Status of Multi-Vendor?

[webgobe]

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!!!

[Bill Bohn]

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

[Gargoyle]

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)

[Letterhead]

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)

[MutliVendor]

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.

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.

[dnlvsci]

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

[DomMaster]

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

[vectorite]

I would very much like to contribute to this. I'm just about to give getting MV working to one of my developers

[supersistem]

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?

[Milbo]

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.

Magento 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.

[Milbo]

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.

[liltrig3]

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.

[jenkinhill]

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

[lindapowers]

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

[markdoub]

I know that it is a very old topic, but what CavySpirit described is exactly what I am trying to do.

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).