What Shopify already does
Two ideas often hold a wholesaler back: that Shopify is made for retail, and that it can't handle a big catalogue. Both are out of date.
A 7,000-item catalogue loads from a file, and the store doesn't suffer for it. For selling between businesses, Shopify has features built for the job:
- Companies. Each business customer has its own profile, with its shipping addresses and the people allowed to order.
- Catalogs. A catalog decides what a group of customers sees and at what price.
- Volume pricing. The unit price drops as the quantity goes up, in breaks.
- Quantity rules. A minimum, a maximum, or selling in multiples: by the case of twelve, for example.
- Payment terms. Paying in 30 days rather than at the order, with a purchase order number.
These features are available on all plans. The Plus plan keeps a few to itself, and the number of active catalogs is limited on the others.
How it's actually set up
Get the catalogue out of the PDF
A PDF isn't data. The first step is a file: one item per row, with its code, name, category, price and price breaks. Until that file exists, nothing else moves. It's also the longest part, and the one people always underestimate.
Decide who sees what
Are prices public, or only visible once logged in? Do all your customers get the same prices? Every different answer is one more catalog. Three price groups can be managed. One price per customer is another conversation.
Write the price breaks
Price breaks load from a file, not by hand across 7,000 product pages. We test them on about twenty items before loading everything.
Make the item findable
At 7,000 items, nobody browses the categories. A business customer knows the product code. They need a search that finds it, filters that make sense, and a way to quickly order several items at once.
Take the photos
An item without a photo doesn't sell, even to a customer who knows it. It's a project of its own, to plan in batches.
The pitfalls
- Price breaks are counted per variant. Five units of one colour and five of another don't make a break of ten.
- A volume price locks the price. Once an item has its price breaks, the overall discount applied to the catalog no longer applies to it. You choose one or the other, item by item.
- The number of catalogs. Outside the Plus plan, it's limited. If you have ten price lists, you want to know before you start.
- The data. Two codes for the same item, prices that are out of date: the store will faithfully show whatever it's given.
What we did for a wholesaler
An importer and wholesaler sells thousands of items to religious institutions and retailers. Its catalogue was a PDF.
We didn't set up a Shopify store for them. We built a custom store, designed for 7,000 items, with quantity-based pricing. The customer searches the catalogue, fills a cart and sends a quote request. The order goes out as a quote request, not an online payment.
We photographed the first 500 items on site.
This case shows where the line falls. Volume pricing and quotes, for a catalogue this size, are what a store theme doesn't do on its own.
When to choose Shopify, and when to go custom
Shopify is the right choice when your customers pay at the order or on terms, your prices fit in a few catalogs, and you want to connect the store to the rest: shipping, the point of sale in store, the books. Those connections already exist. You pay a subscription and have nothing to host.
Custom is the right choice when the order is a quote, when the catalogue is your customers' working tool, or when your pricing rules don't fit any box. In exchange, there's an application to host and keep evolving.
Neither if you have thirty customers who order by phone and are happy that way. An up-to-date price list and a good form are enough. We'll tell you so.
What we do for stores, from the simplest to the most unusual, is on our page Websites and e-commerce.
