When we built United Textile on Shopify, it was never meant to work like a normal online store. The buyers were businesses. They ordered by the case, they came back for the same items, and they did not want retail shoppers seeing wholesale prices. So the job was to set up a Shopify wholesale store that hid prices from the public, let real buyers register, and made reordering quick. Here is how I think about that setup, and what I would tell anyone building one.
Can you hide prices on Shopify?
Yes, and it is the first thing most wholesale sellers search for. There are a few ways to do it, and which one fits depends on your plan and how much control you want:
- Theme edits. Wrap the price and the add to cart button in a check for a logged in customer, often tied to a customer tag. Guests see a line like Log in to see pricing instead.
- Apps. Wholesale and lock apps in the Shopify App Store can hide prices, lock pages or whole collections, and show different prices to tagged customers. Less code, one more monthly bill.
- Shopify’s own B2B features. On plans that include them, company accounts, catalogs and price lists handle this natively.
Whatever you choose, test it logged out, logged in as a retail account, and logged in as an approved buyer. I have seen setups where the price was hidden on the product page but still showed up in search results, quick view popups or the collection grid. Check every template that renders a price, not only the main product page.
Buyer registration and approval
Hiding prices only works if you control who gets in. For a B2B storefront I want registration to collect what the sales team actually needs: business name, contact, phone, address, and any resale or tax paperwork the business requires. A plain Shopify signup does not ask for most of that, so you either extend the form or use a registration app that adds fields.
Then someone approves each account. In practice that meant a tag on the customer record once the business checked out. The tag is what unlocks pricing. I would keep the approval step manual. Automatic approval sounds efficient until a competitor signs up to read your price sheet.
Write a clear message for the waiting period too. A buyer who registers and sees nothing has no idea whether it worked. A short note saying the account is being reviewed and when to expect an answer saves a lot of phone calls.
Case packs and order minimums
Wholesale buyers rarely buy one unit. They buy a case of twelve or a pack of six, and the store should make that obvious. The cleanest approach I have used is to make the case the product, or the variant. The title or variant name says the pack size, the price is the case price, and the description repeats the count so nobody is surprised.
Where items can be bought in different pack sizes, variants work well: one product, several pack options. Order minimums are a separate question. If you need a minimum dollar amount or quantity, that usually takes an app or the B2B features, since basic Shopify checkout does not enforce it on its own.
Collections built for reorders
Retail stores organize around browsing. Wholesale buyers mostly already know what they want. So I organized United Textile’s collections the way buyers talk about the product: by type, by use, and by the categories they reorder from. Fewer clever names, more plain labels.
A few things that help repeat buyers:
- Search that works on item numbers and style codes, not only product names.
- Consistent titles, so similar items sort together and look alike in a grid.
- A collection for new arrivals, because regulars want to see what changed since their last order.
- Clear stock status, so buyers do not build a big order around something that is out.
Content for people who already know the product
Product copy for a B2B store is different. These buyers do not need to be sold on what a towel is. They need specs: dimensions, material, weight, color options, pack count, care details. I keep descriptions short and scannable, with the same fields in the same order on every product. When a buyer is comparing three items, consistency matters more than personality.
Do not skip SEO just because prices are hidden. Product and collection pages can still rank and still bring in new businesses looking for a supplier. Titles, meta descriptions, clean URLs and image alt text all matter. The difference is that the call to action is register for wholesale pricing, not buy now.
Coupons and seasonal promos on a wholesale site
Wholesale customers respond to promotions too, they just look different. Instead of a flashy retail sale, it is usually a discount code for approved accounts, a seasonal push on certain categories, or a reminder to stock up ahead of a busy season. I ran promo calendars across both stores at Universal Wholesale, and the wholesale side worked best when the offers were simple and sent directly to the buyers who could use them.
Where to start
If you are setting up a Shopify wholesale store this week, start with the price gate. Pick your method, then log out and click through every page type to make sure no price leaks. Once that holds, build the registration form and approval tag, and only then spend time on collections and copy.