Shopify sync for vendors: a work in progress
Show mode puts the cards you're selling on a screen at your table, with your asking price next to the market price. Today you mark those cards yourself. But a lot of vendors already keep their inventory in Shopify, often through a point of sale that syncs to it. Typing it all in twice makes no sense. So I'm building Shopify sync: connect your store once, and your screen keeps up with it.
This isn't finished yet, but a good chunk of it works, so here's where it stands.
What works today
- Connect your store. From Collection, Import and export, enter your store's address and sign in to Shopify. TCG Marquee only reads your store: products, prices, and stock. It never changes anything in Shopify.
- Every product is matched to a card. TCG Marquee reads titles the way vendors actually write them: "Charizard ex - 199/165 - Scarlet & Violet 151", "Evolving Skies: Umbreon VMAX (215/203)", "PSA 10 Pikachu 025/165", Magic cards with a set code, and One Piece codes like OP01-024. Conditions and printings come from your variants.
- Nothing goes on screen until you've looked. The first import lands on a review screen with each card's picture next to your Shopify title. Approve them all, or fix the ones that are wrong.
- It never guesses. If a title could be several cards, like "Pikachu Promo" (Pikachu has dozens), it asks: "Which one is this?" A wrong card on your screen, with the wrong market price beside your asking price, is worse than asking.
- Find the card. For anything that didn't match, search right there and pick the card from the pictures. If the title says Promo, the search starts out limited to promo sets.
- Sealed product, supplies, and mystery packs stay off the screen automatically. You can hide anything else too.
- It keeps up. When something sells in Shopify, it drops off the screen. When you restock, it comes back. Change a price in Shopify and your asking price follows. Right now the store is checked every 15 minutes, or whenever you press Sync now.
- Your other cards are untouched. Cards you added by hand stay as they are, and disconnecting removes only what came from Shopify.
What I learned from real data
I built this against a test store first, and then against the real thing. The real thing taught me a few lessons. One Piece cards are best found by their printed code, Magic cards by their set code and number, and Pokémon by name and number. The matcher now handles each game its own way. That work also made the regular CSV import a little smarter about telling apart cards with the same name and number from different sets.
Still to come
- Instant updates. Shopify can tell TCG Marquee the moment something sells, so the screen changes in seconds instead of minutes.
- Choosing which stock counts, for vendors with a shop, a storage room, and a show table in different Shopify locations.
- A pilot at a real show, with a real vendor's store, to shake out the titles I haven't seen yet.
- Shopify's app review, so any vendor can connect, not just test stores.
Shopify sync will be part of the Pro plan, alongside show mode. If you sell cards through Shopify and would like to try it at a show, I'd love to hear from you through the contact page.