With a host of eCommerce solutions in the market people generally have too many platforms to compare with respect to so many required features. Hosted solutions like Shopify is mostly chosen by merchants with relatively simpler business models. But some amazing apps in the App store can enable your store with almost any feature you might have in mind. Many merchants with the plan to operate on both B2B and B2C model sets up two separate Shopify stores. But in this article we will show you, how using one app you can operate both the models and cater to your B2B as well as B2C customers.
Whenever we visualize having an ecommerce store on B2B model we think of features like this –
- Customer group/level specific discounts
- Catalogue/Category specific discounts
- Minimum Order Quantities
- Volume discounts
Wholesale Pricing by Supple can enable your Shopify store with all these above features. So if you are planning to sell to your end customers and Wholesalers/Distributors, you can do it all from the same store.
Now, let’s look at these features in detail.
Customer group specific price –
You can have multiple customer groups like Distributors, Wholesalers and Retailers or may be different levels of B2B customers like – Gold level, Silver level and Bronze level. This app will allow you to configure different discount percentages for these individual groups. Multiple tags have to be defined for the groups and then you have to define the discount percentage associated with each customer tag.
Customers associated with the customer tag Retailer will log into your store and see the prices of products with the respective discounts as defined from the back end.
Wholesale customers after logging in will see a discounted-stroked off price.
Now, you might be wondering in an actual scenario how would a customer get associated with a tag automatically. This has to be done manually. Best practice would be to put up a page where you can notify that people interested to enroll as a Wholesale customer would need to send a mail to xyz@store.com mail id with company name, website, tax ID etc. for verification. So a customer will register following the standard steps and then he will send a mail to your mentioned email id. Then based on your judgement you can associate the customer with the Wholesale tag.
Catalogue/Category specific discounts –
Categories or Catalogue is referred to as Collection in Shopify. If you have multiple collections of products, you might not be willing to provide the same percentage of discount to products of all collections. You can define discount percentages specific to customer groups and collections as well.
So Wholesale customers might get 25% discount in products from Jewelry collection and 50% discount on Apparel.
Minimum Order Quantities –
Primary characteristics of a Wholesale customer will be that he will buy in bulk. So you can specify a minimum order quantity for a customer group and you can even define it specific to collections also. For example – as shown in the below screenshot Wholesale customers can only be eligible for any discount if they place an order with Beanies in numbers equal or greater than 12 units. Similarly, for Jackets it will be 6. So if they place order for these items in lesser number the group discount for Wholesale customers will not be made applicable on the Cart.
The restriction can also be put on the total no. of units of any product in the Cart or the total Cart value irrespective of any discounts. As in the screenshot shown above – Gold customers will only be eligible for the customer group discounts if the no. of units is 6 or more in cart. Wholesale customers will only be eligible for the customer group discounts if the cart value is 100 USD or more. (100 USD -calculating based on standard non discounted prices)
The above screenshot has been taken in a scenario when a wholesale customer has tried placing an Order with two Beanies when the following are set up at the backend –
Customer group discount for Wholesale customers for Beanie collection – 40%
Minimum cart total value for wholesale customer group discount to be applicable: $100
Each product in Collection Beanies for wholesale customer group discount to be applicable: minimum 3
So the order total is 48 USD instead of the discounted price of 28 USD (40% discounted) as the cart value is less than 100 USD and the no. of units is less than 3.
Volume Discount –
In B2B scenarios in order to lure customer into buying more quantity often upsell offers are given. You might like to give an additional discount based on any of the following –
- Total Cart value
- Total no. of units in cart
- Particular no. of units of a product.
You can even define discount ranges based on the values. For example, you can offer extra 5% discount on a cart total of 1000 USD, 8% discount on a cart total of 2000 USD and 15% discount on a cart total of 5000 USD.
You can also define the upsell message that will show in the cart before your checkout.
These are features offered by the standard app, but if required SuppleApps can customize and add new features to the app like making specific catalogues visible to specific customer groups or hiding prices of products to not logged in customers.
The Wholesale pricing app seems to be far better than other similar apps in the Shopify market place. Unlike other apps it doesn’t create duplicated variants to maintain separate prices for different customer groups. The app has a current price of 24 USD per month but it does have some restrictions on volume and some of the features require a one-time activation fee beyond the monthly fee.
Limits –
- Up to 500 monthly wholesale orders: $24 /month
- Up to 2,000 monthly wholesale orders: $49 /moth
Unlimited orders: $99 /month
Activation fees –
- Setting up first theme: free
- Setting up additional themes: $25
- Advanced Minimums: $99 (one-time)
- Volume Discounts: $99 (one-time)
If you plan to use this app on Shopify and you are also looking for B2B integration with your backend ERP system we have the right solution for you.
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