How Wholesale Ecommerce Adds Value to the B2B Market

While wholesale customers have a distinct shopping pattern from retail customers, the factors driving the strategic advantages of B2B ecommerce are remarkably similar. These factors, such as integration with enterprise systems like ERP, not only help manage inventory and streamline operations but also provide real-time data for informed decision-making, thereby enhancing the efficiency of wholesale ecommerce.

Automated order processing that speeds up transactions with reordering capabilities and customer relationship management (CRM) that engenders customer satisfaction are also key benefits of ERP in wholesale ecommerce.

The key differentiators are pricing and quantity.

Because wholesale ecommerce focuses on bulk purchases, they expect to negotiate discounts based on order volume. Consumers typically are less price-sensitive because they're buying for themselves.

With manufacturing shipments eclipsing retail trade sales, Statistica estimates B2B ecommerce online sales in the US to reach $3.128 billion in sales value by 2027.

Consequently, wholesale ecommerce businesses will want to tailor their offerings and interactions to cater to the B2B market and its huge customer base.

In this article, we examine the modern B2B buyer, the advantages of ecommerce for wholesalers, and what qualifies as the best wholesale ecommerce platform.

Wholesale vs. retail B2C ecommerce

The primary difference between wholesalers and retailers is that wholesalers deal in bulk, often selling directly to other businesses: manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and even other wholesalers. Their bulk purchasing allows them to resell to the end consumer. Retailers typically sell directly to consumers on a smaller scale. 

However, there are other differences between the two, including:

Pricing.

Because wholesalers buy in significant quantities, ensuring they get the lowest price possible is integral to their ultimate success. The less they pay for each product, the more money they eventually make. 

It may sound simple, but the difference of a few dollars when dealing in significant quantities of products can make or break a small business's profit margin. 

On the other hand, while pricing is valuable for retail, they inherently have more flexibility because they don't have to buy in bulk.

Marketing.

For wholesalers, revenue growth is a crucial goal. Ecommerce presents a significant opportunity to achieve this. By embracing ecommerce, wholesalers can enhance their revenue potential. 

Wholesalers operate on a delicate balance of profitability, selling in bulk and at a discount. An online platform can be a game-changer, allowing wholesalers to reduce or eliminate unnecessary costs while expanding their online presence.

Because the customer base is ever-changing — and hopefully expanding — retailers must spend significantly more on marketing, which affects the bottom line and company motivations. 

Competition.

The competition level any organisation faces depends on the products and method of selling. 

Wholesalers can choose from a large array of products and markets to target. As long as businesses are interested in bulk purchases, wholesalers will have a market. 

Individual retailers deal with significantly more competition than wholesalers, with most markets saturated with other competitors. Unless you're going to market with an entirely new product, the journey will likely be more complex, and the potential revenue will be more challenging.

Location.

For retail organisations, especially those with brick-and-mortar locations, location is critical. Retailers must be where consumers are, whether on a high-traffic street or inside a mall — all of which can be expensive. 

Wholesalers typically do not have this issue, as they do not sell into specific locations or markets but to different businesses.

Fulfilment.

The primary focus of wholesalers is warehousing, shipping and fulfilment. This focus is their bread and butter and represents where they make their money. Wholesale organisations that can consolidate and streamline their fulfilment processes are the ones that will find greater success. 

Retailers have different worries, as fulfilment is just one aspect of their business needs. Their primary focuses lie elsewhere with marketing and branding.

Types of wholesalers

It is essential to understand the distinction between the different types of wholesalers available, whether you want to gain entrance into the wholesaler market or simply want to know how it works.

The following are the three wholesalers that businesses are most likely to see and work with: 

Merchant wholesalers.

Merchant wholesalers align with the traditional business model. They buy large quantities of products from the manufacturer and then sell them directly to businesses. 

These wholesalers typically have significant history, experience and knowledge within the market. 

Partnering with merchant wholesalers is a smart move – they're industry veterans who know the ins and outs of the business and can help your ecommerce company grow.

Agents/brokers.

In the wholesaler industry, agents and brokers negotiate deals with manufacturers directly for merchant wholesalers or as independent contractors.

Their roles are self-explanatory — they want the best price for the wholesaler they're working with. Their expertise comes from an understanding of the financials of the wholesaler market.

Sales and distribution.

Sales and distribution teams typically work out of a manufacturer's office. They are putting together wholesale deals, from calculating the values of their products to selling them. 

Because of their direct connection with manufacturers, they are often less trusted than the other two types of wholesalers in crafting equitable sales plans.

Ways wholesalers can benefit from using ecommerce

Historically, the B2B sales process predominantly relied on salespeople building long-term relationships with prospects, even for more straightforward deals. 

However, the rise of ecommerce has changed the status quo, providing many benefits to B2B companies that move sales to an online store.

Meet buyers where they are.

Wholesale ecommerce businesses aren't bound by physical location. They can reach customers all around the globe via their website, social media and various marketplaces. 

Because of this omnichannel experience, your customers have more opportunities to find you as they move between devices and channels. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of all B2B sales interactions will occur digitally.

Selling wholesale online is an excellent opportunity to create brand awareness if you want to expand into new markets and reach a previously unreachable customer base without investing in a physical location.

Potential to grow revenue.

The opportunity to increase revenue drives most companies — wholesalers are no different. By leveraging the power of ecommerce, wholesalers can significantly improve their revenue potential. For instance, TYGRIS saw a 138% increase in revenue after implementing an ecommerce solution, a testament to the optimistic future of wholesale ecommerce.

Wholesalers deal within the fine line of profitability by selling in bulk and at a discount. By using an online platform, they can lower or even eliminate unnecessary costs while expanding their online presence.

Too often, wholesalers find themselves held back by archaic methods of communication or outdated, unresponsive online sites. With the right website design, wholesalers can provide intuitive, interactive ways for prospective buyers to explore their inventory, identify what they want to purchase and expedite the process.

 Consider TYGRIS, an online wholesaler of cleaning and protective solutions. For years, the company sold primarily through email or over the phone. Combined with a shortage across the UK for sanitising products, TYGRIS found the sales process increasingly challenging. 

By working with BigCommerce to craft a specialised website, TYGRIS was able to clean up the sales process and reach customers much more effectively. TYGRIS sales orders grew by 99% in the first year.

Because TYGRIS' ecommerce website provides stock levels, pricing and product information, prospective customers can easily find what they are looking for and confidently place orders. Repeat customers can look up their order history, increasing customer lifetime value (CLV).

Automate manual processes.

Using an ecommerce platform to sell goods is a way to automate time-consuming manual processes and complex workflows. With the right platform, technology manages tasks such as checkout, billing and inventory management with apps. 

Employees can devote resources to other parts of the business, such as digital marketing or customer service. Additionally, sales teams can spend time working with larger, more complex accounts instead of handling order processing for bulk purchases they can complete through a self-service model on the website.

Through automation, B2B customers can request quotes directly from the storefront. They can add items to a cart and submit an RFQ with just a few clicks. Automation funnels these leads to a central location for sales and customer service to manage.

Depending on the setup, the rep can quickly reply with a quote linked to the B2B cart, allowing the customer to complete their order online without further human intervention. These quotes are generally stored and accessible via the customer's account portal. They might still submit the PO manually, but if set up appropriately, your CSM or sales rep should be able to convert that quote to an order quickly. 

Streamlining this process, where the customer and sales staff can go from quote to order in a few clicks, removes one of the most tedious daily manual tasks for both parties.

Improve data-driven decision-making.

When you have a website, you can get more access to granular levels of customer data and insights, such as:

The pages and products are viewed the most each day/week/month.

• Number of visitors who clicked on a specific coupon.

• The average length of time spent on a webpage. 

• Percentage of users who bounced from the site vs. those who moved throughout it.

This data can inform your marketing campaigns, product mix, pricing, and/or discount structure. Combined with the feedback from sales representatives and customer service, you can better understand your customers' needs.

Enhance customer relationships.

Wholesale buyers are often on the go. Many don't spend time in front of a desktop or laptop computer. Instead, they rely on mobile devices to find product information while travelling or on a job site. 

Wholesale ecommerce stores allow them to research options and purchase from their mobile phone. The move to the online marketplace has made shopping more convenient for B2B buyers who know what they need and have negotiated wholesale prices since they can go through the processes without involving sales.

For example, Tectran is an industry leader in air, hydraulic and electrical components. 

Since pivoting to ecommerce with a partnership with BigCommerce, Tectran has experienced a 30% increase in average order value, a 98% increase in orders and a 157% increase in revenue. Additionally, the company has seen a rise in new customer sign-ups and more customers completing transactions online instead of faxing or emailing their orders.

By making the move online, Tectran has a much more active relationship with its customers, allowing them to better understand their wants and needs and know how to serve them best.

Choosing a wholesale ecommerce platform

Once you plan to digitise your wholesale business, it's time to select a wholesale ecommerce platform. Look for one where the user experience and customer journey are well-defined. Remember, even though you're a wholesaler, you want to engage and delight your customers.

Here are some features and capabilities to consider:

Meets your budget.

When selecting an ecommerce B2B platform, you need to ensure it fits within your budget and your long-term strategy. 

Here are some potential questions to ask:

• What's the total cost of setting up the site? 

• Are there any out-of-the-box integrations that will help you cut costs?

• What is the difficulty level of maintaining the site? 

• What will be updated for you vs. what will you have to update manually? 

Are you responsible for managing security and upgrades?

Extensive integrations.

The days of monolithic systems are gone. Nowadays, your ecommerce platform must be user-friendly and able to integrate with other software systems to create a seamless customer experience. 

Ensure the ecommerce site you choose has versatile APIs that allow you to integrate with your existing business systems, including ERP, CRM and PIM.

SEO and content marketing capabilities.

Like every other business, wholesale buyers use the internet to search for products. 

Quality content driven by SEO optimisation is essential to help shoppers find your site and decide once they're there. Your wholesale ecommerce website should enable you to deliver SEO-optimised content that answers the precise questions wholesale customers are asking.

Additionally, once they're on your site, a concise landing page — from descriptions to technical specifications — can make them confident they're getting the exact products they need.

Catalogue browsing and search functionality.

When you have an extensive catalogue with numerous SKUs, you must ensure customers can find the wholesale products they need. 

One solution is to offer multi-faceted search capabilities, allowing shoppers to filter by certain product features — e.g., size, weight, colour — to narrow their search results.

Another option is to use AI-powered search technology, like the one from BigCommerce Partner Klevu, to ensure buyers find what they're looking for.

"Shoppers using search are your highest intent buyers. They know exactly what they are looking for, and it's important that they find just that. So using an NLP based, or natural language processing based search technology, will ensure relevant search results — no matter the complexity of the query,” said Ford Crane, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Klevu.

Giving consumers more ways to view your products will expedite their shopping and open them to more significant revenue opportunities. 

Payment versatility.

Reducing friction is increasingly crucial for B2B businesses. How businesses accept payments can profoundly impact the success of their ecommerce channel overall, and the payment gateway and payment options you choose make all the difference.

B2B payments are not as simple as punching in a credit card number or logging into a PayPal account — buyers might not want to put a forty-thousand dollar order on a credit card. By understanding what payment methods are available, from traditional credit cards to Buy Now, Pay Later systems, organisations can add flexibility to their purchasing process.

Examples of wholesale ecommerce websites

Wholesalers must keep up with the times because customer needs and technology constantly change. An ageing ecommerce platform can't deliver the goods. The wholesale websites featured below were looking to expand and scale. They needed cutting-edge technology and flexible APIs to get the job done. Ultimately, that's why they all chose BigCommerce.

AS Colour. 

Case Study: AS Colour

A long-lasting, high-quality product is the cornerstone of AS Colour's business. It's only natural that they would seek out an ecommerce platform that matches their high expectations for form and functionality. An ageing platform led them to reevaluate their ecommerce technology. With DTC and B2B on one platform, BigCommerce made global expansion a breeze.

Their latest performance metrics tell us they made the right choice: 51% increase in visits, 39% increase in orders and 45% increase in revenue since they upgraded their wholesale ecommerce website.

The Beer Bat.

Case Study: The Beer Bat

Nothing grows faster than a good idaea. The Beer Bat hit a home run with its speciality mugs, sold out at launch. They needed a solution that could scale the business because they wanted to grow a wholesale side along with retail. BigCommerce allowed for limitless scalability. Our B2B  Edition, with its B2B sales and functionality, made wholesale order management a breeze, and  Multi-Storefront made international expansion possible.

Toolsaver.

Case Study: Toolsaver

A family business since 1965, since moving to BigCommerce, they have gone from strength to strength, providing the highest-quality service to tool dealers across the UK. Having experienced functionality gaps with other vendors, they found connectivity and flexibility with our open API architecture.

One app that met its goal of reaching more customers with omnichannel selling is Feedonomics, a full-service data feed management platform. The app manages every order in the same way, whether the order originates from an online marketplace like Amazon or Google Shopping.

Ballard Industrial.

Case Study: Ballard Industrial

Ballard Industrial works to supply tangible solutions for its B2B and DTC audiences, expanding into a 45,000-square-foot warehouse, serving marine, manufacturing, and industrial customers across the country. Driven by "a deliberate intention to resolve and respond to our customer's problems," Ballard Industrial knew it needed an ecommerce platform to do the same for them.

How BigCommerce helps wholesale brands

Wholesale brands selling B2B through ecommerce often need more functionality and resources than your average B2C brand. B2B and retail consumers display different shopping characteristics unique to their buyer experiences. For example, consumers may trade off costs for a personally satisfying experience. Where a B2B wholesaler likely prioritises product information and volume discounts over brand image.

Based on our experience with wholesale brands, here are the areas that most impact their end users.

Native enterprise functionality.

BigCommerce's B2B Edition is designed for the enterprise wholesaler. Product variants and price lists are built in regardless of the types of buyers or segments served. Volume discounts and manual orders are just a click away. Your customers' information is secure behind SSO and API login to access the B2B buyer portal.

Trusted technology.

Experience enterprise-grade security with ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and PCI DSS Level 1 certifications — the exact rigorous requirements trusted by major financial institutions. Running on Google Cloud Platform, you'll have all the capacity you need to handle surges in traffic, ensuring your customers can deliver to their customers during peak times. With our 99.99% uptime guarantee and Cloudflare's global CDN, your customers enjoy lightning-fast loading times whether they're buying from New York, London or Singapore.

Modern buyer experience.

Give your B2B buyers the same intuitive digital experience they might enjoy as consumers with straightforward navigation and a streamlined buyer experience. Customised pricing and product access for different customer segments make it easy for buyers to find what they need at rates that meet their unique business requirements.

Partner-supported functionality.

Streamline your wholesale operations with seamless integrations across your business systems — from ERP and OMS to EDI connections. Offer procurement teams punchout capabilities while giving buyers flexible financing options. Simplify complex decisions with automatic tax calculations and real-time shipping rates for parcel and LTL freight at checkout. Our extensive network of trusted technology partners delivers the robust B2B functionality your growing business demands.

Maintenance, updates and more.

Our platform has the potential for a lower total cost of ownership compared to other options thanks to included updates, security patches, and hosting.

The final word

The wholesale industry is at a turning point. As more B2B buyers expect digital purchasing options, having a solid ecommerce presence isn't just nice to have — it's becoming essential. Success in today's market requires meeting buyers where they are, whether on their mobile phones at a job site or behind a desk, comparing bulk orders.

The good news is that switching to digital can be manageable. With the right platform and strategy, wholesalers can create an online presence that matches their offline capabilities and enhances them through automation, better data insights and improved personalised experiences. Those who embrace wholesale ecommerce will position their business to grow and adapt to changing buyer needs.

FAQs about wholesale ecommerce