How to Start Selling Wholesale on Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you already have a Shopify store and want to start selling wholesale, you don't necessarily need a second store or Shopify Plus.

As of April 2026, Shopify’s native B2B tools (companies, catalogs, and Net payment terms) are available on paid plans. That is a solid place to start for a handful of buyers.

For many businesses, the goal is simpler than a full rebuild: keep selling normally to retail customers while giving approved wholesale buyers different prices, larger ordering options, and payment terms—then add credit controls when unpaid invoices start stacking up.

Here is a simple way to get started.

1. Decide who can buy wholesale

First, decide who should have access to your wholesale program.

You may want retailers, distributors, resellers, or other businesses to apply before they can see wholesale pricing.

Your regular customers can continue shopping at normal retail prices. Only approved buyers need access to the wholesale side of the business.

2. Set your wholesale pricing

There are several ways to price wholesale products.

You might give all wholesale customers a percentage discount, such as 20% off retail. You may also have different pricing levels for different buyers.

For example:

You can also offer quantity-based pricing, where the price becomes lower as the buyer orders more.

3. Set minimum quantities and order rules

Wholesale orders are usually larger than retail orders.

You may want customers to order at least 6 or 12 units of a product, purchase by the case, or meet a minimum total order amount.

Setting these rules upfront helps avoid manually checking every wholesale order.

4. Make large orders easy

A retail customer may buy one or two products. A wholesale buyer might order dozens of products and variants at once.

Making them visit every product page is not ideal.

A Quick Order page lets buyers enter quantities for multiple products from one place and submit the entire order together. This can make repeat ordering much easier as well.

5. Decide how wholesale buyers will pay

Not every wholesale customer needs payment terms.

New customers can pay when they order. Trusted buyers might receive Net 15, Net 30, or Net 60 terms—which Shopify can assign natively on paid plans.

If you offer credit, the next step is enforcement: set credit limits and keep track of unpaid invoices. A buyer with a large overdue balance shouldn't automatically keep placing unlimited Net Terms orders. Native Net Terms set the due date; they do not, by themselves, block over-limit or overdue buyers. See Shopify Net Terms 2026: native vs credit.

6. Keep retail and wholesale in the same Shopify store

One common misconception is that adding wholesale means turning your entire store into a private B2B store.

It doesn't have to work that way.

Your normal products can remain available to everyone at retail prices. Approved wholesale buyers can receive their own pricing and wholesale ordering experience after they log in.

You can also keep certain products available only to approved wholesale customers if needed.

7. Automate the parts that become difficult

You can manage your first few wholesale customers with native Shopify B2B and a spreadsheet.

But as the business grows, emailed orders, re-keyed POs, and manually tracking who owes what become the bottleneck—not “how do I show a wholesale price.”

That is where a Shopify wholesale operations app helps.

Wholesale Engine is built around that workflow: approved buyers, tier and contract pricing, quantity rules, Quick Order, Net Terms with credit limits, invoices, overdue freezes, and a buyer portal—on the same Shopify store.

The idea isn't to replace retail or native B2B. It is to add the credit and ops layer when Net Terms alone are not enough.

Start simple

You don't need to build the perfect wholesale operation on day one.

Start with a few buyers. Decide how you want to price your products, set some basic ordering rules, and make it easy for those buyers to place larger orders.

As the wholesale side grows, you can add different pricing levels, customer-specific catalogs, payment terms, credit controls, and other automation.

The important part is getting the basic wholesale buying experience working without making your existing Shopify store more complicated than it needs to be.

Try Wholesale Engine free on Shopify — up to 3 approved wholesale buyers on the free plan.

Related: Wholesale operations for Shopify without app-stacking.

Try Wholesale Engine on Shopify