Having your online store accessible to wholesale customers can create new revenue streams and also open doors to long-term partnerships in this progressive eCommerce world. To make the process easier, a Shopify wholesale customer account lets you customize the pricing system, an exclusive product catalog, and the buying process to improve customer satisfaction and build loyalty.
In this post, we will go through what is a Shopify wholesale customer account and how to create a wholesale account, with the methods of setup and best apps for additional functionality. Let’s begin!
Contents
What is a Shopify Wholesale Customer Account?
A Shopify wholesale customer account is one such business arrangement within the Shopify store that allows the purchase and sale of products, which are intended specifically for various parties like manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. An account for one user with a completely different stock and audience, the Shopify wholesale customer account is aimed at helping retailers access products at a wholesale price, enabling the sale of large quantities or bulk goods at a discount to other retailers.
You can log in to your Shopify admin panel and instantly place wholesale orders on behalf of your business customers or invite them to register for wholesale store accounts in your Shopify store. Once you get the pricing list assigned to your Shopify store then customers can be seen as the Shopify wholesale customers and they have to sign on for buying a specific no of products in a stipulated time.
Now, why do you need a Shopify wholesale customer account? To reinforce your why for opening wholesale accounts, let’s look at the following points:
For the seller:
- Buried in the details is the revenue growth, even at discounted rates
- Promote repeat orders, loyalty, and long term business relationships
- Streamline bulk transactions
- Automatically control pricing according to customer segments
- Reach broader customers
For the buyer:
- Access to wholesale pricing of a wide range of products from different suppliers, making it more cost-effective to order in bulk.
- Get higher profit margins
- Effortlessly find the products they want thanks to the dedicated wholesale porta, which displays only relevant products, pricing, and terms
- Simplifies the process of purchasing large quantities
- Get exclusive deals from sellers that are not applied to regular buyers
We believe you have made informed-decision. Now, let’s move to the main part of this article – the comprehensive guide to setting up a Shopify customer account.
Setting Up a Wholesale Customer Account
Step 1: Create a Wholesale Price Rule
- From your Shopify admin, navigate to “Pricing & Discounts”
- Select “Create Discount”
- Choose Discount level to set the discount rule you will apply for products
- Enter a Customer Tag (e.g wholesale)
- Click on Discount Type to set the percentage discount or a set price
- Set the amount of the discount
- Enter “Save”
Step 2: Create a Wholesale Customer
Existing Customers
If you already have a customer account, login to your account and follow these steps to make your account a wholesale account:
- Go to Shopify admin ⇒ Click on “Customers” on the left corner
- Select an existing customer to view their account
- Click “Add” and scroll down until you find “Tag”
- Enter the customer type (wholesale, etc.)
- Click “Save” to completely transform the account into a wholesale customer account. This time, when the customer logs into your Shopify store, it will show the special price you have set for this customer tag.
New Customers
- The process for creating a new customer account is as follows:
- In Shopify admin panel, go to ” Customers” ⇒ “Add customer”
- The blank was filled in with the customer’s contact details
- Add a customer tag which is available in discount rule ( e.g wholesale)
- This will ensure the change, so just click “Save”
- If you take advantage of the classic customer accounts mode, you have to send an invitation. Activate the customer account, create a password, and log into the Shopify store as a B2B customer. Then in the upper right corner of the profile page, choose “More Actions” ⇒ Send account invite ⇒ Send invite email by following the instructions. If you are in the new customer accounts mode, you do not need to send any invitations.
- Verify the customer’s email address you submitted, then click the link to create a password and access your business.
5 Ways To Set Up Wholesale Accounts on Shopify
1. Create discount codes
The easiest method of implementing a customer account on Shopify for wholesale is to determine discount codes for each customer segment wholesale. Using this you can create the MOQ (min order qty) or limit the discount to some group of customers or within a range of products. Besides, with this way, you can activate tax-free mode for some customer accounts to bring down the price that they have to pay for the items and thus stimulate mass purchases, boosting your total revenue.
However, this method has drawbacks. With this, you can only set one restriction on a coupon code. Consequently, the coupon can be transformed from one to another easily unless you restrict by customer group. Separate payment terms, shipping options, or flat rate discounts per item are impossible as well.
To conclude, this can be the perfect solution for beginners to create various handful wholesale accounts while maintaining the effective performance of your site. However, if you want more advanced functionality in your wholesale account, consider other methods below.
2. Utilize a wholesale app
The most effective way to create a wholesale customer account is by using the third-party wholesale app. Once the app is installed, it can simplify the process of managing wholesale customer accounts thanks to its high-function features such as automated account registration, tiered pricing, and exclusive access to wholesale products. Remove the manual price adjustment; the wholesale app, on your behalf, makes it happen in seconds by configuring pricing rules to automatically apply discounts based on order quantities while ensuring accuracy, consistency, and time-saving.
Ultimately, the benefit of an extended wholesale app is to enhance the customer experience. To adapt to most requirements of wholesale buyers, such as seamless ordering, quick checkout, customized payment method, shipping options, and many more, the extended app comes with tools like the bulk order form, wholesale pricing, product visibility restriction, flexible payment methods, and shipping options for specific wholesale clients, etc., which significantly increase customer satisfaction and foster long-term business relationships.
Also, a wholesale app lets you monitor your Shopify retail and wholesale customer segments within a single platform. By automating complex processes and providing a user-friendly experience, it becomes a powerful tool for growing your business while maintaining operational efficiency.
3. Open another store
Many Shopify businesses hesitate to open a new store for wholesale customers because of its complicated feeling. Nevertheless, it is still worth trying. To be more specific, if your retail store is at www.abc.com, you can place your wholesale store at www.abc.wholesale.com or whatever you would love to call the subdomain. By naming it like this, customers are more likely to identify the new wholesale site as belonging to your store, and this is a shortcut to the wholesale site for the wholesale customer group. Do not forget password protection for your wholesale store and customize it to be your brand identity and shopping experience that your wholesale customers prefer.
There are some brilliant points we want to demonstrate regarding its advantages. It means your new store is highly secured and can only be accessed by the wholesalers who you share that password with. Furthermore, you can also fetch all the price for particular products precisely how you want, and payment conditions, tax exemption, and transport methods can be customized for your wholesale clientele. Consequently, you bring a unique wholesale experience for your customers and hence they buy from you.
4. Build a wholesale channel
For merchants on Shopify Plus, this can be a highly strategic move to expand your business, reach a broader market, and boost revenue. In essence, with a separate wholesale channel, you are able to create an exclusive gate for whole buyers to access, providing them with tailored pricing and product catalogs that are invisible to retail customers.
The best benefit that a wholesale channel adds to you is scalability. That said, it allows you to access a broader wholesale customer base without the operational overhead of directly managing customer-facing sales. There are also advantages of wholesale distribution such as payment structure flexibility, customized customer services, and bulk pricing discount all of which can be used to create loyalty. However, this approach has many features that are highly convenient — quick-order forms, minimum order thresholds. Because of this, they can make purchases and check out much more quickly, encouraging repeat business while increasing sales volume.
5. Sell on a wholesale platform
Wholesale platforms let buyers explore your catalog, place orders, and manage transactions and payments in one center, which makes sure you will get paid promptly and reduces the risk of payment disputes. This method is ideal for large enterprises with large catalogs and high-value transactions.
For small and medium-sized businesses, it still works well to help you compete on a global scale, leveraging the platform’s network of retailers thanks to its comprehensive suite of analytics and insights into every aspect of your business, such as sales, orders, shipping, return, market demand… helping you identify trends, forecast demand, and optimize your offerings.
Apps For Creating Shopify Wholesale Customer Account
BSS: B2B & Wholesale Solution
Unlike a regular app that just allows businesses to create Shopify wholesale customer accounts, BSS: B2B/Wholesale Solution is an all-in-one app that provides a combination of functionalities designed for B2B and wholesale. It allows you to customize pricing, quantity breaks, B2B minimum orders, registration form, etc. The unique feature of the app is auto-tagging which makes the shopping process and order management a piece of cake. In fact, it can work with API which is a quite useful tool, focused on the integration with third-party systems and services to maximize the effectiveness of your store.
Highlight features:
- Allows custom pricing, tiered pricing and bulk pricing
- Provides B2B wholesale registration form with drag and drop
- B2B wholesale custom fields such as VAT, GST, ABN, US EIN
- Auto-add tags, order notes, apply tags in bulk
- Unlimited bulk discount, set-up discount for various variations
- Multi-currency support
Price:
- Free plan forever
- Essential plan: $25 per month
- Advanced plan: $50 per month
- Platinum plan: $100 per month
Wholesale Pricing Discount B2B
Wholesale Pricing Discount is a one-stop solution app for setting up your wholesale store in here on Shopify. You can stimulate larger orders with adjustable breaks on quantity and volume pricing in Shopify, which boosts sales and average orders. Additionally, its flexible payment terms enable the customers to order by their desired payment method, thus increasing customers trust and loyalty towards the customers.
Wholesale Pricing Discount, created especially for Shopify shops, interacts with your store with ease. Additionally, the team will offer all the support required to guarantee a seamless connection with your Shopify ecosystem if you utilize third-party Shopify applications.
Highlight features:
- Personalized wholesale pricing: percentage discounts, individual variant pricing, tiered pricing, customer tag prices/discounts, and custom pricing on selected products
- Multi-currency support, display wholesale prices with local currencies
- Discount over VAT or tax-exempted prices
- Wholesale signup form, bulk import/export price
- 30+ third-party integration
Price:
- Basic plan: $24.99 per month
- Professional plan: $44.99 per month
- Enterprise plan: $49.99 per month
- Global plan: 64.99 per month
SparkLayer B2B & Wholesale
Scalability of SparkLayer B2B & Wholesale walk hand-in-hand, so this wholesale application is not only capable of managing your wholesale processes but also scales as per requirement, providing manageable solutions to all your wholesale needs. List is the top extension for your Shopify store, packed with solid B2B wholesale functionality, enabling your sales team and customers to complete orders, control accounts, repeat orders, use “shopping lists”, apply discounts, and more. And not only this, but SparkLayer integrates seamlessly into your existing Shopify theme, so you have everything you need to create your perfect: B2B customer experience.
Highlight features:
- 100+ B2B wholesale features such as B2B pricing, B2B payments, quantity rules, order limits, and many more
- Multi-language, multi-currency support, compatible with Shopify Markets
- Invite B2B customers to log in, see their specific pricing, place orders, manage their accounts, and more
- B2B Pricing Engine allows you to set automatic or fully custom pricing rules, order limits, and discounts
Price:
- Enterprise plan: free to set up
- Starter plan: $49 per month
- Growth plan: $149 per month
- Pro plan: $299 per month
Final Words
The Shopify wholesale customer account serves as a foundation of every business, especially when stepping into wholesale markets, and needs a solid background to scale successfully. These can help you establish an effective wholesale system that fuels customer satisfaction and contributes to business growth.
We hope that this article has provided you with in-depth knowledge about Shopify wholesale customer accounts to maximize your store’s full potential. Do not hesitate to share with us your experience with Shopify here and grow together!
