How to Sync Inventory Between Shopify and Faire (Retail + Wholesale, One Count)

By the Bins-USA team · Inventory & fulfillment guides for multichannel sellers

Selling retail on Shopify and wholesale on Faire is a great combo — until the same product sells on both and your stock numbers fall apart. Here's why Shopify and Faire don't sync on their own, and how to keep one accurate inventory across both.

Does Faire sync with Shopify automatically? (No.)

This trips up almost every brand that starts wholesaling: Faire and Shopify keep completely separate inventory counts. A wholesale buyer ordering 12 units on Faire doesn't reduce what Shopify shows to retail shoppers — and vice versa. Both are pulling from the same physical shelf, but neither platform tells the other. The result is predictable: you oversell, then cancel, then apologize.

What "synced" inventory actually means

Real sync isn't a once-a-day spreadsheet export. To work, it has to be:

• One source of truth — a single stock number both Shopify and Faire read from.
• Real-time and two-way — a sale on either side instantly lowers availability on the other.
• Aware of how each channel behaves — wholesale quantities, lead times, and Faire's order quirks (more on that below).

Why manual methods fail

1. Spreadsheets: accurate the moment you save them, wrong an hour later. They can't keep up with live orders.
2. CSV exports/imports: batch updates leave a gap where both channels still show stock you've already sold.
3. "I'll just remember to update it": the busiest days — when you sell the most — are exactly when manual updates slip.

The reliable way: connect both to one warehouse system

A warehouse management system (WMS) sits between your shelf and your channels. It holds the real count, and the moment an order lands on Shopify or Faire, it deducts the stock and updates both. No spreadsheets, no lag, no double-selling.

How to set it up (the short version)

1. Connect Shopify and Faire to one WMS so both read the same inventory.
2. Do one clean count to set your true starting numbers.
3. Let the WMS deduct at pick time so committed units can't be sold again elsewhere.
4. Turn on low-stock alerts so popular items get reordered before they hit zero.

The Faire detail nobody warns you about: order splits

Here's a real one. When you split a Faire order (to ship the in-stock items now and the rest later), Faire doesn't edit the original order — it creates a brand-new order for the split-off units. If your system isn't watching for this, it counts those units twice and your inventory goes wrong again.

A WMS built with Faire in mind reconciles the split automatically, so each unit is counted exactly once. (This is the kind of edge case that quietly wrecks inventory accuracy — and exactly why a Faire-aware system matters.)

Frequently asked questions

Does Faire automatically sync inventory with Shopify?

No. They keep separate counts. You need a system that holds one shared count and updates both in real time.

Why do my Shopify and Faire stock levels keep drifting apart?

Because each platform tracks its own number while both draw from the same shelf — neither tells the other when something sells.

How do Faire order splits affect my inventory?

Splitting a Faire order creates a new order instead of editing the original, so unaware systems double-count the split units. A Faire-aware WMS reconciles it so each unit counts once.

📚 Related: How to Stop Overselling on Shopify →