- Launch a wholesale channel “in less than 20 minutes” to tap the lucrative $7.6 trillion global B2B ecommerce market
- Offer a branded experience by adding a custom domain, automated account signup, and wholesale-specific pages for FAQs, terms, and more
- Expand your business with a turnkey self-service wholesale storefront so high-volume buyers can order whenever and wherever they want
“Being able to automate the wholesale process changes how we build our team,” says Luan Pham, Chief Marketing Officer at Laird Superfood. “It prevents us from missing 2 A.M. orders and keeps our customers from having to wait to place an order until we’re in the office. It just solves so many problems.”
The wholesale ecommerce channel is your gateway into an online B2B market that is over three times larger than consumer ecommerce sales worldwide.
With the wholesale channel, you can focus on acquiring and serving high-quality customers that place larger average orders and make regular repeat purchases by:
- Launching a password-protected storefront in minutes
- Syncing your existing inventory, orders, and customers
- Running B2C and B2B businesses from a single admin
- Integrating your 3PL, OMS, ERP, or CRM for wholesale
- Branding it automatically without developing a new theme
Allow customers to quickly submit purchase orders, provide payment, view order history, and reorder with no intervention needed.
Over the past year, we’ve worked to create a simple and easy-to-use sales channel for Shopify Plus merchants to sell to high-volume customers.Five new features are now live that make the wholesale ecommerce buying experience more automated and representative of your brand.
- Add a Custom Domain to Your Wholesale Store
- Automate Onboarding with Account Signup Controls
- Create Custom Wholesale Pages for B2B Communication
- Translate Your Wholesale’s Language Front and Backend
- Make Discounts Easier with Volume Pricing by Product
1. Add a Custom Domain to Your Wholesale Store
Branding inconsistencies can be jarring for the customer and negatively impact conversion rates. It’s why offering a consistent brand experience across channels is a key ingredient in making your wholesale store a growth driver.
Shopify Plus merchants have been using the wholesale channel to scale faster and execute a multi-channel global growth strategy. They can now add a custom domain to their wholesale storefronts. With a customized domain, merchants can offer a branded experience across channels while simultaneously making it easier for high-volume customers to find their wholesale stores.
In addition to offering a more professional wholesale experience, a custom wholesale domain allows merchants the flexibility to clearly differentiate or gate their wholesale business from their traditional B2C online store.
Merchants have the freedom to change the domain of their wholesale store to point to a subdomain of an existing URL, whether it’s already associated with your online store or not:
Your online store’s primary domain.
Most merchants choose this method. For example, if your primary domain is www.mystore.com, then you could create subdomains, such as wholesale or warehouse. Your wholesale store’s URL could be wholesale.mystore.com or warehouse.mystore.com.
Or, a different domain from your online store.
For example, if you purchased another domain, such as www.myorganization.com, then you could create subdomains, such as wholesale or warehouse.
Your wholesale store’s URL could be warehouse.myorganization.com or warehouse.mycompanywarehouse.com.
2. Automate Onboarding with Account Signup Controls
The wholesale ecommerce platform you choose must not only allow you to sell to high-volume customers anytime or anywhere but also free you from the manual tasks that can stunt growth or prevent you from focusing on higher value tasks.
The right wholesale platform is one that not only allows you to target and acquire high-volume customers but also save you time. You can achieve both objectives with a wholesale solution that offers you the option of automating the customer onboarding experience.
With the Shopify Plus wholesale channel, you can allow prospective customers to apply for accounts to your wholesale store and choose to automatically approve anyone who signs up or to review each application before approving them.
The flexibility offers unparalleled choice and the control you desire.
With the new account signup controls, you can also create custom fields to capture key information from customers such as tax or business identification numbers:
Not only does automating the onboarding process offer new wholesale customers immediate access to your product catalog, it also positions brands to automatically apply the appropriate price list, minimum purchase amount, and immediately enable online checkout for new accounts.
From signup to purchase, the wholesale channel buying experience is now completely self-service which …
- Shortens the customer acquisition process
- Increases conversion and immediate ROI
- Reduces interactions with unqualified applicants
- And, saves you time to reinvest into growing
3. Create Custom Wholesale Pages for B2B Communication
Lastly, based on feedback from our merchants, we have added the ability to create custom pages on the Wholesale storefront along with a new, easy to use menu builder.
Custom pages within Wholesale save you time and improve customer communications so you can focus on growing your B2B business.
Non-product pages are perfect for sharing self-service information like FAQs, payment terms, announcements, and more.
Get Your Wholesale Ecommerce Channel Started
“Setting up our wholesale store was easy,” says Michael Hoefer, CEO of The James Brand, “we were ready to go in less than 20 minutes.”
For merchants that want to add wholesale to their multi-channel global growth strategy, it doesn’t mean adding complexity. In fact, you can start selling wholesale in minutes with your existing product data and integrations.
Furthermore, you can also manage both your B2C and B2B businesses from one admin and rest assured knowing that your …
- Wholesale products, orders, inventory, and customer data will automatically sync to your store’s existing admin
- Logo, colors, email notifications, and navigation will match your brand and guide discoverability of products with no coding required
- Minimum and maximum quantities and quantity increments per product can be set, and minimum order purchase amounts can be customized storewide or per customer
- Price lists can be generated manually or uploaded as a CSV in bulk as well as customized to individuals or groups with fixed price, percentage, or volume-based discounts
While the entire process from signup to checkout may be automated, you can also offer higher-touch wholesale customers flexibility with regard to purchase options. Specifically, Plus merchants have the option to:
- Let customers instantly pay for their order through an online checkout
- Set flat shipping rates, offer free shipping, or use the rates from your store
- Manually receive orders (through phone, email, or in person) and create an order and apply wholesale pricing for a personal touch
- Allow customers to submit purchase orders for review so you can add negotiated discounts, adjust shipping prices, or upsell products before sending an invoice to be paid by credit card or manual terms
4. Translate Your Wholesale Front and Backend
Given the rise of international ecommerce — and especially because B2B ecommerce dwarfs B2C at the global level — you can now translate your wholesale storefront and admin to one of seven languages with the click of a button:
Provide a consistent customer experience across your B2C and B2B stores by having them in the same language. Wholesale front and backends are now available in French, English, German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese.
5. Make Discounts Easier with Volume Pricing By Product
Customize your wholesale pricing and help your customers get the products they want with more flexible options to reach minimum order quantities.
Introducing a new price strategy allows you to mix and match variant quantities at the product level. Now, minimum order quantity, maximum order quantity, and volume breaks are calculated based on the aggregated quantities of all variants of the product. Or, you can continue to offer pricing at the variant level.
The wholesale channel allows brands to refocus time into growing their wholesale business by automating the order entry process. When executed correctly, B2B can quickly become the fastest growing sales channel for businesses because of the high average order value and repeat customers that wholesale often yields.
