How to surface "In Stock with Supplier" on your Shopify product page

Most Shopify themes have exactly two stock states: "In stock" — show Add to cart — and "Sold out" — show a greyed-out button. For a dropship or multi-supplier merchant, you need a third state: "Not on hand, but supplier has it and it ships in X days." Here is how to add that state to your theme in about four minutes.

The two pieces of data you need

A number for "how many are at my warehouse right now" (on hand).

A number for "how many are at my supplier and will ship soon" (with supplier).

Both stored as product metafields on the stock namespace. Integer type, updated as supplier reports arrive.

Why metafields and not tags

Tags are categorical ("backordered", "in-stock") and do not give you a quantity. Metafields are structured: integer, date, reference. You want a quantity so your theme copy can be specific — "120 available, ships in 3-5 days" — instead of the vague "backordered."

Metafields also support Shopify Flow triggers and collection filters natively. Tags do neither cleanly for numeric thresholds.

Surfacing them in your theme

Shopify 2.0 themes — Dawn, Sense, anything built in the past two years — let you add blocks to sections through the theme editor. No code.

Stockpost ships two blocks, "In Stock" and "In Stock with Supplier," that read the metafields and render a pill. Drop them into the product template above or below the Add-to-cart button. Done.

Decide what to show when on-hand is zero

Shopify's default is "Sold out." For a dropship store you probably want "In Stock with Supplier" to show instead — with a specific shipping window.

The theme block hides itself when both stock numbers are zero, so you do not need a Liquid if/else in your theme to get the fallback right.

Keep the numbers fresh

None of this matters if the metafield values are three weeks stale. The stock source — your supplier's email report — has to flow into the metafield reliably.

That is the problem Stockpost solves on the other side of the block: every supplier email auto-matches to your products and updates the metafields same-day.

Stockpost does this end-to-end: supplier email in, live supplier stock on your Shopify products. 14-day free trial, $39/month per store.