How to sell wholesale on Shopify — a step-by-step guide

You don't need a second store, a sales team, or Shopify Plus. You need wholesale prices retail customers can't see, rules that protect your margin, and paperwork buyers take seriously. Here's the playbook.

Step 1 — Decide your wholesale economics first

Before any app or theme change, answer three questions on paper:

• Discount depth: wholesale typically sells at 40–60% off retail (a 2–2.5× markup for your buyer). Work back from your landed cost — if retail is $30 and your cost is $8, a $13.50 wholesale price (55% off) still leaves healthy margin.
• Minimums: a $250–$500 minimum opening order and case-pack quantities (multiples of 6/12/24) keep fulfillment sane and filter out bargain hunters.
• Tiers: two or three is plenty — e.g. Retailer (40% off), Stockist (50%, $500 min), Distributor (custom, terms available).

Step 2 — Create a wholesale application flow

Don't hand out wholesale prices to anyone with an email address. A short application — company, contact, tax ID, what they sell — does two jobs: it screens resellers from retail customers fishing for discounts, and it captures the information you need for invoicing later. With TAGTrade this is a registration page on your storefront feeding an approval queue; approving a buyer tags them in Shopify automatically.

Step 3 — Set up group pricing (don't use discount codes)

Discount codes leak — they get shared, stacked and forgotten. Customer-group pricing keys the price to who is logged in: collection-level percentages for breadth, fixed SKU prices for negotiated items, quantity breaks for volume. Make sure whatever you use enforces pricing at checkout, not just on the product page.

Step 4 — Put your catalog where buyers already are

Your existing product pages are your wholesale catalog. Approved buyers should see their price beside retail, the case quantity, and a volume-pricing table. For bigger or negotiated orders, an add-to-quote flow beats forcing a 400-unit order through a retail cart.

Step 5 — Offer payment terms (carefully)

Terms unlock serious accounts — purchasing departments often can't buy without Net 30. Protect yourself with three habits:

1. First order always paid upfront.
2. Start small: a credit limit around 2× their average order.
3. Automate the chasing — reminders before the due date, on it, and after. Tracked receivables with an aging dashboard turn "who owes me what" from a spreadsheet into a glance.

New to terms? Read Net payment terms, explained.

Step 6 — Look like a real supplier on paper

Wholesale runs on documents: quotes, proforma invoices, statements. A numbered, branded proforma PDF gets forwarded to a purchasing manager and approved; a screenshot of your cart does not. Monthly statements make reconciliation painless for your buyer's bookkeeper — and buyers reorder from suppliers who are easy to do business with.

Step 7 — Launch quietly, then scale what works

Start with five friendly stockists before announcing anything. You'll find the rough edges — a confusing case quantity, a missing SKU in the price list — with people who'll tell you. Then put a "Wholesale" link in your footer, add the application page to your nav, and mention terms availability in your line-sheet emails. Track two numbers monthly: average order value per tier, and days-to-paid on terms orders.