Multi‑Brand Ecommerce Strategy: Scale with AI and Shopify Collective

Multi-brand ecommerce can expand your store’s offerings and growth potential. But what are some ways you can grow a store without the benefits of DTC exclusives?

Operating as a one-brand, direct-to-consumer (DTC) retailer is a great way to build an ecommerce business. 

However, if you’re looking to significantly grow your sales and build an empire, you may want to shift your model to sell products from more than one brand.

While expanding to acquire or partner with new brands may feel like a leap of faith, it doesn’t have to be. Here’s everything you need to know about multi-brand ecommerce and how it can accelerate your growth.

What is a multi-brand strategy?

A multi-brand strategy means one ecommerce store sells inventory from different brands. A single company sells products through multiple digital channels in the same market segment, each under a distinct name and brand identity.

On a bigger scale, a multi-brand ecommerce strategy can also describe companies that acquire multiple, similar businesses. Think Old Navy and Gap, L’Oréal and Maybelline, or Expedia and Orbitz. These companies may appear to be competitors—some once were—but each pair now operates under one corporate umbrella.

Multi-brand ecommerce can also describe bigger ecommerce platforms that sell a wide range of brands. Take Gilt, for example. If you sign up for Gilt, you’ll see flash sales spanning an entire alphabet of brands. In contrast, if you sign up for Gucci’s newsletter, you’ll only hear about Gucci products.

Typically, a multi-brand store falls into one of two categories:

1. Branded house: Think of Air Jordan. This brand operates under the broader Nike umbrella. Customers know Air Jordan and Nike are distinct, but also know Nike is the source for new Air Jordans.
2. A house of brands: Think Gilt, Amazon, Farfetch, or Net-a-Porter. A house of brands is an ecommerce retailer or third-party seller offering many brands in one shopping destination.

Whatever your approach, multi-brand ecommerce means moving beyond the DTC model, acquiring, partnering with or creating new brands, and operating more like a digital department store.

Why multi‑brand matters in 2025

Market size and growth outlook

Global ecommerce revenue is forecast to exceed $7.3 trillion by 2027, accounting for roughly 21.8% of all retail sales, according to EMARKETER. 

Within that total, the US DTC segment will reach $113.72 billion, but growth has begun to plateau. This slowdown creates room for multi-brand operators and marketplaces to expand—underscored by Amazon’s ongoing dominance, with roughly 40% of US ecommerce sales in 2025.

For enterprise retailers, expanding into (or consolidating) a multi-brand portfolio offers three high-value advantages:

1. Portfolio diversification: Multiple brands reduce single‑SKU dependency and widen lifetime value across consumer segments.
2. Cross‑sell lift: Aggregating complementary catalogs boosts attach rates for cross-selling products and reduces pressure on your margins from single‑brand discounting. 
3. Economies of scale: Unified tech stacks—including systems like product information management (PIM), order management systems (OMSs), and headless front ends—lower per‑brand infrastructure costs and accelerate geographic rollouts. 

Consumer shopping shifts

Shopper behavior is shifting toward social discovery and blended channel journeys. Shoppers no longer shop exclusively for one brand on an ecommerce site—they explore across brands.

• US social commerce revenue is forecast to hit $118 billion in 2027, as social networks drive more than 7.8% of all online sales.
• Deloitte’s 2025 retail outlook reports omnichannel shoppers spend 50% more per month than single‑channel buyers. 

Owning multiple brands and presenting them cohesively across your site, socials, and marketplaces lets you meet shoppers where they already are. Retailers don’t need a custom tech stack to execute a multi-brand play. 

Shopify offers the building blocks out of the box:

• Shopify Collective: Import products from other vetted Shopify suppliers (or wholesale your own) with inventory and fulfillment auto‑synced.
• Managed Markets: Localize price lists, catalogs, and storefront content per brand, region, or buyer segment, all from one admin.

Commerce Components and unified PIM: Decouple storefronts while sharing a single product-information layer, allowing teams to create new branded sites in weeks.

What does multi-brand ecommerce look like?

Multi-brand ecommerce, done well, is almost invisible to the consumer. But it’s not so invisible that it obscures the benefits of multi-brand shopping.

“The reason potential customers visit a multi-brand ecommerce site is because they found some solution to a problem,” says David M. Burrows, founder of Hivessence.

“Do the brands you’re offering complement each other in helping to solve those issues?” he says. “If so, you increase your chances of not only selling one, but perhaps several items at once.”

Multi-brand stores are growing in popularity because they offer customers the following solutions.

One-stop shopping

Paceline, a fitness rewards app, shows how a one-stop shop can scale fast. 

By adopting Shopify Collective, the fitness app added 150 wellness brands (roughly 3,000 SKUs) without stocking any inventory. 

Customers now redeem workout credits on everything from yoga mats to protein shakes in one cart, driving a 262% jump in sales and capturing 185% more new shoppers year over year.

👉 Read Paceline’s story. 

Wider inventory

Big-time e-tailer Mytheresa delivers a luxury brand and product-curation experience across brands, making it easy for customers to shop a complete look from multiple brands—right from a single product page. 

For example, consumers interested in a Lemair top will also see matching shoes and skirts, but they’ll also find complementary items from brands that aren’t Lemair. This strategy enhances the customer experience and often boosts average order value (AOV).

Discounts

Some multi-brand ecommerce outlets, like The Outnet, work out deals with multiple brands to sell out-of-season products at discounted rates.

This approach benefits the consumer, the ecommerce company, and the brand. The consumer gets discounted prices, the ecommerce business takes a cut, and the brand moves excess inventory.

Advantages of offering multi‑brand ecommerce

The benefits of selling multiple brands on your ecommerce store go beyond adding more inventory and pleasing more customers. Here are additional ways a multi-brand approach can benefit your business.

Adding new products for increased cross-selling opportunities

The more diverse your product offerings, the more opportunities there are for cross-selling. McKinsey reports that category-penetration programs can lift sales by 20% and profits by 30%—but cross-sells only work when your assortment is broad enough for relevant suggestions.

More effective advertising

Being selective about your brands puts you in a better position to get specific with segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP). This strategy helps you target the right customers with the right ads for the right brands.

When you partner with more brands, your marketing team has room to segment your different customer profiles and position products appropriately.

“As part of building a new multi-brand ecommerce platform, you need to choose the brands you want to partner with,” says Lori Taylor, founder of The Produce Moms.

“If you are developing an ecommerce site for forms, you may target Samsung and Apple. You will have segmentation, targeting, and positioning … to get it all right.”

Brand diversification

The way consumers think about brands is always evolving. According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer: Brands & Politics report, 84% of global consumers say they must share values with a brand before buying, and nearly 6 in 10 Gen Z shoppers feel a social connection with people who use the same brands.

Limiting your store to just one brand puts all your consumer trust eggs in one basket. If a customer—or a group of influencers—loses trust in your brand, they’ll quickly turn to competitors.

However, a multi-brand strategy casts a wider net, capturing the loyalty of customers and influencers across multiple brand affinities.

Multi-brand strategies and tactics

Launching a multi-brand ecommerce shop requires knowing how and where to connect with new customers.

There are three main strategies to prioritize: the social strategy, multichannel selling, and optimizing your platform.

Social strategy

A good social media strategy works no matter what type of shop you’re promoting. But when you’re incorporating multiple brands and testing which resonate with your audience, your best approach is to create a two-way conversation.

For starters, you need feedback to help you position your offerings. What brands will you offer? What brands are you missing? Social media is an ideal platform for soliciting this feedback because social users are eager to share their opinions on your store’s direction.

More importantly, social media users already overlap with a multi-brand audience. People who sign up for Gilt, for example, often follow multiple brands across social media channels to seek exclusive discounts across them.

Multichannel selling

Multiple brands broaden your inventory, so they fit naturally into marketing through multiple channels. As mentioned above, omnichannel shoppers spend more than those who shop on one channel.

Shopify simplifies multichannel selling by supporting B2B commerce, integrating seamlessly with Instagram and TikTok, and connecting with Faire’s wholesale marketplace.

Even better, you can use the Marketplace Connect app to push any brand’s catalog to Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy, with orders routed to Shopify for centralized inventory and analytics. 

To link it all together, try cross-selling.

According to Shaunak Amin, cofounder and CEO of SnackMagic, good cross-selling with a multichannel approach can make you hard to beat:

“You acquire customers at different entry points when you have multi-brand ecommerce. For this reason, each vertical must relate to your other offerings for you to be able to cross-sell to customers.” 

“There are only so many times a customer will order from one vertical. But by playing to your strengths and creating a horizontal integration of your offerings to include related products and services, you can make it difficult for other companies to compete against you because people use your brands for many things. A ‘same customer, different sells’ strategy keeps customer acquisition budgets low as their lifetime value grows.”

User-friendly platform

Good news: It’s not difficult to sell multiple brands in the same shop. A Shopify account and a few applications will help you get started. The trick is to build a strong user experience that rivals what customers expect when browsing brick-and-mortar retail.

“Take full advantage of your chosen ecommerce platform’s features,” says Stacey Kane, business development lead at EasyMerchant. She recommends enabling “Shop by Brand” on your ecommerce site, which makes it “easier for your customers to find the brands and products they prefer.”

Stacey explains it doesn’t have to end there. By adding product information like categories and price range, you create a standard ecommerce experience, similar to what a customer might expect on a single-brand DTC website.

“Customers also want reviews,” Stacey says—a note that’s especially useful when promoting multiple brands. For shoppers more accustomed to single-brand shopping, anything you can do to enhance their buying journey will have an impact.

If you can curate unique brands with competitive prices, you might get customers wondering why they shouldn’t shop your site first instead of a brand’s official store.

AI‑driven merchandising and personalization

AI in ecommerce shows no signs of slowing down, and for good reason. McKinsey’s research found that personalization drives measurable results for brands:

• A North American retailer’s pilot of AI‑targeted promotions delivered a 3% margin lift in three months.
• Across dozens of retailers, McKinsey reports 1%–2% incremental sales and 1%–3% margin improvement from always-on targeted-offer programs.

Deloitte’s 2025 US Retail Outlook also reports that 7 in 10 retail leaders plan to deploy AI‑led personalization within the next 12 months to close profit gaps created by rising acquisition costs.

To create these personalized experiences, you need customer data. That’s where Shopify comes in. Shopify’s unified commerce stack streams first‑party data from your online store, POS, B2B, and social channels into a single profile. You can use this data to create customer segments, relevant ads, tailored email campaigns, and personalized discounts. 

If you want to create a multi-touch program, you can add the Nosto Shopify app to your store. It integrates with Klaviyo, Shopify Flow, and LoyaltyLion to create cross-brand bundles, dynamic prompts, and offer AI-powered product recommendations and site search. According to reviews, the Vintage Frames Company saw their conversion rate jump nearly 50% in three days after optimizing with Nosto.

Fulfillment models 

When shoppers’ carts can mix sneakers, supplements, and sofa cushions from different labels, the post-click experience has to be as easy as the add-to-cart moment. Clear delivery dates and methods must match the convenience that draws shoppers to multi-brand stores.

For example, before you place an order on Farfetch, you can see when each item will arrive. As the order is fulfilled, you receive updates from both Farfetch and the carrier with tracking information and more accurate delivery. 

Brands can only achieve trustworthy delivery with the right fulfillment process. With Shopify Fulfillment Network, you get access to a multi-warehouse network across North America with two-day ground coverage. You can auto-route orders and sync your inventory across every sales channel to ensure accurate, speedy deliveries and keep customers happy. 

If you want to offer Amazon Prime-like service without owning the infrastructure, Shopify Fulfillment Network makes it possible. 

Examples of multi-brand ecommerce websites

Here are classic examples of websites that appear to have mastered the multi-brand formula.

Larroudé

Three years after launch, footwear label Larroudé used Shopify Collective to open Colléct, a curated marketplace within their existing website. Without holding any additional inventory, the team onboarded 17 partner brands and six new categories—apparel, jewelry, home decor, and more—in less than a month. 

All product data was automatically synced, giving Larroudé consistent merchandising and more accurate inventory management. The retailer quickly saw measurable results. Revenue rose 21% in the first month, AOV climbed 5%, and 82% of Collective sales were from first-time customers. 

👉 Read Larroude’s story. 

Mr. Porter

What Mr. Porter excels at—beyond offering a department store vibe—is treating multi-brand retail as a service.

Mr. Porter pledges to help men lead stylish, happy, and fulfilling lives. In that way, they’re part GQ, part department store. On their website, this means de-emphasizing individual brands in favor of the overall aesthetic.

The ecommerce functions with collection-style curation, tossing in multiple brands with a single click. In this case, you’ll struggle to shop by brand, because Mr. Porter deliberately avoids emphasizing brand names.

Instead, Mr. Porter’s ecommerce navigation resembles a clothing manufacturer’s single-brand DTC navigation. Collections like “For the Summer” are typically associated with clean and bright looks. There’s plenty of cross-selling between brands, but Mr. Porter guides customers to browse by vibe instead.

Escalade Sports

Sporting goods retailer Escalade Sports demonstrates multi-brand ecommerce done well. Using Shopify, the ecommerce site brings all their brands under one technical architecture, gaining centralized control and greater efficiency. 

Using a single platform, the retailer provides a consistent customer experience across all brand sites. A unified, improved experience tripled completed checkouts and boosted sales 139% year over year. 

👉 Read Escalade Sports’ story. 

Building a multi-brand ecommerce growth machine

If you want an ecommerce presence that goes beyond a single inventory style, selling multiple brands helps you reach a broader audience.

To succeed, you need a clear plan for establishing multiple brands on one site. Our headless ecommerce guide shows how to build a streamlined storefront linking multiple brands under one digital roof.

Multi-brand ecommerce FAQ

What is multi-brand ecommerce?

Multi-brand ecommerce means selling different brands on the same ecommerce platform, often within the same shop. It can also describe companies that own multiple brands while running each with a DTC-style approach. This differs from single-brand ecommerce, where store owners sell products under a single brand, through one online—and possibly offline—store.

What sorts of shops offer multiple brands?

There’s no specific qualifier for offering multiple brands in your store—only that you have an agreement in place with the brands you sell. Typically, a multi-brand ecommerce strategy is the opposite of DTC. Online shops positioning themselves as digital department stores often choose a multi-brand model.

What are the advantages of multi-brand ecommerce?

Multi-brand ecommerce gives consumers perks like discounts on past-season items or exclusive deals. For the seller, multi-brand ecommerce can simplify scaling by pushing inventory management to brand partners and expanding product variety.

Why should I expand to multiple brands?

A multi-brand approach works if you want to build a growth engine like a department store or e-tailer. In contrast, a DTC approach can strengthen brand identity but limits inventory and audience size.

What is an effective multi-brand strategy?

There are a few approaches to consider. Larger brands may create brands as subcategories in a strategy known as a “branded house.” An example is Nike’s Air Jordan brand. A “house of brands,” on the other hand, might be a headless commerce site sourcing multiple brands in its inventory, similar to an online department store. In most cases, building an ecommerce shop from the ground up follows the latter approach.