B2B ecommerce has a reputation for being clunky: PDF order forms, manual quoting, account managers fielding emails for orders that should take two minutes to place. Shopify has spent the last few years making that excuse harder to justify. Between native B2B features on Shopify Plus, third-party wholesale apps like SparkLayer, and the platform's flexibility to build custom buyer portals, the gap between B2B and DTC ecommerce has closed considerably.

The brands below have all built wholesale operations on Shopify that actually work: self-serve ordering, tiered pricing, company accounts, and reorder flows that reduce the manual overhead on both sides of the transaction. They come from food and drink, apparel, industrial equipment, and consumer goods — the common thread is that each one treats the wholesale buyer experience with the same seriousness as their retail store.

Tony's Chocolonely

Tony's Chocolonely sells ethical chocolate to consumers and corporate partners across six markets. What makes their Shopify Plus implementation notable is the ChocoPortal: a custom B2B application built by agency Ask Phill that sits on top of their Shopify store and manages tiered pricing, volume discounts, and a "Pay by Invoice" option for high-value corporate accounts. The ChocoPortal gives large B2B clients access to ladder pricing based on their segment and order size, with the flexibility to manage bulk orders and settle payment terms outside of the standard checkout flow.

The wider Shopify implementation is a unified commerce setup: DTC, B2B, and reseller operations share the same platform across all six markets. That means a product update, pricing change, or new SKU goes live across all channels simultaneously rather than needing to be maintained in multiple systems. For a brand operating across Europe and the US with a complex network of retail partners and corporate gift buyers, that operational clarity matters as much as the customer-facing features.

Pricing is handled confidently rather than apologetically. Tony's Chocolonely does not run constant discount mechanics on their DTC store, and the B2B portal reflects the same premium positioning: volume pricing is tiered and structured, not a race to the bottom.

Brooklinen

Brooklinen sells premium bed linen DTC and wholesale to boutique hotels, Airbnb operators, and hospitality businesses. Their B2B Shopify Plus store is a clean example of a brand that has recognised the wholesale buyer is a fundamentally different customer from the retail buyer and has built accordingly: a separate B2B storefront within the same Shopify admin, with company-specific pricing, product access, and payment terms baked in at the account level.

The core challenge in hospitality wholesale is repeat ordering. A hotel buying 200 sets of sheets does not want to browse a collection page and add items to a basket. Brooklinen's portal handles this with a reorder flow that surfaces previous order history, letting buyers recreate past orders in a few clicks. Account managers can still configure custom pricing and product access at the company level, which means the portal works equally well for large hotel chains on negotiated contracts and smaller boutique properties buying at standard wholesale rates.

What Brooklinen gets right is the baseline: they automated the manual back-and-forth that was costing their team time on every order and replaced it with a self-serve experience that still supports custom terms where the relationship demands it. The result is a B2B operation that scales without a proportional increase in headcount.

Teapigs

Teapigs is a UK-based premium tea brand selling to retail stockists, cafes, and hospitality businesses alongside their DTC operation. Their wholesale channel runs on Shopify Plus with SparkLayer layered on top: a B2B platform that installs directly on the existing Shopify theme rather than requiring a separate wholesale store, which means trade buyers get the same branded experience as retail customers with a dedicated pricing and ordering layer on top.

The results are concrete. After launching the SparkLayer B2B channel, Teapigs recorded a 33% increase in average order value among wholesale customers. The operational improvement was equally significant: trade orders that previously fed through once-per-day CSV exports to their fulfilment centre now land directly in Shopify and ship immediately. For a perishable product sold to cafes that need reliable restocking, removing that delay matters commercially.

The store itself handles multi-channel well. Retail customers see the full DTC experience; trade buyers log in and see their account-specific pricing, minimum order quantities, and order history without any visible seam. SparkLayer's approach of preserving the existing Shopify setup rather than replacing it is worth noting: Teapigs kept their theme, apps, and DTC configuration entirely intact.

Carrier

Carrier is a global HVAC, refrigeration, and building controls business that operates at a scale most Shopify merchants will never approach: 180 countries, dealer and distributor networks covering over 500 locations in the US alone. They are on this list because of what they achieved by moving their dealer and distributor ecommerce to Shopify Plus rather than continuing to build bespoke systems.

Before Shopify, standing up a new ecommerce site for a specific market or product line took Carrier between nine and twelve months and cost up to two million dollars per site. On Shopify, that dropped to thirty days and one hundred thousand dollars. The underlying architecture is a shared Shopify accelerator called OneCommerce, which covers around 80% of the shared requirements across all Carrier ecommerce experiences and lets individual markets or brands launch on top of an already-proven foundation.

For B2B specifically: Carrier's dealer and distributor ordering channels now operate through Shopify Plus with company accounts, custom catalogues by customer segment, and contractual pricing at the account level. Order fulfilment cycle time in existing B2B channels dropped from fourteen days to three, and sales increased 40% year on year. The lesson for B2B merchants is not the scale but the architecture: a composable, shared foundation that reduces the cost and time to launch each new channel or market.

Kraft Heinz

Kraft Heinz moved their wholesale distributor operations to Shopify to consolidate what had been a fragmented mix of platforms and manual processes into a single system. The commercial reality for a food and beverage business of their size is that distributors are placing the same types of orders repeatedly: specific SKUs at contracted prices, with regional availability rules, compliance documentation requirements, and invoicing terms that vary by account.

Their Shopify B2B implementation handles all of this through buyer portals: distributors access custom catalogues, see their contracted pricing rather than a standard price list, and manage reordering without involving a sales team for routine transactions. Automated workflows handle bulk order processing and regional availability, which removes a category of manual effort that at Kraft Heinz's scale represents a significant overhead.

The broader value is data accuracy. When distributor orders flow through a system rather than via email or fax, the order data is clean, the inventory signals are reliable, and the reporting gives the commercial team visibility they previously did not have. That is not a Shopify-specific lesson, but Shopify is the platform that made it operationally viable for a brand of this complexity.

Kulani Kinis

Kulani Kinis is an Australian swimwear brand that made the move to B2B on Shopify Plus after their wholesale business was growing faster than their manual processes could handle. The result: a self-serve wholesale storefront covering their full catalogue of over 800 products, built specifically to serve smaller stockists who want to browse, compare, and order without going through a sales call.

The growth numbers are the clearest measure. Their wholesale customer base grew more than three times after launching the Shopify B2B portal. The portal attracted new wholesale buyers from around the world who were using the self-service functionality to place orders, a category of customer who would not have engaged through the previous manual process at all.

The implementation is a good example of the right tool for the right buyer segment. High-value wholesale accounts still work with account managers and get bespoke terms. The Shopify B2B portal is optimised for the long tail: smaller stockists placing smaller orders regularly, who benefit from the self-service experience and represent a segment that was previously too labour-intensive to serve profitably. The combination of both channels in one Shopify admin makes the distinction simple to manage operationally.

Nature's Path

Nature's Path makes organic cereals and snacks sold through retail chains and independent health food stores worldwide. Their wholesale channel runs on Shopify with SparkLayer, serving a distributor and retail partner network that has very different ordering needs from their DTC customers.

The food and drink B2B context is specific: retail buyers and distributors are ordering to planogram quantities, restocking on cycles tied to promotional calendars, and need to manage their accounts across multiple locations. SparkLayer's standing order functionality handles this by allowing trade customers to set up recurring orders that process automatically, which removes the administrative burden of manually placing repeat orders on a fixed cycle.

The Shopify integration means order data flows directly into their fulfilment operation without a manual export step, which is particularly important for a product with shelf-life constraints. Nature's Path also uses SparkLayer's sales rep ordering functionality, letting their trade account managers place orders on behalf of stockists during in-store visits rather than following up with paperwork afterwards.

Andar

Andar makes full-grain leather wallets, bags, and carry accessories, and ships over a million handcrafted products from their base in Arizona. Their wholesale channel serves online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores wanting to carry Andar products, with a password-protected trade portal built on Shopify that surfaces wholesale pricing and ordering for approved stockists.

What Andar's wholesale implementation illustrates is how a premium DTC brand can extend into trade without compromising the retail experience. The DTC site conveys the brand story well: material sourcing, craftspersonship, and the patina that develops with use are front and centre. The wholesale portal serves a different buyer who has already decided on the brand and needs to understand margins, minimum order quantities, and restock timelines rather than brand narrative.

The product quality argument is as important in wholesale as it is in DTC. Andar products carry a meaningful margin for stockists because they sell at a premium price point and hold their value well. A well-built wholesale portal that makes the commercial case clearly and removes ordering friction is the right commercial infrastructure for a brand where the product sells itself if you can get it in front of the right buyers.

Death Wish Coffee

Death Wish Coffee built their business on the claim of making the world's strongest coffee, and then proved it could scale. Their Shopify Plus operation spans DTC subscription, retail, and B2B channels including corporate offices and multi-location cafes buying in volume. After integrating their ERP system with Shopify Plus, Death Wish Coffee saw 200% year-on-year top-line growth and expanded into major grocery chains.

The B2B channel serves organisations buying coffee in bulk for office kitchens, hospitality businesses, and independent cafes stocking single-origin and blended products under the Death Wish brand. Wholesale accounts access net-30 payment terms, volume pricing, and dedicated account management for higher-volume buyers. The Shopify Plus and ERP integration is central to why this works: when a large office account places a recurring order, the stock reservation, fulfilment trigger, and invoicing all happen in connected systems rather than being manually coordinated.

Death Wish Coffee's B2B approach is merchant-first: they recognise that a cafe owner ordering coffee beans is making a business decision based on margin, consistency, and reliability, not brand storytelling. The buying experience reflects that, with streamlined reordering and clear wholesale pricing rather than the lifestyle-led content that anchors their DTC store.

Snyder Performance Engineering

Snyder Performance Engineering manufactures performance automotive parts and grew from a home repair operation into a wholesale supplier serving dealers and distributors nationally. Their move to Shopify B2B brought their wholesale ordering process online for the first time in a meaningful way, launching a self-serve trade portal and integrating real-time inventory tools that reduced back-office processing work by 25%.

The automotive parts wholesale context has specific demands: buyers need to know immediately whether a part is in stock, what the lead time is if it is not, and how it fits their vehicle application. Snyder's Shopify implementation surfaces real-time inventory at the product level rather than forcing trade buyers to check availability by phone or email. That single change removes the most common reason a wholesale buyer leaves the ordering process before completing a purchase.

The back-office efficiency gain is the metric worth focusing on. A 25% reduction in manual processing work in a wholesale operation means either fewer staff hours spent on administrative tasks or the same team processing significantly more orders. For a manufacturing business where margins are tighter than in consumer goods, operational efficiency is a direct commercial lever.

How these stores compare

Brand	Niche	Price Point	Shopify Standout
Tony's Chocolonely	Ethical chocolate, corporate gifting	Mid to premium	Custom ChocoPortal with tiered B2B pricing and Pay by Invoice
Brooklinen	Premium bed linen, hospitality	Mid to premium	Separate B2B storefront with reorder history and company-level terms
Teapigs	Premium tea, cafe and hospitality	Mid	SparkLayer B2B on existing Shopify Plus — 33% AOV increase
Carrier	HVAC, industrial	High	OneCommerce accelerator: 30-day site launch vs. 9-12 months previously
Kraft Heinz	Food and beverage distribution	Varies	Distributor portals with custom catalogues and contracted pricing
Kulani Kinis	Swimwear, apparel	Mid	Shopify Plus B2B self-serve — 3x wholesale customer growth
Nature's Path	Organic food, FMCG	Mid	SparkLayer standing orders and sales rep portal for retail buyers
Andar	Premium leather goods	Premium	Password-protected trade portal with wholesale pricing for approved stockists
Death Wish Coffee	Specialty coffee	Mid	ERP integration with Shopify Plus — 200% YoY growth
Snyder Performance	Automotive parts, manufacturing	Mid	Real-time inventory for trade buyers — 25% back-office reduction

What these stores get right

Self-serve first, account management second. Every brand above has built the portal so that routine orders require zero manual intervention. Account managers exist for complex negotiations or large accounts, not for taking orders that a buyer should be able to place themselves.
Company accounts with the right pricing architecture. Tiered pricing by segment, volume discounts, contracted rates, and minimum order quantities are configured at the account level rather than manually calculated for each order. The buyer sees the price relevant to them without asking.
Reorder mechanics that reflect how wholesale buyers actually work. Most wholesale orders are repeats. Surfaces that show order history, allow one-click reordering, or support standing orders remove the biggest source of friction in an established wholesale relationship.
Unified operations, not separate platforms. The strongest implementations run DTC and B2B from the same Shopify admin. Product updates, stock levels, and fulfilment all flow through one system. Managing two separate platforms is an operational overhead that compounds over time.
Treating the B2B buyer as a business, not a discounted consumer. Payment terms, invoice-based checkout, bulk order tooling, and company-level account history signal that the portal is built for a commercial buyer. These are not features bolted on: they are the core of the wholesale experience.

If your B2B or wholesale operation is still running on email, spreadsheets, or a portal that was built ten years ago, the gap between what you have and what Shopify Plus can deliver is likely much smaller than you think to close. Talk to us about B2B Shopify builds or see our Shopify development work.

10 Best B2B and Wholesale Shopify Stores