11 forum member test version, soon to be released as VM2.0.12
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=107588.0
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=107541.0
Multivendor is not easy at all, and you can see that just by reading this post.
Even 2 of us couldn't agree on legal terms and concepts for multivendor, and you are asking for a free feature now.
If I had to deal with the stupid questions I read daily in the forum answered 20 times and asked 1000 ill jump from my 8th floor.
Sometimes yo get answers and sometimes you don't, is a free component, if you want professional help, pay it.
We managed to build our website in vm 1.1x and we had no clue of what VM was 2 years ago, guess what we did? we actually read the manual and the forum lol
I know that it is a very old topic, but what CavySpirit described is exactly what I am trying to do.
Quote from: CavySpirit on December 03, 2011, 01:44:58 AM
More important is the financial model. I DO NOT want the IRS headache of taking in all the income and distributing it back to the vendors. Why on earth do I need to inflate my reportable income? I surely don't. The IXXO model assumes that YOU, the administrator is receiving in all the income and then at some later agreed upon time, you then pay your vendors. Me holding my vendor's money and paying them later is NOT a selling point for my vendors. Not to mention you have to factor in the added transaction fees for getting them their money electronically. What I THOUGHT I was going to be able to do is have my vendors manage their store--their payment processor from a chosen list that I provide, their shipping, their orders, their customer support (for the most part). I had no intention (and still don't) of being the middle man. I'm marketing and tech support. I want to provide a MALL experience. At a mall, you don't go into one store, pick out some products, go to another store, pick out some more products, and then go to some giant central mall checkout and pay. That is not what I wanted. If I'm in Macy's, I'll pay Macy's. If I'm in Sears, I'll pay Sears. I want to know what commissions are due to me. I want the vendors managing their own business. I don't want to be involved in managing their logistics or customers. I was willing to compromise on getting paid later (my commission payments due to the constraints on paypal adaptive), but I don't want the liability for all of their transactions.
I can see multivendor is working in the newest version. My question is how can I be sure that a vendor is not deleting orders (and I am losing my commision).