If you’re a Shopify merchant, you may be thinking: “eCommerce and B2B? Those two things don’t go together!” Newsflash: you’re wrong. Selling B2B wholesale has a lot of upsides—many profitable upsides—for your eCommerce business.
In case we lost you at B2B wholesale, let’s take a step back for a second. Wholesale B2B means wholesale business-to-business, or when one company sells products in bulk to another company at a discount. This is as opposed to selling DTC, which is when a business sells directly to consumers. Most Shopify stores fall into the latter category.
However, just because you’re a DTC business doesn’t have to mean you have to limit yourselves to selling only to consumers. Many eCommerce businesses are starting to turn towards B2B wholesale for increased revenue streams, including Public Goods and Bark. In fact, B2B wholesale reached a $698 billion market value in 2022. Read on to learn the 6 top benefits of selling B2B wholesale.
Benefit #1 of eCommerce Wholesale: Higher AOV
This benefit is pretty straightforward: selling wholesale means selling items in bulk, which means more sales—and revenue—per order. Even at a discounted rate, one wholesale order alone will amount to so much more than an order from an individual customer.
Benefit #2 of eCommerce Wholesale: More Sales, Generally
If your B2B client likes what you sold them, they’ll likely keep coming back for more—and will do so in a consistent, dependable manner. In SaaS terms, this wholesale customer would be more or less synonymous with an account, and revenue from this account would pretty safely be accounted for as recurring. This is beneficial not only from a financial standpoint (i.e. revenue you can more safely rely on month after month), but also from an operational point of view since you’re better able to manage product demand.
So, not only are you making more money with every wholesale purchase, but you’re also making more in a recurring manner.
Benefit #3 of eCommerce Wholesale: More Revenue Streams
Selling wholesale to other businesses can open up an entirely new revenue stream for you and your eCommerce business. Just think about it— these businesses are essentially entirely new, untapped customer bases. Even if you’re able to win just a fraction of this potential client pool, that’s still extra money in the bank that had never even existed for you before. (Call it magic, or simply call it smart business strategy)
Benefit #4 of eCommerce Wholesale: Lower Customer Acquisition Cost
Since your wholesale customers are buying more with every purchase, that means that your acquisition cost—aka, the cost of acquiring new customers (typically through marketing spend)—goes way down. Why? Because each wholesale customer is a higher-value customer than an individual constumer. This means that the return on your marketing spend is far greater. In other words, you’re getting more bang for your buck.
Benefit #5 of eCommerce Wholesale: Lower Operational Costs
Since your order volume is going up by selling items in bulk, your cost-per-unit when buying products from manufacturers typically goes down. Also, since you’re shipping more items to fewer customers, costs associated with shipping usually go down, too. Decreased expenses mean increased profit at the end of the day for you and your eCommerce business.
Benefit #6 of eCommerce Wholesale: A Better Buying Experience For Wholesale Customers
For businesses looking to purchase items in bulk, wholesale eCommerce is also a godsend. Why? Because it’s SO much more convenient that the traditional approach to wholesale. Oftentimes, these businesses are used to messy processes that involve numerous back-to-back emails and phone calls. With wholesale eCommerce, they get time back in their days while also enjoying a more automated wholesale buying experience that’s almost entirely in their control.
In Conclusion
Convinced that you should expand into B2B wholesale? Great! But hold up for just one second—obviously, there are several steps you have to take before seeing profits from this extra revenue stream actually hit. First, you need to come up with a wholesale strategy. Next, you have to implement this strategy. And while we unfortunately can’t help you with Step 1, we’ll gladly help you tackle Step 2.
Implementing B2B wholesale on your eCommerce website is made easy with Wholesale Pricing Now. With this app, you can encourage your best customers to buy more with custom and tiered pricing — all without a separate store. With an easy install and compatibility with most themes, you can sit back and let your site do the selling.
But don’t take our word for it—hear words of praise from One Hydraulics, an eCommerce store distributor and integrator of hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical and automation equipment.
“This app is what you need if you are looking to sell B2B on net terms. We are a Shopify Plus store and this app is still better. Compatibility with the Bulk Discounts Aow app from the same developer was also huge for us. Using these two apps we can give discounts and B2B checkout for our logged in customers,
while still offer discounts for the non-logged in customer. Support could not be better.”
So what are you waiting for? Implement B2B wholesale in you eCommerce store today with Wholesale Pricing Now.
