From Showroom to Shopify

For years, Shopify's bread and butter has been Direct-to-Consumer (DTC). But if you're a brand balancing DTC with a wholesale business, or thinking about launching one, it's time to take a closer look at Shopify’s dramatically improved B2B offering. It’s no longer an afterthought or workaround. It’s an out-of-the box solution that finally speaks wholesale’s language.

Shopify B2B: Built for the Way Wholesale Works Today

Shopify has spent the last year overhauling its B2B features, and the result is a platform that covers what wholesale brands (and their retail buyer customers) actually need:

• Purchase Orders (POs) and Net Terms: Manage POs directly from your Shopify Admin, with net terms already built in.

• Company-Specific Catalogs and Pricing: Tailor product visibility and wholesale pricing for retail account or pricing tiers.

• Discount & Order Rules: Set unit and dollar minimums, quantity breaks, and account-specific discounts without clunky third-party tools.

• Personalized Storefront: The Trade theme is designed specifically for wholesale, optimized for buyers who want to place quick reorders or browse new lines efficiently.

• Unified Analytics: See DTC and B2B data in one place—so you can actually understand your top performers across channels and customer types.

• Built to Scale: Enterprise? No problem. Build your storefront via custom Liquid, Headless, or API connections tailored to your exact needs.

All this on top of Shopify’s core strengths: lightning-fast storefronts, scalable architecture, and the flexibility to create highly customized buyer experiences.

Why This Matters (and Why I'm Writing About It)

I spent the first 15 years of my career in wholesale sales. From pounding the pavement with samples to running sales teams and managing showroom partnerships, I worked with major retailers like Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s, Saks, Anthropologie, and hundreds of specialty boutiques across the U.S.

I’ve also sat inside the brand’s four walls at Diane Von Furstenberg, Milly NY, Splendid, and Paper Crown by Lauren Conrad, where I saw how seasonal production timelines, EDI requirements, and last-minute shipping windows shape everything. Designing a great product was only ever the first step.

And when I launched my own direct-to-retail clothing line and produced for Anthropologie, I learned (the hard way) how much logistics and timing matter, and how little room there is for error in wholesale.

So when I moved into the eCommerce agency world six years ago, I wasn’t sure that experience would translate. Back then, digital-first brands weren’t thinking about wholesale. The tools weren’t there. Buyers were still faxing POs (yes, really). And Shopify just wasn’t built with wholesale in mind.

They want to reorder from their phones while walking the sales floor. They want personalized recommendations based on their store’s buying history. They want to log in, see their terms, their catalog, their pricing—and submit an order in minutes, not hours.

If part of that process can be automated? Even better.

Wholesale Is Still a Growth Channel—But Only If You Modernize

In-store retail isn't dead. But the brands winning today are the ones who make it easy for retailers to buy the way they want to buy. That means ditching the dated PDF catalogs, the endless back-and-forth emails, and (shocker!) the fax machine.

Shopify’s B2B platform now gives brands the tools to deliver that modern experience—without needing to bolt together three or four external systems.

If you’re still operating wholesale through legacy platforms or hacked-together portals, it may be time to rethink your tech stack.

Let’s Talk

At Bear Group, we’ve helped brands build Shopify B2B storefronts that not only function better, but sell better. Whether you're replatforming, redesigning, or just want to explore what’s possible, we’d love to hear your goals.

Let’s talk.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run wholesale and DTC on the same Shopify store?

Yes. Shopify's B2B features run alongside your DTC business instead of in a separate, bolted-on system. Company-specific catalogs and pricing control what each retail account sees when it logs in, and unified analytics put DTC and B2B data in one place — so you can see your top performers across both channels and customer types without stitching together three or four external tools.

Does Shopify handle purchase orders and net terms natively, or do you still need a wholesale app?

Both are built in. You manage POs directly from the Shopify Admin, and net terms come standard. The order rules that used to require third-party apps are native too: unit and dollar minimums, quantity breaks, and account-specific discounts. That's the real shift from a few years ago, when running wholesale on Shopify meant duct-taping apps and workarounds together.

What do modern wholesale buyers expect from a B2B storefront?

The same experience they get everywhere else in their lives. Today's buyers are younger and digital-native. They want to reorder from their phone while walking the sales floor, see recommendations based on their store's buying history, and log in to find their own terms, catalog, and pricing — then submit an order in minutes, not hours. PDF catalogs and faxed POs don't clear that bar.

Do you need a custom wholesale storefront, or is Shopify's Trade theme enough?

Trade is Shopify's theme built specifically for wholesale, optimized for buyers placing quick reorders or browsing a new line — genuinely out-of-the-box for a lot of brands. When requirements go past it, Shopify scales through custom Liquid, headless builds, or API connections, which is where Shopify Plus tends to enter the conversation for enterprise wholesale operations.

How do you know it's time to move wholesale off a legacy portal?

The signs are operational: PDF line sheets, orders that take a dozen emails to confirm, a fax machine still somewhere in the loop, or a portal someone hacked together years ago that nobody wants to touch. If retailers find it harder to buy from you than from the brand next to you, the stack is costing you the channel. Bear Group builds and replatforms Shopify B2B storefronts for exactly that situation.