Shopify recently hosted a very informative B2B webinar, and it was packed with insights for brands looking to grow their wholesale and B2B channels. As more merchants move their B2B operations onto Shopify, the platform has been rolling out powerful features to help companies manage complex catalogs, pricing, and checkout flows. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the session:
Companies and Locations
Shopify B2B revolves around two core objects: Companies and Locations.
- Company: The root object that holds all B2B context.
- Location: A child of Company, and the anchor for all B2B orders.
Catalogs, payment terms, and taxes are tied to a Company Location, not just the Company itself. This structure makes it easier to manage merchants with multiple locations, each with different needs.
Unified Checkout for B2B
One of Shopify’s biggest strengths is the Unified Checkout. With B2B, you can still leverage Checkout UI Extensions (like apps such as Checkout Blocks). This means your wholesale buyers can enjoy the same flexible, optimized checkout experience as your DTC customers.
Storefront Customization
B2B doesn’t have to be a cookie-cutter experience. Using Liquid variables (like customer.b2b) and Customer Account UI Extensions, you can tailor your storefront so that B2B buyers see pricing, products, and experiences unique to them.
New Customer Accounts Are Required
Every B2B solution must be built using Shopify’s New Customer Accounts. This shift unlocks more customization and a more consistent buyer experience, but it also means legacy account setups won’t cut it for wholesale.
Best Practices for Development
Shopify called out a few “do’s and don’ts” for building B2B solutions:
- Do: Use the Company primitive to handle customer data.
- Don’t: Avoid relying on customer.tags for B2B logic.
- Do: Use Catalogs and native pricing tools to set discounts.
- Don’t: Don’t hack things together with discount apps or Functions when the built-in tools are designed for the job.
Complex Catalog Management
For many B2B merchants, catalogs can be huge. We’re talking tens of thousands of potential product combinations, which can easily exceed Shopify’s native 2,000 variant limit per product. In these cases, you’ll need custom solutions such as:
- Treating variants as discrete products.
- Creating product bundles.
- Leveraging third party apps built for advanced catalog management.
Why This Matters Now
This webinar was especially timely for us at Ambaum as we gear up for the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in November. A large portion of the merchants we work with are in the automotive and parts space, and these B2B features are exactly what they need to scale effectively on Shopify Plus.
If you’re exploring how to set up or optimize B2B on Shopify, now is the time. The platform has matured significantly in the past year, and these tools make it possible to run even the most complex wholesale operations natively
