An online store is a public shop, open to anybody, selling your products under your brand. A customer finds it, chooses what they want, pays, and the order arrives in Gorilla Dash against the tribe that will fulfil it. It is the shopfront version of what your tribes sell over the counter.
Gorilla Dash has three kinds of shop, and they are easy to confuse because they share a great deal of machinery underneath. The difference is who is allowed to buy.
| Kind of shop | Who buys from it | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Online store | The general public. Anybody who finds the address can order. | Selling your products online, under your own brand. |
| Branded store | One client's own staff, usually behind a login. | A client orders their branded uniforms and merchandise from you. |
| Network Store | Your own tribes. | Head office supplies its tribes with stock, signage and marketing material. |
A network commonly runs more than one at a time, and there is no conflict in doing so — the same product can be sold to the public in an online store, to a client through a branded store, and to your own tribes through the Network Store, at three different prices.
What sits underneath all three
Several screens are shared between the three kinds of shop, which is why they live under Online Store rather than under any one of them. Set them up once and every shop uses them.
| Screen | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Store Dashboard | Sales totals across your online and branded stores. |
| Online Sales | Every order, from every shop, with its status. |
| Online Stores | The public shops themselves. |
| Branded Stores | The client shops. See the Branded Stores guides. |
| Supplier Pricing | Applying a margin across a supplier's whole catalogue at once. |
| Margin Groups | The margins that turn a wholesale price into a selling price. |
| Shipping Zones | Where you deliver to, and what you charge for it. |
| Store Settings | Tax, payment providers, and what tribes are allowed to change. |
| Store Invoice Footer | The wording at the bottom of every store invoice. |
Where a tribe fits in
An order has to end up with somebody who will make and deliver it, and in Gorilla Dash that is a tribe. Each online store is connected to the tribes that sell through it, so an order placed in the store is attributed to one of them and appears in that tribe's sales figures.
How much control a tribe has over its own selling is set on Store Settings, at organisation level. A network can keep prices and payment entirely central, or let each tribe set its own prices and take payment into its own bank account. Those decisions are worth making before you build the store rather than after.