Hi 👋🏼

Regarding the Commerce app, which serves as a storefront for site owners (please correct me if I’m mistaken), I have a suggestion. Would it be feasible to allow site owners to enable members to open their own storefronts and sell their physical items? Essentially, this would transform the community into a dynamic shopping center environment.

The site owner could manage this by creating listing packages and setting up options to charge either commissions or flat fees. This feature could significantly enhance community engagement and monetization opportunities, empowering members to participate more actively in the marketplace aspect of the community.

maybe also opening it up to work within Clubs too.

Thanks

1 hour ago, ANTONY said:

Would it be feasible to allow site owners to enable members to open their own storefronts and sell their physical items?

Actually, you can only sell digital items as the site owner. Commerce in version 5 doesnt have shipping etc for physical goods.

😳

sorry for asking but why would you remove the ability for the site owner to sell physical items? Like merchandise etc.. especially when we already have a powerful digital marketplace with file sharing? Are you then just completely removing the shop functionality and the site owner just sells their digital goods through the already established digital marketplace?

Thanks for update.

Edited September 3Sep 3 by ANTONY

8 hours ago, ANTONY said:

😳

sorry for asking but why would you remove the ability for the site owner to sell physical items? Like merchandise etc.. especially when we already have a powerful digital marketplace with file sharing? Are you then just completely removing the shop functionality and the site owner just sells their digital goods through the already established digital marketplace?

Thanks for update.

The only thing removed from Commerce is the ability to ship or post physical products. Technically, you can still have physical products in your store. There are just other alternatives out there like Shopify to meet this demand. You will have a message advising this in your AdminCP → Commerce → Payments → Shipments.

For the official deprecation announcement, click below.

Commerce Physical Products - Deprecation Tracker - Invision Community

For discussion on this, you can read through the following topic on the official Invision Community forum.

Invision Community

Invision Community v5: An update, and next steps

As we find ourselves with our toes over the precipice of June; signalling the half way point of the year, I thought it's a good time for an update. Apologies southern hemisphere. Invision Community...

21 hours ago, ANTONY said:

Would it be feasible to allow site owners to enable members to open their own storefronts and sell their physical items? Essentially, this would transform the community into a dynamic shopping center environment.

Thanks Gary for update and the links as I hadn’t seen them previously.

I guess I had envisioned the Storefront evolving into a multi-vendor environment within Invision Power, akin to cs-cart’s multi-vendor model except better as it’s within Invision Power itself. In my view, Invision Power's powerful and flexible design, focuses on true social media engagement, makes opening up the storefront to members a logical step to significantly enhance monetization opportunities for site owners. Personally, I'd rather invest in enhancing Invision Power than in platforms like cs-cart or Shopify as for me creating a multi-vendor storefront within Invision Power, under one roof, outweighs the need to integrate costly cs-cart and Shopify models. This approach also avoids managing two separate websites, saving stress, money, and time. Moreover, it leverages the unique monetization opportunities only possible within the robust Invision Power environment.

I’m trying at present to picture us having 10 Invision power sites now each one having to have it’s own shopify site 😳 and that’s just to achieve the original storefront for site owner.

Many thanks for your feedback and all the amazing work you and the team have done on v5. Looking forward to its launch 🚀

Antony