If you're launching a DTC brand, Shopify has long been a no-brainer: it’s the industry leader in providing everything you need operationally so that you can focus on what you sell.
B2B, though, has been a different story until now. The changes announced Wednesday are a huge milestone in Shopify’s commitment to B2B commerce: they’re not playing around.
It’s much easier to have ops use one unified platform than two.
Even the best B2B tools for Shopify have often had to rely on workarounds within a DTC-focused universe.
This has been the dealbreaker for many brands wanting to use Shopify for B2B over the years. Without the ability to easily split out data by channel, some brands have seen the introduction of a B2B channel turn the metrics they’ve used to run their DTC business unintelligible, leaving them scrambling for hacky workarounds.
If you’re expanding into a B2B channel after starting DTC, you quickly realize that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for wholesale buyers.
These stores were already secondary to the main store and were challenging to maintain. Merchants can now easily sell B2B using their existing Shopify store. You can now extend your theme for wholesale. App developers can leverage theme-level App blocks and App embed blocks to enrich the b2b experience and the post-checkout experience.
The addition of Company profiles allows brands to set net payment terms, save tax ids, and set billing addresses that are different from shipping addresses: these are needs that are ubiquitous in B2B (and non-existent in DTC). This is a great signal to brands and developers that B2B is no afterthought for Shopify.
Brands will be able to apply new B2B-specific filters to their reports and have a clear view of their wholesale business when using one storefront. The new B2B filters will be available on all reports under the following sections: Sales, Orders, Profit Margin, Customers, and Finance.
Until now, the only way to do this was to create a wholesale product or use a 3rd party app. Now, every wholesale relationship can have different pricing or discounts added based on volume.
The focus on B2B creates a virtuous circle from the perspective of brands who’ve grown up on Shopify’s DTC offering and face the challenge of extending into B2B as they mature. The latest updates will further encourage developers to consider the wholesale experience as they build apps and themes, making it more appealing for brands to grow their B2B channel within Shopify.
In a time of change—with macroeconomic uncertainty, declines in ad effectiveness, and an inventory glut—building a B2B channel has become more appealing than ever to DTC brands. We think Shopify’s release today strikes a major blow toward keeping these sorts of brands on Shopify. We’ve heard brands weigh the pros and cons of turning to higher-priced marketplace solutions for access to their wholesale-specific features. One way to interpret today’s news is that Shopify has heard this too, and acted.
At Streamlined, we’re glad Shopify is focused on making itself the best option as its brands expand to the B2B channel. Our purpose-built solution integrates seamlessly with Shopify to help brands get paid as quickly and efficiently as possible by their wholesale customers while worrying as little as possible about invoicing.
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