Most legacy commerce platforms treat wholesale and direct-to-consumer (DTC) as two different businesses. Two systems, two inventories, two customer databases, and often a multi-month, high-budget project just to stand up a business-to-business (B2B) channel at all. For CPG brands running both, that split creates operational drag: manual reconciliation, inconsistent stock counts, and a wholesale buyer experience that feels bolted on rather than built in.
Shopify changed that with native B2B functionality across their Plus plans, and it is worth understanding what "native" covers before assuming you need a custom B2B build.
Company profiles, tiered or program-based pricing, bulk ordering, net payment terms, and draft order workflows are all covered within Shopify's native B2B offering, without custom development. A founder-led brand adding its first wholesale accounts can use the same native tools as a portfolio brand running national distribution. Neither has to reinvent the workflow as the wholesale side grows.
As part of a brand refresh, Barrel relaunched BIOLYTE on Shopify and built wholesale functionality directly into a single store experience. DTC subscriptions and wholesale now run through one inventory system and one customer view, instead of two disconnected platforms that required manual syncing to stay accurate.
Native B2B on Shopify Plus covers most standard wholesale-alongside-DTC configurations well. For more complex environments, deep custom pricing logic, highly bespoke order workflows, or requirements closer to an enterprise B2B platform, Salesforce and Magento's B2B tools currently offer more depth in specific areas.
The right approach is to scope your requirements in detail against what is available natively first, and have the conversation about what additional requirements are necessary for your business and why. From there, we can determine how to extend functionality with custom features once the gap is clear.
B2B and DTC unification is exactly the kind of decision that is cheaper to build correctly during a migration than to retrofit later. Our Shopify Migration Playbook for CPG brands walks through how to map your wholesale requirements before you start evaluating agencies or timelines.
Download the free Shopify Migration Playbook here.
