How to sell B2B in e-commerce: Shopify B2B, wholesale price lists and the sales team

Episode recorded in Polish (English subtitles available on YouTube); this is our edited English translation. Released on May 23, 2023, so Shopify features reflect that time; where something has changed, we add a dated 2026 update. The report mentioned in the episode is the Polish Chamber of Electronic Economy's (e-Izba) B2B e-Commerce NOW! 2022 (in Polish).

What is B2B sales and what does it look like in practice?

Tomek: Hi! In today's episode we'll tell you how to sell B2B in e-commerce and how Shopify Plus can help you do it. Let's go. Hi, Maciek.

Maciek: Hi, Tomek.

Tomek: Today's topic: B2B sales in e-commerce. Let's start with what B2B sales really is and what this model looks like in practice today.

Maciek: Sure. It's selling between two businesses. Orders are usually much bigger than in D2C, where we sell directly to the consumer. It's not one or a few products in the cart, but very often wholesale quantities: dozens or hundreds of different products in large amounts. And what does it look like today? Traditionally, these sales were built on relationships. You literally have to wear a path to the customer's door, get in touch and convince them you're an attractive business partner. Once you've built that relationship, the selling is done, in practice, over the phone. You call your sales rep, your account manager, or they call you, and you place the order by phone. There are online sales platforms, of course, but they're outdated and pretty much put people off using them. It's hard for me to put a percentage on it, because I don't have that research, but most of it is still phone sales, and in some cases maybe even fax.

The sales rep, the phone and orders retyped into the ERP

Tomek: To me, B2B sales means a travelling sales rep who drives from company to company collecting orders. As you said, he builds relationships and a network of customers he wants to work with and offer his product to. Then he visits them regularly and collects their orders. I also agree that today's technology is mostly an order-taking platform, but one operated by the sales rep. After driving around or phoning his customers, he sits down in the office and retypes the orders, often filled in on paper, into the internal system so they can actually be fulfilled.

Maciek: Or clicks them into the ERP somewhere.

B2B sales and the pandemic

Tomek: Yes, exactly. Two years ago we ran into the pandemic, a situation where building those personal relationships became much harder, and sometimes impossible. In my view that moment exposed a lot of flaws in this model. To some extent it's slowly becoming a relic of the past. Would you agree?

Maciek: I would. The pandemic definitely sped up the move of B2B sales online, onto e-commerce platforms. But it's not as if that didn't exist before, because there are solutions that offer it. There's clear interest in the topic, and I think you can see it in Shopify Plus's strategy too, because Shopify says clearly that B2B is at the center of its plans for the coming years. That comes from market trends and from what the reports say. I'm not sure if you remember, but I think the B2B e-commerce market in the US alone is currently around eight billion dollars, and by the end of 2030 it's supposed to be…

Trends in B2B sales

Tomek: Close to 10 billion.

Maciek: Exactly, so the planned growth is about 20%.

Editor's note: the US market figures were quoted from memory, and we couldn't find a source that confirms them, so don't treat them as data.

Tomek: Sure.

Maciek: Maybe it'll be bigger, so there's really a lot to fight for. The expectations of people involved in B2B sales are changing as younger generations come in, both on the side of suppliers, manufacturers and wholesalers and on the side of companies that buy in bulk. You have to expect sales to move from the phone to self-service solutions that don't need assistance. It's a simple observation. I don't know if you've noticed this too: when your parents call, you still pick up, but when I watch our younger colleagues, at work and outside it, their attitude to the phone is: "Just text me."

Tomek: "Don't bother me right now, I'm busy."

Maciek: Exactly. That kind of communication dominates, and I think everything will head that way.

Tomek: I'll tell you more. I came across a report Shopify published last year about changes and trends in business-to-business sales. It confirms exactly what you just said. Generations are getting younger, so the expectations of buyers and sellers are getting closer and closer to what they're used to from the regular online stores they use every day. A standard, somewhat archaic Excel sheet for taking an order, just so it has some kind of form, is completely unattractive to them. They'd rather have a tool where they can easily find the product they're interested in. That product has nice photos, sometimes even a video showing what it looks like in use. A whole rich visual layer.

Maciek: Customer reviews.

Tomek: Yes, customer reviews too. We have to realize that emotions are starting to play a role in B2B purchasing as well. The customer wants to decide which product will be attractive to them and which will be easier for them to resell.

Maciek: Emotions, but I think data too. Your own sales figures are one thing, but when you browse a B2B platform and see that another product sells well for someone else and has good reviews, that can also point you toward expanding your range.

Tomek: Exactly. I'm not surprised by these findings at all, because that comparison to picking up or not picking up the phone shows a clear trend: society is more and more tech-savvy and has different expectations. That's why the new solution Shopify, among others, has prepared, a strictly B2B solution available on Shopify Plus, is meant to meet those expectations. Let's try to define those purely functional, practical expectations. Apart from product descriptions: what features do buyers and sellers look for in a platform like that today?

What do buyers and sellers expect from a B2B platform?

Maciek: One of the basics is definitely the ability to place wholesale orders, so a cart where you can have large quantities of products. That's number one. Second: orders are often repetitive, you order exactly the same things, just in different quantities. So duplicating orders, and changing and editing draft orders, will definitely be necessary.

Tomek: Deferred payments are typical of this business. Very often we pay for orders against an invoice, at a later date, or even use trade credit with the supplier. So that's a must. I'd also look at it from the other side, from the companies that sell. I think what they want most is a shorter, simpler sales process. They want a tool that lets them take complete orders quickly and pass them on very quickly to a system, the ERP for example, so they can be fulfilled. With no human step in between and without lots of manual work. Most of it can be automated.

Maciek: Definitely. I'd also add purchases only by authorized people.

Tomek: Yes, that's typical of this market too.

Maciek: The buying process looks different in B2B. When you buy a shirt, I hope you don't have to ask anyone's opinion. In B2B a purchase very often needs approval along the way, and there are several decision makers.

2026 update (as of November 8, 2026): most of the features on this list now come standard with Shopify on all plans: easy reorders, a quick order list, net payment terms with payment reminders, location-level permissions, PO numbers, and draft orders turned into invoices (help.shopify.com). Rules that send selected orders for review, for example above a certain value, come from apps built on Shopify Functions, and Shopify Editions Winter '26 added more prebuilt ERP integrations, including Fulfil and Patchworks (shopify.com).

What does the B2B solution in Shopify look like?

Tomek: Sure. So, Maciek, let's talk about what Shopify's B2B solution looks like right now. As we mentioned, it's only available on the Shopify Plus plan, the enterprise version. Probably not by accident, because B2B very often involves large wholesale orders, and the parties are manufacturers or large distributors. So it's no surprise it's part of the enterprise version. How does it work on Shopify Plus, and how do you implement it?

Maciek: Sure. The new solution is called Shopify B2B. It replaced the earlier platform, called the Wholesale Channel, which was quite limited, both in features and in how much you could customize the design. As we said in one of our earlier episodes, Shopify spends a lot on research, listens to its users and, of course, watches where the competition is pulling ahead. I'm not sure you remember, but once or twice in the past we lost a client because, I think, BigCommerce had a B2B solution that was twice as good and better matched what both sides expected, the buyer and the seller. I think Shopify identified those pain points well, and the platform it has now built addresses them very well.

2026 update: since April 2, 2026, the core B2B features (companies and their locations, up to 3 active B2B catalogs, net payment terms, volume pricing and quantity rules) are also available on the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans at no extra cost (changelog.shopify.com). Shopify retired the Wholesale channel in 2024 and replaced it with B2B on Shopify, with a migration tool (community.shopify.com).

A separate B2B store or one store for D2C and B2B?

Maciek: What am I getting at? You can implement this platform in two ways. The first is a separate store for business customers, where we build everything around them. The second is, in my view, more interesting and closer to what most of the market expects: in one store you serve both D2C and B2B customers. Its advantage is consistent data. You keep all the information, stock levels and product data in one place, and if you want to change something about how the store looks, you change it in one place.

Tomek: Right, because you use one theme, don't you? The theme is shared.

Maciek: One code base.

Tomek: Yes. We just add the B2B features.

Maciek: You can make front-end changes so they look the same for both groups, which saves a lot of time. Of course, in this setup you can also change the design or behavior only for B2B customers. That's allowed too and works perfectly well.

Tomek: Sure. I assume that if it's a mix of B2C and B2B, we have to accept some trade-offs in how the store behaves toward each group of customers. In some places the paths will be identical, because we still use the same front end.

Maciek: They'll be identical right up to placing the order.

Tomek: Okay.

Maciek: I mean you only see the B2B features once you log in and someone has given you B2B customer permissions. Then you see wholesale prices, and you have different payment methods and different shipping methods.

Companies, locations and price lists in the Shopify admin

Tomek: Yes. Technically, in the Shopify admin, a Companies section was added in the customers area. There we create a company we have a contract with and assign the people who represent it and are authorized to buy on its behalf. Second: for each of these companies we can create individual price lists and link them to individual customers.

Maciek: You can go even deeper, because within one company you can create separate locations. If the company has offices in different countries or simply operates in different markets, you can assign to each location, I think the limit right now is 25, different price lists.

Tomek: Okay. So it depends entirely on the contract you've negotiated with a given branch.

Maciek: It's not that you have price groups or tiers. You can set it individually.

2026 update (as of November 8, 2026): the limit hasn't changed, and one company location can have up to 25 catalogs assigned. Assigning catalogs, that is price lists, directly to companies and their locations is only available on Shopify Plus, though. On Basic, Grow and Advanced, catalogs are assigned to B2B markets, with up to 3 active (help.shopify.com). Deposits, partial payments and payment requests per fulfillment are also Plus-only, and a separate checkout and storefront for B2B customers (through Markets) needs the Advanced or Plus plan (help.shopify.com). You can now also set up companies and catalogs with Sidekick, the AI assistant in the Shopify admin: since Editions Winter '26 you describe the wholesale customer in plain words, and Sidekick fills in the company's contact details, address and payment terms (shopify.com, help.shopify.com). In our implementations a person on the team still checks that data before launch, because a wholesale customer spots a wrong price list or payment term right away.

Who should run a separate B2B store and who a shared one?

Tomek: Sure. Let's sum up the two models. The first, a separate instance, seems to me to fit companies that focus mainly on B2B and want that channel fully tailored to them.

Maciek: Sometimes it works the other way round: you sell B2B and want to open up to D2C.

Tomek: That's not a rare case at all.

Maciek: Again, an effect of the pandemic. Shorter delivery times.

Tomek: That's right. Diversifying and widening the audience for your product. That's one approach. The second, as we said, is a bit more tricky, but also very smart and a good fit for those who want to extend their sales model with B2B and try to reach businesses at a larger scale. They can do it at relatively low cost, because it's already built into the package.

Statistics: what does selling B2B online bring?

Tomek: As for statistics showing why it's worth thinking about a B2B channel, it's worth quoting a report on the B2B market published by eBiznes.pl that says outright that companies which launched this channel in the past year increased their sales by almost 50%. The number of new customers grew, which is quite obvious, and that growth was over 30%. What also matters from an e-commerce point of view is that the average order value goes up, because wholesale purchases are larger and for bigger amounts. In a word, we can have a much bigger sales volume and keep scaling the business.

Maciek: Absolutely.

Editor's note: the report we linked when the episode came out is e-Izba's B2B e-Commerce NOW! 2022. In it, these figures are shares of companies, not the size of the growth. 57% of companies named higher sales and 48% more customers as an effect of starting B2B e-commerce (p. 42). A Mobile Institute survey for e-Izba also found that 49% of companies saw a significant or slight increase in online sales (p. 57).

Will Shopify work for B2B?

Tomek: To wrap up, a short and simple summary. First: is B2B online an attractive option? And second: does Shopify as a platform meet customers' requirements and expectations?

Maciek: Okay, I'll answer from the end. I think Shopify will be a good option. But you have to be aware that the bigger the company and the larger the scale of the business, the more entrenched and rigid its B2B processes are, and the harder it is to make that kind of change. Shopify can be a good way to test it on a small scale, for a selected group of sales reps or part of the range. The process itself will certainly meet a lot of resistance, though, because introducing e-commerce is often seen in a company as a threat to the sales reps.

Will a B2B store replace the sales team?

Tomek: As an attempt to eliminate that department and sideline it in favor of a tool.

Maciek: I think that's a very mistaken idea, and a lot of work on relationships inside the company has to go into introducing e-commerce. That means making the team understand that the tool is actually there to help them sell. Because what do you gain as a sales rep? You free up time, because the customer will often place the order on their own, but they'll certainly call you to negotiate better terms. You have time to build the relationship with the customer and grow your network of business contacts instead of placing orders for your customers.

Tomek: So you're still the key person in the process, we just shift your role a little.

Maciek: I don't believe any B2B e-commerce system can replace a company's sales team. New generations are coming in with their own expectations and habits, but there's a huge number of people who do this business the way it was always done. I think it'll be hard to wean someone who has called their sales rep all their life off that and suddenly get them to use some system.

Tomek: Sure. Maciek, thank you very much for today's episode. I hope we've convinced you that Shopify is a solution that lets you start selling B2B or move your current process over. This year and in the years to come, Shopify will be developing its B2B features very heavily, so we'll keep you posted on all the updates. Thanks a lot.