Glossary

Shopify multi-vendor terms, defined plain.

Every term that comes up in the Shopify multi-vendor distribution world — routing, MAP, MSRP, UPC matching, cashback, schemas — defined without the buzzword salad.

Cheapest-in-stock routing
Order-routing strategy that picks the vendor with stock at the lowest wholesale price for every line item, automatically.
MAP (Minimum Advertised Price)
Distributor-set floor below which retailers can't advertise a product. Violation = losing the distributor account.
MSRP
Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. Distributors typically provide MSRP alongside wholesale; retailers price between MAP and MSRP.
UPC matching
Auto-mapping the same physical product across vendors using the Universal Product Code. The basis for cross-vendor cheapest-routing.
Variant grouping
Detecting that "Velvet Touch Vibe (Pink)", "Velvet Touch Vibe (Blue)" should be ONE Shopify product with a Color variant — not 3 separate products.
Time-bound routing override
Force-routing all orders for a brand or product type to a specific vendor for a date window. Used for distributor cashback and trip-incentive programs.
Distributor cashback
Distributor-paid rebate (typically 2-5%) above a $ threshold within a date window. Common in adult/novelty, automotive, smoke-shop verticals.
Tag rule
Automation that emits Shopify product tags like brand:doc-johnson, color:pink, type:dildo on every product push. Drives smart collections and search filters.
Dead-letter queue (DLQ)
Persistent queue of failed jobs that exhausted their retries. Operator can replay or abandon; failures don't silently disappear.
Circuit breaker
Reliability pattern that opens (fails fast) after consecutive failures from an upstream service. Prevents hammering an unhealthy vendor.
Per-tenant SES
Each tenant verifies their own AWS Simple Email Service domain identity. Order emails to customers come from THEIR domain, not the platform's.
Diff-only inventory sync
Inventory sync strategy that only pushes when actual stock changes. Saves API calls + prevents drift vs blanket re-sync.
Idempotent inventory write
Inventory updates that set absolute values (not adjustments). Safe to re-run with same input. Shopify's inventorySetQuantities is idempotent.
Token exchange (Shopify)
Custom Distribution app authentication using App Bridge session tokens. Replaces the legacy OAuth redirect flow for embedded apps.
Multi-tenant
One platform instance serving many isolated organizations. Each tenant's data is scoped to their org_id; admins manage all tenants.
Programmatic SEO
Generating many landing pages from data templates to capture long-tail keywords (e.g. "best X for Y" matrices, vs-pages, vertical pages).
OG image
Open Graph image meta tag. Renders in Facebook, LinkedIn, iMessage, Slack previews. 1200×630 PNG ideal.
Schema.org JSON-LD
Structured data markup (Organization, Product, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, HowTo, etc.) embedded in pages so search engines can build rich results.
Bcrypt password hashing
Adaptive password hashing function. Ordnance uses 12 rounds. Tunably slow to defend against brute-force attacks.
TOTP (2FA)
Time-based One-Time Password. Standard 6-digit code generated by Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, etc. RFC 6238.
Audit log
Append-only record of every action taken in the platform: logins, settings changes, role grants, order routing decisions, billing events.
UTM parameters
Query-string params (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign) appended to URLs to attribute marketing traffic. Read by Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Stripe attribution, etc.
GCLID / FBCLID
Click identifiers from Google Ads (gclid) and Meta Ads (fbclid). Append automatically to ad-clicked URLs. Used for offline conversion tracking.

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