Top Shop is our way of recognizing brands that raise the bar for quality and service. Brands that meet all the Top Shop criteria in a quarter earn a badge for the following quarter, helping them stand out to retailers in the marketplace.
When retailers are deciding among brands, seeing the Top Shop badge can make them feel more confident placing an order—especially with a brand they haven’t purchased from before. If you become a Top Shop, you can also use our customizable social media templates to publicly share your Top Shop status and celebrate your team.
We launched the first version of Top Shop in 2021, and many brands have seen very positive results from the program. Each year, we re-evaluate the program to ensure it continues to recognize brands who are offering quality products and reliable customer service, and that the criteria continue to reflect the actions that are proven to help brands grow and succeed on Faire.
Read on for more detail about the current program —and how you can qualify.
What are the Top Shop criteria?
We considered the experiences, perspectives, and preferences of our customers to land on the current Top Shop criteria. To qualify as a Top Shop, you’ll need to hit these 6 criteria by the last day of the quarter:
- Merchandising score: Earn a minimum of 60 points by completing tasks to improve your shop, such as adding new products, adding full descriptions and quality imagery to your product listings, or running a promotion.
- Orders: Fulfill 5+ orders during the quarter.
- Rating: Maintain a 12-month average rating of 4.8 stars or higher
- Late shipments: Keep the percentage of orders shipped after the expected ship date during the quarter at or below 10%. Preorders and custom products are excluded from this metric.
- Canceled orders: Keep the percentage of orders you’ve canceled for avoidable reasons during the quarter at or below 3%. Preorders are excluded from this metric.
- Missing items: Keep the percentage of orders missing items during the quarter at or below 3%.
We’ll look at your performance every three months to see if you qualify. We’ll review your criteria on the last day of each quarter, and you’ll need to meet all 6 criteria on that day in order to qualify for Top Shop. There are four times you can qualify throughout the year, on the last day of each quarter: March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31. Your progress toward the criteria may fluctuate throughout the quarter as you get orders or add products, so it’ll be important to keep track of your current status and make any improvements you need by the last day of the quarter.
If you qualify, we’ll send an email on the first day of the new quarter to let you know you earned your Top Shop badge. You can also check your Top Shop status on the homepage or the Top Shop page of your brand portal.
When you qualify for Top Shop, you’ll keep that status for 3 months until we check your criteria again on the last day of the quarter. If you don’t meet all the criteria in any given quarter, don’t worry! You’ll still be eligible to qualify again the following quarter.
What steps can I take to meet the criteria?
On the Top Shop page, you’ll find tips that highlight how to meet the Top Shop criteria. Here are a few ways you can start making progress today:
- Orders: To ensure you get 5+ orders next quarter, you can start sharing your Faire Direct link to bring customers to your Faire shop, or encourage reorders from your existing customers by sending a targeted campaign with a special promotion.
- Merchandising score: You can meet this 60-point requirement by doing tasks that help make your shop attractive to retailers. You can choose from a series of tasks, such as adding new products, uploading at least three videos or images to your product listings, or running a shop-wide promotion. Learn more about the merchandising score on your Top Shop page.
- Ratings: To improve your ratings, keep your quality and service levels high and make sure that customers leave reviews. Leverage tools within the Faire app to offer faster customer service or message customers after they receive an order to ask for a review.
- Late shipments: Most orders are considered late if they are shipped one or more business days (not including weekends or regional holidays) after the expected ship date. Lean on the Customer Service page in your brand portal to track your shipping performance and review order issues. If you’re having trouble reducing late shipments, you may want to adjust your shop lead times to be more accurate. Reminder, preorders and custom products are not counted in this metric.
- Canceled orders: Avoid cancellations by keeping your inventory up to date and reviewing your product offerings every few months to ensure they’re current. Reminder, preorders are not counted in this metric.
- Missing items: Printing pick lists (and checking every order before shipping) can help your team avoid missing items in your shipments. Note that your missing items percentage for Top Shop does not include anything related to damaged items—those are two separate metrics.
As always, striving to meet each criterion can help grow your business on Faire, even if you don’t earn the Top Shop badge. Taking actions to merchandise your shop, earn high ratings, and fulfill orders smoothly can help attract customers and make them more likely to reorder over time.
Stay tuned for the updated criteria live in your portal on January 2, and if you have any questions about these updates in the meantime, feel free to reach out!
