Articles · Platform & Pricing
How we built Shopify wholesale pricing for a real trade buyer
Published
This is a real client's build, not a theoretical explainer. Black Sand is an FMCG distributor selling full container loads of drinks and snacks, and we have built and run their gated Shopify store since 2022. Their commercial numbers are not ours to publish, and we say so plainly rather than working around it.
Why one price on every product does not work
Black Sand came to us in 2022 with no storefront of any kind. Trading happened over WhatsApp: a buyer asked what was available, somebody quoted a price, and the deal closed in a chat thread. That works until the business has to scale past what one person can quote by hand.
A public catalogue with one price on every product was never going to replace it. Prices in a commodity trade are negotiated and confidential, moving by buyer, by volume tier and by market, so the store had to gate that information rather than publish it.
How the pricing and the cart actually enforce it
We built the store on standard Shopify rather than Plus, with the gating and the pricing built on customer tags: a visitor sees the brands, and an approved buyer sees their own catalogue and their own prices. Pricing varies by tier, by group, by individual buyer and by market, with headroom built in for currency movement, the Japanese yen being the sharp case, because an exchange-rate swing can undo a quoted margin before a container has shipped.
The cart enforces the trade minimum directly, rather than leaving it as a note on a price list a buyer has to remember. A container order carries its own minimum, and the checkout applies that rule itself: fall under it and the buyer finds out before checkout, not after.
The qualifying funnel that decides who sees what
Each landing page, per brand and per market, carries a qualifying form: company name, email, WhatsApp number, country, and how many containers the buyer imports in a year. The qualification is the point. A buyer importing none and a buyer importing five hundred are not the same lead and should not get the same reply.
One submission fans out four ways: to WhatsApp where the sales team already works, to the CRM, to the sales inbox, and into a Shopify account waiting on approval. The tag applied at approval is the same tag that unlocks the pricing, so qualifying a buyer and giving them a catalogue are one decision rather than two.
The rest of the account
Alongside the build we run Black Sand's SEO, their Google Ads and their Meta Ads, and conversion-rate-optimisation work on the same store. The two paid channels do different jobs: Google catches buyers already searching for container prices, and Meta puts the brand in front of importers before they have started looking. We also consult on their wider Shopify strategy as they grow.
The full write-up, including the loyalty programme built for people buying by the container, is on Black Sand's case study. We cover the same gated-pricing discipline as a service on Shopify B2B and wholesale, and the buyer-side version of this story on B2B and trade.
What we cannot tell you
Black Sand's commercial numbers are not published here, or on their case study. They have not authorised any, and that stays their call rather than ours to work around. What we can say is what we built and what we still run: four years into the engagement, with the store, the search work, the paid channels and the conversion work all live.
Common questions
- Can Shopify show different prices to different wholesale buyers?
- Yes, gated by customer tag rather than a discount code. We built Black Sand’s catalogue and pricing this way: a visitor sees the brands, and an approved buyer sees their own catalogue at their own prices, which vary by tier, group, individual buyer and market.
- Do you need Shopify Plus for wholesale pricing?
- Not always. Black Sand runs on standard Shopify rather than Plus, because the gating is built on customer tags, not on a feature that requires the higher plan. Whether your volume and complexity actually need Plus is worth checking honestly before anyone quotes you a migration.
- Can Shopify enforce a minimum order quantity at checkout?
- Yes, at the cart itself rather than as a note on a price list somebody has to remember. Black Sand sells by the container, so we built the cart to check the minimum directly: a buyer under the threshold finds out before checkout, not after spending time on an order that was never going to complete.
- Do you run conversion and marketing work for B2B stores, or only build them?
- Both, on the same account. We run Black Sand’s SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads and conversion-rate-optimisation work alongside the build, and consult on their wider Shopify strategy as they grow. A gated trade store still has a funnel, from the qualifying form to a checkout built for containers rather than a single item.
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