MerchRep is a registered Shopify Partner. We provide web development and product range management services tailored for APPA Distributors.
The MerchRep website is our concept store. It's a full functioning Shopify store supporting the Replicat music merch production business. It contains the entire product ranges offered by two major APPA suppliers through the Promodata API.
With most developers offering a 6+ month build with a corresponding price tag, there's a significant benefit in choosing an industry specialist developer.
We've seen and solved most if not all of the specific product, collection, e-commerce, site configuration and integration challenges for APPA Distributors that non specialist developers will face.
We aim to complete the discovery process, functional build, integrations and training program within one month for most stores, provided it's of a similar complexity to the MerchRep site. If you're preparing content assets (products, images, banners, static page content, trading terms) while we build the store, you'll be ready to launch soon after training.
Our fixed price contracts include the following:
Our curated Promodata based product range data can be made available prior to launch, but range requirements vary significantly from one APPA distributor to the next. We quote this aspect separately based on the number of products and suppliers involved, and the current state of their product data. Some product ranges are significantly easier to prepare web ready data for than others.
We also don't include custom changes to functionality and styling in the initial contract or build scope. This provides a clear first contract milestone and deliverable, and ensures you get to market with your new store in the shortest possible timeframe. Instead we'll make a list of desired customisations that arise during this first contract stage.
Finally, we receive many requests for custom project price calculators on product pages, including the selection of production quantity and decoration options for a particular product. We do have an custom Shopify app based solution for this requirement, but the main issue we face is the availability and maintenance of accurate prices and mapped options for such a system. When Promodata has products ready for such a product page project calculator, we'll be ready to add this custom functionality to your Shopify store. In the coming weeks, we'll also be creating a demo product on MerchRep to showcase this custom app.
Once you've become familiar with all the possibilities of your theme, content, app library, and the Shopify content management system - we'll be ready to take on any theme and functional customisation you require.
As the first stage of the build progresses, we'll start creating a list of desired style and function customisations. This list may continue to grow as you get deep into content creation and product / collection management. Once you've loaded all content ready for launch, we'll prioritise that list and prepare a customisation scope for separate quotation.
Our network of Shopify theme and custom app developers, web designers, digital marketing integration specialists, data integration experts & product range management gurus provides a scalable long term solution for ongoing development. We're ready to scope, customise and support your site in the years to come.
Here are all the large product range themes currently recommended by Shopify. The MerchRep website is built with one of these, Galleria Empire v3.
Large Inventory Shopify Themes
Choosing the right Shopify theme is one of the most important decisions we'll make together, as the right choice can significantly reduce or even eliminate custom development cost.
And it's not just about look and feel. As you become familiar with the Shopify content management system, you'll start to realise just how important that initial theme choice is. Some themes are well supported. They're packed with home page, landing page, collection filter, and product page options, ready to drop into your site. They take full advantage of the new Shopify custom metafield system. Others just aren't.
We've seen some of these themes evolve considerably over the past three years, and we're ready to provide our store development clients with the benefit of that experience.
Are you a specialist or generalist? What are your major product categories? Which APPA supplier relationships are most important to you? Are you bricks & mortar or an online provider? New or established business? What are your sampling policies? Do you hold stock? In-house or sub-contracted decoration? Who are the key members of your team, and what unique skills & experience do they have?
Every APPA Distributor business is different. We find out who you are before building anything.
APPA distributor online stores are not like retail online stores. There's a custom branding process, stock level checks, sampling options, and lead time v deadline checks. There's a high average order value that doesn't gel with significant merchant % transaction fees.
We'll talk through e-commerce options for your store in detail during the discovery stage. We'll talk about why we offer sample purchase through MerchRep checkout, but not production orders & payments. We'll talk about custom product page forms and general inquiry forms. We'll talk about the importance and limitations of product data.
Then we'll design and configure an e-commerce system and data integrations that work for your specific business.
MerchRep are experts in Shopify product structures. We've seen every way products and their variants can be handled and bundled on a Shopify site with large inventory ranges.
We've developed a few custom strategies of our own to manage the most complex product page and collection page requirements.
We understand smart and custom collections, and all the ways collections interact with Shopify store navigation.
We understand Shopify API range limits and upload speeds, and have strategies in place for large ranges.
We've built our own backend range management system linked to Promodata.
We've done the work to categorise every Promodata product by one of 162 APPA sub-categories. If there's a colour record with a colour image available, we've categorised that style-colour by one of 40 APPA colour families. We've also identified the major brands & labels supplied by each APPA supplier and created collections for those too.
Then there are the little things. We've stripped out weird html characters. We've weeded out the products that don't have prices. We've provided a few more garment sub-categories and a distinction between popular & specialist product range in each category. We know which products have supplier SKU codes down to style-colour level and which don't.
We can see Promodata evolving every day, with APPA suppliers providing more and more precise content. Eventually we'll see Promodata with perfect collection tags aligned with APPA categorisation, style-colour supplier SKUs, normalised decoration and other options, standardised price structures, sample cost data and freight policies, clean description text, ordered web-optimised images, and specific images mapped to every colour.
But it will still take a year or two for data to come through the Promodata API categorised and structured to APPA standards. Until that happens, our curated MerchRep range data is available to our development clients to help fast forward your Shopify store launch.
Once we've been through the discovery process, we can structure product data to preload your new Shopify store with the most important supplier ranges from Promodata for your business.
Every MerchRep built Shopify store also comes pre-loaded with every collection definition we have available. Even if you don't use all of them and decide to hide a few from your navigation, it's a collection structure that will make it a breeze for your clients to compare and choose products.
One of the key features of our approach is that you're not tied to Promodata ranges.
We will provide a product structure and upload method to allow any products and data from your in-house production or favourite non-Promodata suppliers. We've even developed some tricks and resources to generate public paths for image files.
And if these suppliers eventually include their ranges on Promodata and allow live price, stock and other updates via the API, we can assist to load the product keys that tie these systems together.
The Shopify content management system is exceptionally powerful, yet easy to learn. There are also one or two apps we consider essential for each large product range store owner to master.
While we do provide ongoing training & support, we'd prefer that all our web development clients have one or more team members responsible for their own store's content management. We ask that these key team members be nominated as part of the discovery process.
We've including a training & insights phase in our standard build contract to bring your nominated team members up to speed before handover.
Once trained, our clients can manage their own content, layout, and site features. There's an extensive product range management interface. Landing pages and navigation options can be customised in powerful ways with zero external development cost. It's even possible tweak your site content and architecture on your smart phone via a full featured mobile CMS interface.
Our MerchRep Shopify stores are designed to work hand-in-hand with the new BrandEngine systems.
Every week, the MerchRep and BrandEngine development teams meet up to talk through store specific requirements, and future functionality.
We've already created data integrations for your Shopify transactions, custom form submissions, and store product range updates.
Once we've loaded your store with the initial product ranges, your BrandEngine knows they're there and displays them in your BrandEngine catalogue. If you update a product on your Shopify store, that change is reflected instantly in your BrandEngine product record. If you quote a client with a new Promodata product within BrandEngine that's not yet on your Shopify store, it's added immediately as a draft product on your Shopify store, ready for you to drop into a collection.
Your Shopify store isn't just a client-facing store. It's a full featured catalogue management system synchronised to BrandEngine. Combined with our MerchRep discovery and range management services, it's a complete solution for your product range data.
The MerchRep team built Drupal websites for years leading up to our first Shopify store. We do understand that some important aspects of a website (such as page speed and product range load times) need careful consideration in a Shopify environment.
But the benefits of Shopify are numerous. Initial and ongoing development costs are much lower than most other platforms. Shopify security is rigorously maintained by experts. The content management system is easy to learn and powerful. The reporting system is extensive. There's a huge choice of themes. And the development community is the largest of any platform.
We've developed two Shopify stores for the Replicat music merch business. We have digital marketing integration and transaction / inquiry integration. We have custom forms on several pages. The ranges are large and the integrations are complex.
Yet we run both on Shopify Basic Plan and have a minimal number of apps with recurring charges.
We've found ways to avoid expensive form builders, digital marketing integration apps, data integration solutions, and other 'standard' apps with very expensive recurring charges. We're not interested in saving 30 minutes of dev time only to land you with years of yet another $11 per month charge.
Our aim is to provide each store owner with a site structure that provides the minimum possible initial recurring charges, while still providing powerful product range management, custom form build, digital marketing integration
We'd be delighted to make an initial presentation via Zoom. This is a no obligation process that defines the key elements of your scope, with a view to preparing a fixed price contract and timeline.
You can contact our MerchRep dev team directly via the contact page on this website.
