Wholesale ordering that doesn't go through a salesperson
A large South African apparel retailer ran a serious wholesale operation entirely through its sales team — organisations emailed or phoned to ask what was available, what it cost and whether they could have it. We built a Shopify B2B store alongside the existing DTC business so those accounts could order for themselves.
- Wholesale ordering ran on email and phone calls into the internal sales team, with the rules held in people's heads rather than in a system.
- We built on native Shopify B2B — company accounts, catalogue access, price lists and payment terms — sitting alongside the existing DTC storefront.
- The store now serves institutional accounts, including several large schools, without a salesperson in the middle of every order.
The brief
The retailer runs one of the larger Shopify Plus stores in the country, selling direct to consumers and supplying organisations that buy in volume.
The wholesale side worked. That was never in question. The problem was that it worked through people: a buyer emailed or phoned the sales team to ask what was in stock, what their price was and whether an order could be placed. For the accounts that need a relationship, that attention is the product. For everything else, it was the same conversation repeated, and it was consuming the time of the people best placed to grow the accounts that mattered.
What we found
Wholesale is not a price list. Every order carries rules about who the customer is, what they're allowed to see, what they pay and what terms they're on — and almost none of those rules existed anywhere except in the sales team's heads.
That was the real work. Before anything could be built, the rules had to be written down: which organisations are approved, what each of them can access, which products are available wholesale at all, how pricing and minimums apply, and where Shopify Plus hands off to Sage Intacct.
What we built
Native Shopify B2B on Plus, rather than a bolted-on wholesale app or a second storefront to maintain.
The B2B store now serves institutional buyers, including several large schools, placing orders directly against their own catalogue and terms.
Where it lands
The point was never to replace the sales team. It was to take the repetitive part of their week off them, so the accounts that need a relationship get one and the rest can simply order.
For a retailer at this scale, B2B isn't a website feature. It's the difference between growing the customer base and growing the sales team.
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