Industry Guide
Shopify for B2B & Wholesale.
Built for tiered pricing, account catalogues, and repeat orders.
Built for the tiered-pricing model, the account-specific catalogue, and the high-AOV repeat-order pattern of B2B + wholesale e-commerce.
The brief
What makes B2B different.
The honest commercial reality of running a Shopify store in this vertical — the structural challenges that decide which apps and patterns earn their place.
Tiered pricing + customer-specific catalogues
B2B pricing varies by account, by volume, by contract. Native Shopify variants alone can't handle this — needs admin-side bulk management plus storefront-side account-aware pricing.
Long sales cycles + repeat order velocity
First-order takes weeks; subsequent orders are weekly or monthly. Section design needs to support both the trust-research first-order and the fast repeat-order pattern.
PO + invoice workflows
Net-30 / Net-60 terms, PO numbers, multi-location shipping. Different checkout pattern from D2C.
Catalogue scale
B2B catalogues often run thousands of SKUs across hundreds of brand-account combinations. Bulk catalogue admin tools matter more here than in any D2C vertical.
Section Store for B2B
The sections that earn their place.
Native Shopify 2.0 sections curated for the structural realities above — not a generic list of pretty blocks.
Comparison Table
Bulk-discount tiers, volume thresholds, contract-level pricing. Surfaces the pricing model that drives B2B buying decisions.
Trust Badges
Industry certifications, accreditations, B-Corp status, ISO certifications — drive first-order conversion at scale.
FAQ
PO process, payment terms, lead times, account setup. The single highest support-volume-reducing section in this vertical.
Customer Stories
Case studies from existing wholesale accounts ("here's how X buys from us") carry conversion weight that lifestyle UGC doesn't in B2B.
Logo Slider
Existing wholesale-account logos (with permission) are the single most-effective trust signal for B2B prospects.
Product Variants for B2B
Bulk-edit thousands of SKUs across tiered pricing structures
A wholesale brand selling 800 SKUs across 4 pricing tiers (MSRP, wholesale-tier-1, wholesale-tier-2, wholesale-tier-3) has 3,200 pricing rows to manage. Product Variants' bulk pricing rules let you apply tier-level percentage deltas in one preview-and-commit operation — adjust all "wholesale-tier-2" prices by +3% in 30 seconds. Template re-use means new SKU lines inherit your standard tier structure without per-SKU manual setup.
Product Variants for B2BIndex AI for B2B
B2B procurement queries route through AI engines (yes, really)
B2B buyers — especially category managers and procurement teams — increasingly use AI engines for initial vendor shortlisting ("Best B2B suppliers for sustainable packaging in Europe?"). Index AI ships Schema.org Organization + Product fields plus llms.txt that flags your B2B onboarding pages and capability statements as canonical sources. For B2B specifically — where the first conversation often starts with a shortlist — being cited in AI answers is high-leverage.
Index AI for B2BThe honest take
Where another app might fit better
For account-specific storefront-side pricing (different prices visible to different logged-in accounts), use Shopify B2B (native to Plus) or a dedicated B2B app. Product Variants handles admin-side bulk catalogue and tier-level pricing; the B2B app handles per-account visibility at checkout. The two compose cleanly.
FAQ
Questions specific to B2B.
Built for Shopify, used by b2b stores.
Three native Shopify apps that work together: Section Store for conversion-focused sections, Product Variants for the catalogue work, Index AI for the AI-search execution layer. All free to install.