Shopify B2B: Running Wholesale and Retail From One Store
Native B2B on Shopify removed most of the reasons to run a separate wholesale platform. Here is how to configure it properly.
For years, running wholesale on Shopify meant a separate password-protected store, a bolt-on app, or a spreadsheet-and-invoice process taped to the side of the business. Native B2B changed that, and most brands running a parallel wholesale platform are now maintaining complexity they no longer need.
What native B2B actually provides
The core building blocks are company accounts and price lists. A company represents the buying organisation, containing multiple locations with their own addresses, tax settings, payment terms, and assigned buyers with distinct permissions. Price lists attach to companies and can express percentage discounts off retail, fixed per-product pricing, volume breaks, and currency-specific pricing.
On top of that sit ordering rules — minimum order value, case quantities, and increment enforcement — plus payment terms such as net 30 with invoice, and buyer permissions distinguishing someone who can draft an order from someone who can approve and place it.
One store or two?
| Factor | Single store | Separate stores |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog overlap | Substantially shared assortment | Largely different assortments or pack configurations |
| Inventory | Shared pool, one source of truth | Separately allocated stock |
| Branding | Same brand, different audience | Distinct brands or private label |
| Operations | One admin, unified reporting | Independent teams and processes |
Default to one store. The unified catalog, inventory, and reporting outweigh the theming complexity in nearly all cases, and duplicated product data across two stores becomes an ongoing reconciliation cost.
Configuration decisions that matter
- Price list structure. Prefer a small number of tier-based lists — distributor, retailer, key account — over per-customer lists. Per-customer pricing is where wholesale operations become unmaintainable.
- Catalog visibility. Use publications to control which products appear for B2B versus retail buyers, including wholesale-only pack sizes.
- Tax handling. Configure tax exemption per company location with certificate storage, and validate the exemption logic against a real order before launch.
- Payment terms and risk. Net terms are a credit decision, not a commerce setting; define approval and credit limits before enabling them.
- Ordering rules. Enforce case quantities at the cart level so operations never receive an unfulfillable order.
Storefront experience for buyers
B2B buyers are doing a job, not browsing. The features that measurably increase order value and reduce support load are quick order by SKU with paste-in support, reorder from order history, saved lists for recurring assortments, visible account-specific pricing and available credit, downloadable invoices and order documents, and inventory availability with expected restock dates. Conditional theme logic can serve these to authenticated B2B buyers on the same templates retail customers use.
ERP and integration patterns
Wholesale makes back office integration mandatory rather than optional. Four flows need explicit design: customer and company sync so credit and terms originate in the system of record; product and pricing sync, with a decision about whether the ERP or Shopify owns price; inventory sync with an availability buffer to avoid overselling shared stock; and order and invoice flow with fulfilment status returning to Shopify.
Name a single owner per data domain. Bidirectional ownership of pricing is the most common source of wholesale integration incidents, because two systems each believe they are authoritative.
Migration approach
Run a pilot with five to ten cooperative accounts covering the range of pricing complexity you support. Import companies, locations, and buyers with their tiers; validate pricing, tax, and terms against historical orders; then onboard the remaining accounts in waves with direct enablement support. Keep the legacy wholesale process available for one full ordering cycle — wholesale buyers order on schedules, and a mid-cycle cutover creates avoidable revenue disruption.
Frequently asked questions
Can Shopify handle wholesale natively?
Yes. Company accounts, customer-specific price lists, quantity rules, payment terms, and buyer permissions are native on Plus, without a separate channel or third-party app.
Should B2B and B2C share a store?
Usually yes, for unified catalog, inventory, and reporting. Separate stores make sense when assortments barely overlap or the brands are genuinely distinct.
Are wholesale prices visible to retail shoppers?
No. Price lists apply only to authenticated buyers attached to a company; everyone else sees published retail pricing.
How long does implementation take?
Six to ten weeks for a straightforward configuration with theme adjustments, and three to five months when deep ERP integration and complex tax or credit rules are involved.