Please recommend best solution for online Business

[nanastasiou]

Hi all,

I am looking for the best way solution to manage an online hair business.

There will be one website where customers can place orders online and during checkout they should have the option for delivery from the warehouse or collection from a variety of local stores.

I will need the local stores to be able to get immediately notified somehow when an order comes through preferably by a mobile app or even an online interface which will be limited to orders placed at their own store.

I have looked at various e-commerce solutions e.g. Magento, PrestaShop, Opencart but I haven't been able to figure out yet which would be the best or if there is a better product?

Can I please have some assistance?

Thanks in advance and have a great weekend.

 

[OElite]

I think you can focus on finding a stock control software that has integrated online shop/website - because your focus is more about better stock control. Users buying from a website is just an entry point for the stock control software notifying local stores.

Possibly a custom development is more appropriate than finding a ready made open source solution.

 

[nanastasiou]

I think you can focus on finding a stock control software that has integrated online shop/website - because your focus is more about better stock control. Users buying from a website is just an entry point for the stock control software notifying local stores.

Possibly a custom development is more appropriate than finding a ready made open source solution.

I agree with your opinion, ideally a custom solution should be the best way forward in the long term.

Now for the short term what happens if the stock control is managed by a different process?

I had a play with Opencart 2.0 today and kinda like it but I need to figure out how to setup the local stores to have access to it? Obviously I don't want them to have full access to the back end interface but kinda limited access to only the orders placed on their local stores. Is that possible with Opencart 2.0?

 

[nanastasiou]

It seems that what you want to build is a marketplace. Something like etsy dot com.
Try this site if at all you seem this is the angle you should word towards: etsyclone dot com

Thanks. Is etsyclone a full e-commerce solution like Magento etc? What makes it different or stand out?

 

[Alan]

Are you a developer or are you looking for a solution that you can assemble as a non-techie.

I ask as, as the response is different depending on your technical skills. OpenCart is customisable pretty much totally, if you are a developer.

 

[Alan]

Another question is related to the business model, is stock held centrally and only distributed to local stores when a pick up order placed, or are you planning to provide stock availability levels per store?

 

[nanastasiou]

Are you a developer or are you looking for a solution that you can assemble as a non-techie.

I ask as, as the response is different depending on your technical skills. OpenCart is customisable pretty much totally, if you are a developer.

I work in IT but my job is to design and support computer networks. I do have very basic knowledge of html and php/mysql but I am not in any way a developer.

As far as I know so far the stock is sold to the stores in advance as the stores buy from the warehouse directly so they can sell locally as well to customers simply coming to the store if that makes sense. At the same time customers can place orders on the main website, complete payment online and have the products shipped directly from the warehouse or simply collect them from their local store. I will meet with the company director on Thursday next week to get a better understanding of the business model. Till then I need to have something in place so I can demo to him if that makes sense

 

[antropy]

I will need the local stores to be able to get immediately notified somehow when an order comes through preferably by a mobile app or even an online interface which will be limited to orders placed at their own store.

It might be worth getting a demo of Brightpearl as this can handle multiple stock locations quite well, as well as allowing you to place orders in store. It also connects to OpenCart.

 

[nanastasiou]

It might be worth getting a demo of Brightpearl as this can handle multiple stock locations quite well, as well as allowing you to place orders in store. It also connects to OpenCart.

Thanks, Brightpearl looks interesting and something the company can use in the long term.

Till then I was thinking if I could get away with a complete solution by using Opencart with any necessary extensions so I can keep the costs down. Could that be possible?

 

[adamo]

I'd definitely recommend Magento over others - it's a very well-supported platform, and there are plenty of free and paid extensions available should you wish to extend the functionality. Then you can self-host it on web hosting from WebHostingBuzz, Namecheap etc.

 

[antropy]

Till then I was thinking if I could get away with a complete solution by using Opencart with any necessary extensions so I can keep the costs down. Could that be possible?

It's a good idea and I think you can probably do everything with various extensions except for having your stock distributed across multiple warehouses/shops.

When an order comes in, how will you decide which warehouse/shop to ship from?

 

[amac]

If you're a developer or can hire one, open source is a good way to go. If not, there's nothing wrong with hosted solutions like Shopify, BigCommerce etc to get started.

 

[nanastasiou]

I'd definitely recommend Magento over others - it's a very well-supported platform, and there are plenty of free and paid extensions available should you wish to extend the functionality. Then you can self-host it on web hosting from WebHostingBuzz, Namecheap etc.

Thanks. Does Magento have an option to handle stock levels per store and orders placed at different stores?

 

[nanastasiou]

It's a good idea and I think you can probably do everything with various extensions except for having your stock distributed across multiple warehouses/shops.

When an order comes in, how will you decide which warehouse/shop to ship from?

The customer will have the option to collect from local store, otherwise the order will be shipped from the main warehouse.

If local collection is selected the store should automatically be notified and get the order processed and marked as shipped via an interface. Is there a ready solution that could manage this option? Any ideas?

 

[nanastasiou]

If you're a developer or can hire one, open source is a good way to go. If not, there's nothing wrong with hosted solutions like Shopify, BigCommerce etc to get started.

I agree, that may be the only way to go unless I can find a solution to address the business plan especially the local collection and stock level requirement?

 

[nanastasiou]

Well, I appreciate your interest, but on the other hand you might have certain problems regarding managing this plan. In my point of view you should consider Magento over the other options as it offers a wide range of options but at the same time, if it is affordable to you, better to go for the custom development.
Apart from above, I myself have worked on Magento sold some products online, so I personally can assure that it works good in it.

Thanks, do you know if there is way for Magento to handle the local collection and stock level requirement ?

 

[nanastasiou]

Yes, Magento is the only solution which covers mutiple stores functionality.

Can each store have it's own account and access to the interface with Magento? I want each store to be able to see their own orders only and not have access to orders placed at other stores. Only the main warehouse should be able to see all the orders placed at all the stores.

And when the customer places an order for collection will the local store get an email automatically with the order so they can process it?

 

[BrightpearlUK]

Hi Nanastasiou.

Opencart and Magento would both be good options for your website based on the requirements you have posted, although neither platform is designed to cope with the strain of managing a multichannel business in the back-end.

 

[milow]

Opencart is a good option in my opinion. I've used Joomla before with Virtuemart and K2 integration. With OpenCart everything is more straight forward. OpenCart has multi-store abilites which allow you to manage multiple stores from one admin interface.You can theme the stores differently, use different localization, set different prices, etc