Shopify has teamed with B2B retail marketplace Faire, naming that company its “recommended wholesale marketplace.”
The partnership also makes Shopify a shareholder in Faire, the companies announced in a Wednesday (Sept. 27) news release.
“At Faire we have long admired Shopify’s like-minded approach to building tools that empower retail entrepreneurs to run their businesses as efficiently as possible,” Faire Co-founder and CEO Max Rhodes said in the release.
“By decreasing barriers to B2B selling and building deeper connections between our customer communities, we can unlock opportunities for small business growth on a much larger scale.”
According to the release, the two companies are expected to introduce new ways for businesses to expand and manage their B2B offerings across both platforms.
For example, merchants on Shopify will be able to reorder best-sellers from Faire via that company’s buyer app, with products from Faire synced with their Shopify point-of-sale system for in-person selling.
In addition, brands on Shopify “will be able to simplify their wholesale distribution to hundreds of thousands of independent retailers in one place via a fully-integrated Faire seller channel,” the release said. Those brands will also get access to Faire’s free “Stockist Map” to help consumers shop locally.
The partnership is happening at a time when merchants might need help going into what could be a tough holiday season. Recent PYMNTS Intelligence finds that the holiday season creates financial stress for two-thirds of consumers.
The collaboration with Faire follows last month’s announcement that Shopify had chosen finance automation platform Ramp to provide expense management expertise, while Ramp had used Shopify’s guidance to upgrade its flagship product.
“Our needs are incredibly complex, we weren’t sure anyone could meet them and tried to build a platform ourselves,” Phil Whitham, director and international controller, Shopify, said in a news release. “But then we found Ramp, and we saw a system that had the features we needed to operate and the building blocks we needed in the future.”
Earlier this week, Shopify’s Audiences announced new integrations with major advertising platforms Snap, TikTok and Criteo.
As PYMNTS reported, this is designed to expand the reach and efficiency of Shopify Plus merchants, allowing them to target customers more effectively using their preferred advertising network. Shopify’s other channel partners include Meta, Google and Pinterest.