Thinking of launching or upgrading a B2B wholesale store or marketplace in 2025? You’re in the right place. This blog will cover everything you need to know to launch a high-performance B2B store.
But here’s the catch: creating a regular online store just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Today’s B2B buyers expect the same seamless, intuitive shopping experience consumers enjoy, with custom pricing, bulk orders, and fast reordering baked in. Shopify’s B2B eCommerce features are built for exactly that.
It’s no secret that Shopify powers over 5.6 million B2C stores worldwide, but many don’t know how powerful it’s become for B2B. Demand for Shopify B2B is expanding, and thousands of business owners prefer partnering with a certified Shopify Plus agency to create a successful wholesale store.
Why?
Because Shopify Plus offers:
- Custom pricing rules for different buyers
- Bulk ordering, company accounts & reordering tools
- Lightning-fast, mobile-optimized B2B storefronts
And with the B2B eCommerce market projected to hit $47.54 trillion by 2030, now is the time to move.
But setting it all up can be overwhelming for those who are rather unaware of how wholesale and B2B commerce works, from choosing the right plan to customizing your checkout and integrating your backend systems.
So, what impact can you create with this eCommerce platform and the right Shopify B2B development company? There’s only one way to find out.
That’s why in this guide, our Shopify Plus experts at Folio3 will help you:
- Launch a high-converting Shopify B2B wholesale store
- Choose the right Shopify plan for your wholesale goals
- Use essential B2B features like company accounts & tiered pricing
- Avoid costly mistakes by aligning your tech with your sales ops
So, let’s dive in!
What is a Shopify B2B Wholesale Store?
If you’re mostly aware of B2C eCommerce and Shopify’s use cases around it but don’t know much about B2B wholesale and how Shopify excels in it, we’re here to help you out.
For starters, a business-to-business (B2B) wholesale store is built to sell products or services to other businesses at wholesale prices. These B2B customers may include distributors, retailers, and resellers who buy products to resell or repurpose in their own stores.
Instead of creating a wholesale store from scratch, business owners are now opting for Shopify. It offers custom pricing, bulk order capabilities, and self-service account management for B2B customers. Moreover, it provides volume discounts, tiered pricing, customized catalogs, and more.
With these features, Shopify creates personalized B2B wholesale experiences for each business account. This simplifies selling B2B while supporting complex distribution, logistics, and relationship management needs.
Why Choose Shopify Plus for B2B Wholesale?
While opting for Basic or Advanced Shopify plans might work for B2C use cases, for B2B wholesale eCommerce, we strongly recommend Shopify Plus. Here’s why:
1. Customization and Business Scalability
Shopify Plus provides complete control to customize each B2B buyer’s experience. It has unique features, such as special pricing tiers, product catalogs, discounts, payment terms, and checkout flows for different wholesale customer accounts and segments. These tailored profiles help nurture relationships and encourage larger, repeated purchases.
The platform also makes it easy to support thousands of B2B customers without heavy manual work. Automation and self-serve capabilities let businesses onboard new users, manage multiple locations, add products, and scale operations on their own. The system grows along with your customer base.
2. Integration with Other Systems
Shopify Plus integrates seamlessly with surrounding technologies like inventory software, shipping platforms, ERP systems, and more.
For example, real-time sync with inventory and order management tools avoids overselling, data mismatches, and order errors. Connection with 3PL shipping services enables smooth logistics operations and tracking. Integrations ensure your operational systems and customer-facing store work cohesively.
3. Easy Reordering and Bulk Orders
Through their customized business accounts, B2B buyers can easily reorder items in just a few clicks. The platform supports high-quantity, bulk orders with options for LTL, FTL shipping across locations. Shopify Plus makes both reordering and large orders simple for your business customers.
4. Exclusive Features for Wholesale eCommerce
As an enterprise SaaS platform, Shopify Plus offers powerful B2B capabilities unavailable in other plans, like advanced order, inventory, and customer reporting, multi-location stock management, and automatic EDI compliance for retail selling.
5. Endless Customer and Community Support
Shopify Plus clients get assigned account managers for personalized onboarding, training, and ongoing optimization. You receive high-touch support. The broader Shopify community also provides 24/7 troubleshooting, advice, app developers, and partners to assist your B2B operations.
How to Launch a Shopify B2B Wholesale Store: 9 Simple Steps
Selling to other businesses instead of just consumers opens major revenue potential, but requires the right ecommerce platform and strategy. Here’s how you can launch your Shopify B2B wholesale store and drive growth for it:
1. Choose a Shopify Plan
Start by selecting either the Advanced Shopify or Shopify Plus plan. Shopify Plus unlocks more powerful B2B capabilities, while Advanced still supports key features like customer groups and discounts. Choose based on your budget and business needs. You can always upgrade later on.
2. Come Up With an Effective Shopify B2B Wholesale Strategy
Plan out the core elements like your target buyer personas, what value you offer resellers, what types of businesses to partner with, and what specific Shopify features you’ll use. Outline the relationships, product assortment, custom catalogs, pricing levels, and post-purchase support needed to excel in B2B ecommerce. Develop this strategy before diving into the platform and store build.
3. Set Up Companies in Shopify Admin
Company accounts are the foundation of Shopify’s B2B engine. Here you can configure multiple users, locations, credit terms, transaction rules, payment methods, and more for each wholesale customer. Set up individual accounts for every business you want to sell wholesale to.
Read Also: Shopify’s Winter Edition Updates
4. Create an Intuitive Store Design
Choose or build a Shopify B2B theme that makes discovering products, self-checkout, order tracking, and account management easy for wholesale buyers. Display clear calls-to-action. Enable one-page checkout. Show inventory quantity and supply chain transparency. Optimize search and filtering.
5. Integrate the Right Apps
Extend functionality through apps like volume pricing, customizable catalogs, bulk order forms, B2B management suites, ERP connectors, 3PL shipping services, and more. There are thousands of apps to integrate seamlessly with Shopify Plus to manage B2B complexity.
6. Create a Custom Pricing Strategy for Wholesale
Use capabilities like tiered pricing, customer groups, and quantity discounts to incentivize reseller purchases. Display custom catalog prices for each company account. Offer increased margins for large orders or preferred partners. Automate rules to scale pricing as your B2B segment grows.
7. Optimize Your Product Pages for Better Online Visibility and CX
Refine your product pages with detailed descriptions, multiple images, videos, specs, documentation, alternate views, tiered pricing tables, package dimensions, bulk order options, and lead times so B2B buyers have all the information they need. Optimizing pages drives organic traffic and conversions.
8. Enable Personalization Across Your Shopify B2B Wholesale Store
Use functionality to display targeted content, products, pricing, checkout, recommendations, success messages, and more to different wholesale customer accounts as they browse and purchase based on their purchase history and attributes. Build a tailored experience through personalization and AI.
9. Provide Reliable Customer Service
Respond swiftly to inquiries and requests. Offer phone, live chat, email, and self-serve account management support. Invest in customer success resources as your B2B store scales to nurture relationships and maintain loyalty long-term.
Top 10 Shopify Plus B2B Features for Wholesale Businesses
Here are some useful Shopify Plus B2B features that help wholesale businesses streamline their operations and customer experiences while driving sustainable growth:
1. Customer-Centric Pricing and Catalogs
Create custom price lists and product catalogs tailored to individual wholesale accounts. Show tiered pricing based on purchase volume or business tier. Encourage larger orders through discounts and incentives.
2. Automated Workflows
Let customers self-purchase, track shipments, manage billing, and reorder with ease through their business accounts. Automation reduces manual order processing for your internal teams as you scale B2B revenue.
3. LTL/FTL Shipping Support
Built-in capabilities make large freight shipments seamless. Handling palletized goods across warehouses and integrating tracking into business accounts provides supply chain transparency.
4. Integration with ERP and 3PL Systems
Utilize tools like NetSuite, Dynamics, and 3PLs for real-time synching of data that helps improve accuracy, productivity, and business decision-making.
5. Consolidated Platform for DTC and B2B
Manage consumer and wholesale sales channels from a single dashboard. Shared inventories, customer data, order management, and integrated reporting provide complete visibility as you scale omnichannel.
6. B2B-exclusive Features
Access capabilities like advanced order reporting and analysis, EDI integration with major retailers, and multi-location inventory tracking are unavailable in other Shopify plans, catering specifically to wholesale complexity.
7. Dedicated Support and Partners
Get assigned account managers during onboarding and setup. Shopify Plus development partners like Folio3 offer tailored guidance based on your niche, vertical, and operations.
8. Advanced Tools
Robust B2B functionality supports custom fields, regulatory compliance rules, negotiated invoices, dropshipping, international trade, and more, along with an ecosystem of apps extending power.
9. Unlimited Staff Accounts
Add infinite admins and staff accounts to manage orders, inventory, logistics, accounts, etc, across your B2B operations with tiered access privileges, keeping sensitive information protected.
10. Flexible Payment Models
Support a variety of credit terms, blended payment methods, manual approvals before capture, and custom integrations with purchasing frameworks already established in how your B2B customers pay.
How Much Does it Cost to Build an End-to-End Shopify B2B Wholesale Store in 2025?
Setting up a B2B wholesale store on Shopify in 2025 comes with different price tags based on the path you choose. Let’s break down the costs for each option so you can make the best decision:
-
With Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is the premium option designed for larger businesses and comes with a starting price of around $2,300 per month. This higher cost includes:
- Built-in B2B features that let you create wholesale channels
- Custom pricing for different customer groups
- Company accounts with multiple user roles
- Volume-based discounts that apply automatically
- Special checkout process for wholesale buyers
- Direct integration with your business systems
Beyond the monthly fee, you’ll need to factor in:
- Setup costs: $5,000-$10,000 for configuration
- Theme customization: $3,000-$15,000 depending on your needs
- Training: $1,000-$3,000 to get your team up to speed
Total first-year cost with Shopify Plus typically ranges from $35,000 to $60,000, making it best suited for B2B eCommerce enterprises with higher sales volumes.
-
With a Custom B2B eCommerce Development Partner
Working with a trusted B2B eCommerce development company gives you a tailored solution built specifically for your business needs:
- Initial development: $15,000-$50,000 depending on complexity
- Ongoing support: $1,000-$5,000 monthly
- Shopify plan costs: Usually Shopify Plus ($2,300+ monthly)
- Custom integration fees: $3,000-$10,000 for connecting with your existing systems
The custom approach offers:
- Features designed exactly for your business processes
- Seamless connections with your inventory and order systems
- Special wholesale experiences that match your brand perfectly
- Scalable solutions that grow with your business
First-year investment typically ranges from $40,000 to $120,000+, making this best for businesses with unique needs that off-the-shelf solutions can’t handle.
Launch Your Shopify B2B Wholesale Store with Folio3
As a leading B2B Shopify development company, we understand the challenges faced by wholesale business owners and the changing expectations of customers. Building a run-of-the-mill store on Shopify won’t help you meet your B2B eCommerce goals.
Not only do you need to opt for Shopify Plus, but you also need a reliable B2B Shopify partner.
This is where Folio3 comes in!
We offer strategic guidance, development services, and ongoing management for ecommerce businesses pursuing B2B wholesale and distribution at enterprise scale and complexity on Shopify.
Whether you need an assessment identifying Shopify B2B wholesale solutions fitting your operations, integrations with surrounding systems like ERPs and 3PLs, customizations for your products and accounts, tailored functionality empowering staff and customers, or guidance optimizing workflows, count on our certified Shopify Plus experts.
Let’s connect to discuss your business goals, challenges, and questions in beginning your own B2B wholesale journey with a trusted Shopify Plus partner.
Source: https://ecommerce.folio3.com/blog/shopify-b2b-wholesale/
