PlanToys was established in 1981, creating high-quality children’s products using environmentally sustainable materials and manufacturing processes.
Challenge
Dropshipping has always been an essential part of PlanToys’ strategy for distributing products through ecommerce retailers. Before Shopify Collective, this meant using several different software platforms to connect with partners, share product and pricing details, track inventory, and fulfill orders.
Rudy Valenta, Vice President of Americas at PlanToys, explained that the various software platforms allowed basic dropshipping capabilities, but they did not let PlanToys automate product imports, sync data, and track inventory. This work had to be done manually, taking up valuable time and energy, and increasing the risk of mistakes. Product details, images, and pricing had to be shared with retailers through spreadsheets. This often meant that partners did not upload all of the images and information that best showcased the products.
Solution
Shopify Collective allows Rudy to automate and streamline dropshipping processes, reduce administrative workload, and centralize back-office activities. Collective lets businesses on Shopify discover and connect with complementary brands, sync new products, and post them on their website in a matter of minutes.
Rudy uses Shopify Collective to connect and partner with Lalo, a baby-and-toddler retailer on Shopify.
If you’re already using Shopify, and your partner is too, you don’t have to teach a new platform. There aren’t any fears about whether the integration is going to work.
Results
With Collective’s integrated technology, PlanToys easily syncs product details, images, and pricing to Lalo’s store. All Lalo has to do is import and activate them. The new products instantly appear on Lalo’s website for customers to purchase.
Because Collective is built into Shopify, both parties already use it. Our product data is very clean because it’s coming from the data we’re using for our website. That really is the true beauty of it.
With Collective’s live inventory integration and order tracking, there’s less risk of human error. As orders come in through Lalo’s store, PlanToys processes and fulfills them without additional administrative workload.
Shopify Collective generated 18% of PlanToy's November 2022 orders and 4.5% of revenue, with no additional customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Shopify Collective is a no-brainer. It automates all the important work. It’s native to Shopify, so you don’t have to buy and learn new software, and there are no costs associated with it.