With 80% of B2B commerce expected to take place online by 2025, it’s time your business-to-business ecommerce got a digital upgrade your entire sales team will appreciate. If you already have a Shopify account you recognize the need to sell on multiple sales channels like both online Direct to Consumer and wholesale. Selling online only is difficult to scale, and wholesale is becoming a viable channel to increase consumer discovery and lower acquisition costs. But to stay organized and prevent overselling either to end consumers or valuable B2B customers you need to centralize your inventory with a common infrastructure. We get that you likely don’t want to remove Shopify as a DTC solution, but existing B2B Commerce apps found on the Shopify App Store that overlay ontop of your Shopify store are inadequate for B2B workflows and buyer needs.
Shopify B2B Shortcomings
At it’s core, Shopify is meant to be a DTC solution, in fact it makes 70% of its revenue from Shopify Payments with it’s white labelled solution with Stripe. Because of this, the company’s business model is heavily reliant on collecting credit card payments and often provides little flexibility to handle more complex B2B payments and orders which have different workflows then consumer transactions. Managing multiple storefronts comes with its own challenges and likely additional app or integration costs.
We also know that processing orders for consumers and wholesale customers have different needs with respect to payments and workflows. Shopify B2B Apps also miss a critical component of any organization that wants to grow, which is sales reps both inside and those outside on the road calling on accounts. Your biggest wholesale customers are busy, may not have time to login, so using sales reps as an extension of your team makes sense and is a value add for B2B buyers.
A Better Way
This is where ShipEarly’s B2B Commerce solution comes in. The only dedicated B2B platform for brands/distributors and reps that still allows orders, and fulfillments to be processed through your existing Shopify D2C infrastructure. With our service, retailers and their staff can login view real-time and future available inventory, with account specific pricing to place orders either on account with terms or via credit card.
We also know that orders submitted by sales reps or accounts directly can be subject to change. Before any payment is processed we give your team the ability to modify the order and then process for payment. ShipEarly also gives full visibility to the order lifecycle to all relevant parties. This includes fulfillment status, payment status, and the ability to communicate across companies and teams on orders so your sales team can focus on selling rather than handling customer inquiries.
ShipEarly’s platform also recognizes you may have different catalogues that need to be shown to different customers or under different promotions. You can customize every aspect of the dealer/rep experience to prevent inaccuracies in your marketing promotions or programs. So whether this is booking or pre-season order functionality or just a regular order a dealer would like to place for an item that is currently out of stock we have you covered.
So if looking to improve your overall B2B Commerce experience for your most loyal and stable customers, feel free to check out our B2B Commerce or reach out for a demo where we can better understand your needs, explain our platform and see if we can help.
