Shopify B2B eCommerce

Shopify is a great eCommerce platform—if you’re selling straightforward products at straightforward prices, then it works beautifully out of the box. But it does get a little bit more complex if you want to use Shopify to sell wholesale/B2B. It can be done, but it needs a bit of thought (and probably an app or two…)

OVERVIEW

The first thing to do is to think about what B2B means for you and your customers. Are you selling at a discount to pre-approved customers? Will some of those have more discounts than others? Do you want to offer more discounts the more customers buy? Will customers be paying on account, and so on. Having a clear idea of how you want the site to work will help determine the best routes early on.

The first solution to consider is that, although primarily geared towards B2C sites, Shopify does have a wholesale channel … if you’re on Shopify Plus. The monthly fee for Plus won’t suit everyone, but within that the Wholesale channel gives you a separate, password- protected store that runs from the same admin as your B2C site.

The Wholesale channel offers the pricing options you’d expect, so volume-based pricing and different pricing for different customer groups is available. Wholesale customers can also directly create purchase orders. If this option could work for you, Shopify has more information available.

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