Shopify B2B & Wholesale Funnels
Trade buyers don't impulse-buy. They ask for a price list, check the minimum order, get an approval, and reorder the same lines every month. We build the application, approval, pricing and reorder path that process needs — inside Shopify, not in your sales inbox.
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Why it matters
B2B buying is a process. Most Shopify stores model it as a cart.
In Shopify's funnel model this sits squarely in consideration — the stage where a buyer is comparing suppliers, checking lead times and getting internal sign-off, not reaching for a card. A trade buyer needs a price list, a minimum order quantity, payment terms and often a purchase order number before anything is decided. A standard DTC product page answers none of that, so the enquiry lands in an inbox and the whole process reverts to email and spreadsheets. The work is to make that comparison-and-approval stage self-serve: an application that actually gets reviewed, pricing that appears the moment the account is live, and a reorder path that doesn't start from an empty cart. Done properly, your sales team spends its time on the accounts that genuinely need a human.
Sound familiar?
Your wholesale customers are emailing spreadsheets to a sales inbox.
Some of these are a portal problem. At least one is a misconception that will cost you money if you act on it — we'll say which.
- Your trade buyers email a spreadsheet of SKUs and someone on your team retypes it into an order.
- You're running a second, hidden store purely so wholesale customers can see their own pricing.
- Every new stockist gets approved over the phone, and nobody records who approved them or when.
- Repeat buyers order the same fifteen lines every month and still start from an empty cart.
- You assume wholesale needs a separate website — it usually doesn't, and it doubles your admin.
- Your reps quote from memory, so two customers on the same tier are paying different prices.
What's included
What a B2B funnel build includes
The full trade path — application to approval to priced catalogue to repeat order — built on Shopify's own B2B primitives where your plan allows it.
Quote requests, not add-to-cart
For made-to-order, freight-heavy or negotiated lines, the primary action is a quote request that captures quantities, delivery site and required date. The submission becomes a draft order your team prices and sends, so the buyer gets a real document rather than a reply that says 'what quantity were you thinking?'
Account applications with approval
A structured application — trading name, ABN or company number, resale intent, references — feeding one review queue instead of three inboxes. Pending, approved and rejected are all real states with real messaging, so an applicant is never left staring at a page that says nothing happened.
Price lists and payment terms
Customer-specific catalogues and price lists so a buyer sees their tier and only their tier, with net terms where you've agreed them. On Shopify Plus this is native B2B — company profiles, catalogues, terms. Below Plus we build the closest honest equivalent and tell you where it falls short.
Minimum orders and case packs
Minimum order quantities, case-pack increments and per-line minimums enforced at the point of adding to cart, not discovered at checkout. Buyers get told the rule and the shortfall in plain language, because a blocked checkout with no explanation is how a trade account becomes a phone call.
Reorder in a few clicks
Most wholesale revenue is the same lines, again. Order history that reorders in two clicks, saved lists for standing ranges, and quantity fields that accept a typed number rather than fifteen taps of a plus button. This is where a trade portal earns back the build, month after month.
Rep-assisted ordering
Your reps keep working the way they work — building draft orders on a customer's behalf, applying agreed pricing, sending an invoice to pay online. The store becomes the system of record instead of a parallel universe to the spreadsheet on someone's laptop.
How it runs
How a B2B funnel build actually runs.
Three to six weeks for most builds — longer when price lists have to be reconciled from a spreadsheet nobody fully trusts.
- 01
Map the buying process
We write down how an order genuinely happens today: who asks, who approves the account, who sets the price, who chases payment. Most of the build decisions fall out of that document rather than out of Shopify's feature list.
- 02
Decide Plus or not
Native Shopify B2B — company profiles, company locations, catalogues, price lists, payment terms — is a Plus feature. Below Plus we scope tag-based pricing, gated collections and draft orders, then tell you plainly where that will chafe.
- 03
Build the account path
Application form, review queue, approval, then a logged-in experience where trade pricing, minimum quantities and terms are simply correct. We test it as a real buyer would: apply, get rejected, get approved, place a first order.
- 04
Reorder and hand over
Repeat-order flows, saved lists, and a written runbook so your team can add companies, adjust a price list and approve an account without booking us. If you need us afterwards for routine admin, we built it wrong.
3–6 wks
Typical build
Scope and price-list dependent
1
Approval queue
Not three inboxes
0
Public trade prices
Gated behind an approved login
Plus
For native Shopify B2B
Company accounts & catalogues
Straight answer
A trade portal is overkill for a lot of the stores that ask for one.
A good fit if…
- You have enough trade accounts that manual order entry is eating a person's week.
- Your buyers reorder predictable lines and would self-serve if the pricing were simply visible.
- You're on Shopify Plus, or the wholesale volume justifies moving to it for native B2B.
- Reps need to build and send orders without being the only ordering channel you have.
Probably not, if…
- You have six wholesale accounts. Draft orders and an email thread genuinely handle that better.
- You're below Plus and buyers need per-company catalogues — the workarounds will frustrate everyone involved.
- Your trade pricing changes weekly and nobody internally owns keeping the price lists accurate.
- You want a separate wholesale website because it feels tidier, not because buyers asked for it.
Keep exploring
More on Shopify funnels
B2B & Wholesale Funnels is one part of the funnel types we build. Here's the rest of the picture.
Shopify CRO & Funnels
The complete service — every funnel type, built native to Shopify and measured.
View the serviceClosely relatedLead-Generation Funnels
The same capture logic for retail traffic — an offer worth an email address.
Read the guideClosely relatedBundle & High-AOV Funnels
Volume tiers and case-pack pricing, applied to your retail catalogue instead.
Read the guideAll guides in this series
- Post-Purchase Upsell FunnelsLift AOV after the card is charged, without touching checkout conversion.
- Quiz & Personalisation FunnelsTurn 'which one do I need' into a recommendation and a zero-party data capture.
- Subscription FunnelsConvert one-off buyers to recurring, and keep them past the third billing cycle.
- DTC Product FunnelsSingle-product landing pages built to sell one thing properly, not browse a catalogue.
- VSL & Long-Form Sales FunnelsVideo and long-form pages for considered purchases that a product page can't carry.
Beyond this service
Other things we do
Most stores need two or three of these working together. Book a call and we'll tell you which ones actually move your numbers.
- Shopify Theme DevelopmentCustom themes built from Figma to production Liquid on Online Store 2.0 — fast and merchant-editable.
- Shopify App DevelopmentCustom and public apps, Checkout UI Extensions and Shopify Functions built with React and Polaris.
- Shopify MigrationMove from WooCommerce, Magento or BigCommerce with a full 301 redirect map and zero downtime.
- Shopify SEOTechnical audits, Core Web Vitals, structured data and collection content built around buyer intent.
- Shopify Performance OptimizationFaster load times and green Core Web Vitals — theme refactors, image pipelines and app cleanup.
- Shopify A/B TestingHypothesis-led experiments on product pages and checkout, shipped as native theme code.
- Shopify Email Marketing & KlaviyoFlows, segmentation and campaigns — welcome, abandoned cart, winback and SMS, built and monitored.
- Shopify CRO & FunnelsValue-ladder, tripwire, quiz and post-purchase upsell funnels built to lift conversion and AOV.
- Shopify Maintenance & SupportRetainers covering uptime monitoring, security patching, bug fixes and proactive improvements.
Frequently asked questions
- For Shopify's native B2B you do. Company profiles, company locations with buyer permissions, customer-specific catalogues and price lists, quantity rules and net payment terms are Plus features, and they sit alongside your retail store rather than requiring a second one. Below Plus you can still sell wholesale — customer tags driving discounts, gated collections, a password-protected trade area, apps, or draft orders and invoices — but every route has edges. We'll scope the workaround honestly and tell you at what point the Plus fee is cheaper than the friction.
Wholesale still running on email?
Book a 30-minute call. We'll map your trade buying process and tell you whether it needs a portal or just better draft orders.
Book a free call