Shopify Influence on B2B Business
Selling to other businesses is a very old procedure, which makes business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce one of the largest growth prospects yet mostly unexplored. Both customers and merchants experience significant friction and are burdened with manual tasks.
For the purpose of facilitating our merchants’ entry into new markets and making B2B as simple as DTC, we launched B2B on Shopify. Businesses can operate both B2B and DTC. With the ability to run both from the same location, it doesn’t have to be difficult.
Friction must go, and creativity must come.
Before Shopify, the B2B sales process was antiquated, according to Ian Leslie, CMO of furniture company Industry West: A customer would log into their trade account, see their trade discount, put $10,000 of product in their cart, take a screenshot of their cart with the discount, send it to a sales rep for a formal quote, and then send the quote to their client for signoff.
But the furniture industry was finally ready to shift. Modern consumers desired self-service purchasing to eliminate all of those procedures, while sales representatives sought a process that allowed them to focus their time on developing new business. As a result, Industry West transitioned their B2B operations to Shopify.
“The initial results are excellent,” Ian stated. “The combination of our marketing and the new site has undoubtedly made trade customers feel more empowered to place larger orders online.” It demonstrates that we are heading in the right way.
Lulu and Georgia, a major furniture brand, turned to Shopify to better their wholesale experience and innovate quickly, which they couldn’t accomplish with their legacy B2B solution.
“We would create custom catalog pages for our customers, and that was a multi-step, multi-team process,” explained Anis Tayebali, Lulu and Georgia’s VP of engineering. Since switching to B2B on Shopify, “this process has been completely consolidated into a few simple steps.”
Shopify is being used by big brands for B2B.
Carrier, Brooklinen, bareMinerals, Laura Mercier, and Kraft Heinz use Shopify for their wholesale companies. Some use our unified admin to connect their B2B and DTC stores, while others run exclusively B2B, and yet others consolidate all of their transactions into a single store.
“I love seeing the looks on people’s faces when we show them B2B on Shopify,” said Mani Fazeli, Shopify’s VP of Product. “When clients witness how Shopify transformed a tedious and manual procedure into something that feels like a personal shopping experience, they get a beautiful ‘aha moment.’ This feels exactly how B2B should have always been done.”
Our ready-to-use wholesale features are seamlessly integrated into Shopify’s admin interface, enabling you to:
- Use Shopify’s strong tools and APIs to customize end-to-end purchase experiences, including catalogs and custom pricing.
- Customize your storefronts effortlessly with pre-designed B2B themes, tailor-made Liquid options, or opt for a headless approach.
- Combine your choice tech stack (such as your ERP) to manage everything from the same back office.