Selling physical products

Physical products are tangible items you ship to the customer — merch, prints, packaged goods. Add size/colour variants with their own price and stock, collect a shipping address at checkout, charge shipping set once for your whole store, and mark orders shipped with a tracking number.

Selling physical products

A physical product on Zillo is a tangible item you post or courier to the customer — apparel, prints, packaged food, hardware, anything that needs an address. You can sell a single item or offer variants (size, colour), track stock per variant, and charge shipping. Zillo collects the buyer's shipping address at checkout, and you mark each order shipped — with a tracking number — when it goes out the door.

Create a product

    1. Open Products and click New product → Physical product (or just describe it to the AI builder — "sell a $45 hoodie in S/M/L" — and finish the details afterwards).
    2. Add the basics — title, URL slug, description, and a cover image. You can add up to eight additional photos for the storefront gallery.
    3. Add variants (optional) — see below.
    4. Set the shipping type — Physical product (collects a shipping address at checkout) or Not a physical product (no address, no shipping charge).
    5. Set inventory behaviour — decide whether out-of-stock variants can still be ordered (backorder).
    6. Publish when you're ready to sell.

Variants and inventory

If your product comes in options — sizes, colours, finishes — add them as variants:

  • A product with no options sells as a single variant at one price.
  • Add option axes like Size (S, M, L) or Colour (Black, Red). Zillo generates one sellable variant per combination.
  • Each variant has its own price, stock count, and SKU, so you can price the XXL higher or run low on Red without affecting the rest.
  • Leave a variant's stock blank for unlimited / made-to-order, or enter a count to track inventory.

How stock is protected:

  • Stock is reduced when a customer checks out, not when they add to cart, so an abandoned cart never ties up inventory.
  • The storefront prevents overselling automatically — if two customers race for the last unit, only one succeeds.
  • A variant that hits zero stock can't be bought, unless you turn on backorder (below).

Continue selling when out of stock (the backorder option) lets customers keep ordering a variant past its stock count — useful for made-to-order goods or a restock you know is coming. It's off by default, so out-of-stock variants stop selling unless you opt in.

Editing a product later keeps each variant's sales count intact — change a price or restock without losing your numbers. Removing a variant deletes it.

Shipping

Shipping rates are set once for your whole store, not per product, in Settings → Shipping. You can offer:

  • Free shipping,
  • a single flat rate, or
  • several named options (e.g. Standard $5 / Express $15) the customer chooses between at checkout.

Each product is then simply marked Physical (collects a shipping address and one shipping charge at checkout) or Not a physical product (no address, no charge). Shipping itself isn't taxed.

Set your shipping rates in Settings → Shipping before you publish your first physical product — otherwise customers won't have a shipping option to pick at checkout.

Tax, terms, and extra details

While editing a product you can also:

  • Assign a tax class so the right tax is applied at checkout (set up your classes in Settings → Tax).
  • Add terms & conditions and FAQ entries shown on the product page.
  • Turn on customer reviews — see Collect product reviews.
  • Add custom fields to collect extra information from the buyer at checkout (a monogram, a gift message, a colour preference).

Fulfilling an order

When a physical order is paid, the customer automatically gets an order-confirmation email. Once you've packed it:

    1. Open the order from Orders.
    2. In the Shipping panel, enter the carrier and tracking number (both optional) and click Mark as shipped.
    3. The customer is emailed that their order is on its way, including the tracking number if you provided one.

This is what moves the order to Fulfilled. You can see at a glance which orders are still waiting to ship from the Orders list.

Refunds

Refunding a physical line returns its reserved stock to the variant so it's available to sell again, and refunds the customer (including the platform fee). See Refunding an order for the full process.

Next steps

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