Some customers may have negotiated pricing on specific products. For example, a customer might receive a standard 50% discount on all items in the store, but that same customer might also receive a 65% discount on one particular item.
Tiered pricing is common among wholesale stores. Customers can be placed in groups for a standard discount. For example, Group A may get 60% off, while Group B may get 50% off.
As a wholesaler, you'll (most likely) want full control over who can access your store. You can send customers an email with an account invite (sent manually) or you can ask customers to register themselves for approval. Your ability to do so can be controlled in the Shopify admin.
Once a customer has submitted an application to access the wholesale site, merchants can see the customer is awaiting approval before being allowed in.
If a customer registers themselves, the merchant will need to approve their access. You can be alerted via email the moment someone applies for access, so you can take a look at the application straight away.
Once a new wholesale account is approved (or not), customers will receive an email indicating the merchant's decision.
Many wholesalers offer NET 15/NET 30/NET 60 payment terms, which means the customers can pay every for all their orders every 15, 30, or 60 days instead of at the point of sale. You can do this on a "per customer" basis.
Customers can have the choice to pay for each order at the time of checkout, or they can place an order without paying at the checkout–their bill is simply due at the negotiated timeframe.
Note: You decide when the order ships. So you can wait for payment before shipping.
Many wholesalers offer their customers a shipping discount, and many choose to provide this discount to all customers for all products. You can choose to apply this discount to all customers, or create this discount on a "per customer" basis.
Sometimes, your wholesale customers are in close proximity to your business and they can send their own truck to the warehouse to pick up the order. If this is the case, you can provide them with the option at checkout. This can be an offer you provide to everyone, or just select customers who you know are close enough.
Providing an easy route for customers to reorder their last purchase can save a lot of time and energy. (Also translates nicely for repeat buyers.)
A brick-and-mortar store can purchase a retail display, whereas as online retailer has no use for one.
You can also choose to visually display your products on this page. The order details will appear in the sidebar on the right.
Rather than a customer flowing through the traditional order process of a consumer (home -> category -> filter -> product -> add-to-cart -> cart), you can create a single page of products that acts as an order form.
By indicating what type of store your customer owns, they can have different products offered to them. For example, if a customer owns a brick-and-mortar store, you can decide to offer them a retail display. (An online store would have no need for one.)
As a wholesaler, you may want to approve all orders before they ship, and you will want to inform the customer that the order won't be shipped until it's approved. In this case, the customer will submit an order, but won't actually checkout. They'll receive a message indicating their order is subject to review. If it's approved, you will then send an invoice to the customer to checkout.
When the customer owns a retail store, promotional content can be helpful to them. Items such as print material or photos can be added for your customers to download.
Many times, you might want your customers to know about existing promotions, or any new products that become available. a page dedicated to this cause can come in handy.
