Wholesale prices for tagged customers on Shopify, without a second store

A lot of small Shopify stores end up with a few wholesale buyers almost by accident: a café that wants your coffee by the case, a boutique that resells your candles, a gym that orders shakers in bulk. They shouldn't pay retail, but setting up a whole B2B operation for five accounts feels like overkill. This post walks through the usual options, what each one is good and bad at, and a simple setup based on customer tags. I'm writing it as AppVerix, a small studio that makes Shopify apps (one of them does this, mentioned at the end), but the first part applies whatever you end up using. The four common approaches 1. A separate wholesale store. Clean separation, but you now maintain two catalogs, two inventories (or a sync app), two themes and usually two subscriptions. For a handful of buyers, that's a lot of upkeep. 2. Manual draft orders or invoices. The buyer emails you a list, you build a draft order with a custom discount and send an invoice. It works and costs nothing, but every order goes through you, and mistakes (wrong price, wrong quantity) are easy. 3. Discount codes for wholesale buyers. You create a code and limit who can use it to specific customers or a customer segment. Better than invoices, but buyers have to remember to type the code, codes can leak, and a plain discount code doesn't stop someone from placing a two-unit "wholesale" order. 4. Shopify's built-in B2B features (companies, catalogs, payment terms). This is the full system: company accounts, locations, price lists per catalog, net terms. It's powerful, but it's also a real setup project, and which parts you get depends on your Shopify plan. Check your own admin and plan before you count on it. For many stores the gap is in the middle: you want buyers to log in and just see their price, with a few sensible rules, without modeling companies and catalogs. A tag-based setup that stays simple Customer tags are already in every Shopify plan, so they make a good foundation. Step 1: tag your wholesale customers. In the customer's page, add a tag such as wholesale. If you have tiers, use separate tags (wholesale, distributor). Keep the names boring and consistent; you'll be filtering by them later. Step 2: decide the discount per group, not per product. A single percent off per group ("wholesale gets 30% off") is much easier to maintain than a price for every variant. Then add exceptions only where margins need them, for example 15% on a low-margin collection, or 0% on gift cards. Step 3: set minimums that match how you actually ship. This is the part people skip, and it's where wholesale loses money. Common rules: a minimum order value (so small orders don't eat the discount); a minimum number of units overall; a minimum per product (no "one of each" orders at wholesale price); case-pack multiples (if candles ship in boxes of 12, quantities must be 12, 24, 36...). Write these down before you configure anything. If a buyer asks "why can't I check out?", you want a clear answer. Step 4: make reordering fast. Wholesale buyers reorder the same things. A table where they can type quantities across a whole collection, or paste a list of SKUs and quantities, saves them far more time than any discount. Step 5: tell them they're logged in. A small banner like "Wholesale prices applied" stops a lot of support emails from buyers who forgot to sign in and are seeing retail prices. Things to check before going live Signed out means retail. Tag-based pricing only works when the buyer is signed in to their customer account. Put that in your welcome email to new wholesale accounts. Stacking with other discounts. Decide whether a wholesale buyer can also use a sale code, and test a cart with both. Test with a real tagged account. Create a test customer with the tag, sign in, and run through cart and checkout, including a cart that breaks each minimum. Taxes and invoices. If your wholesale buyers need tax exemptions or special invoices, that's separate from pricing; handle it in your tax settings or with your accountant. If you'd rather not build it yourself Full disclosure: we make AppVerix Wholesale, which does the setup above. You create a group for a customer tag with a percent off, add optional percents for specific products or collections (0 leaves a product out), and set order minimums: amount, units, units per product and case-pack multiples. Signed-in tagged customers get the discount in the cart and at checkout. It also adds a quick order form block (collection table, SKU search, paste "SKU,qty" lists) and a banner to your theme. What it isn't: it's not a company-account or catalog system, and it doesn't set fixed prices per variant. If you need net terms, company locations or per-catalog price lists, Shopify's B2B features are the better fit. Plans start at $19/month with a 7-day free trial (current pricing is on the listing). Whatever you use, the order is the same: tag the buyers, keep one discount per group, set minimums that match your packaging, and make reordering painless. Questions about a specific setup are welcome in the comments.