Ecommerce for Distributors: Overcoming Common Challenges and Maximizing Growth

Business-to-business (B2B) commerce has evolved dramatically throughout the 2020s, thanks largely to innovation and technological advances. The recent surge in industrial manufacturing has unlocked next-gen opportunities for B2B companies. 

Some 71% of distributors say they offer some form of ecommerce, and for those selling online, online sales now account for 34% of total revenue. Conducting bulk sales over the phone or in person has seldom been a very efficient process, and now commerce leaders are reaping the rewards of an increasingly online world. The global B2B ecommerce market is projected to reach $47.54 trillion by 2030.

But B2B poses its share of challenges for distributors. Buyer behaviors are frequently changing. Many B2B platforms are clunky and costly, and picking the right B2B platform is crucial. And while customization is a necessary part of online commerce, the wrong customizations can send you flailing in digital quicksand. 

In this article, we’ll explore best practices in B2B ecommerce for distributors: how to navigate common obstacles, the capabilities necessary to get ahead, and examples of retailers that kickstarted their next chapters with digital distribution. 

Ecommerce for distributors: Why now is a strategic inflection point

Wholesale ecommerce has quietly become one of the largest commercial opportunities in the global economy. Global B2B ecommerce sales reached $30.1 trillion in 2025, dwarfing the consumer retail market and reshaping how goods flow from manufacturers to end buyers. 

Distributors occupy a pivotal position in this landscape: They can either become the digital front door for the brands they represent, or watch as marketplaces and more agile competitors claim that role instead.

North American distributors are seeing this shift accelerate. Those who have invested in mobile B2B storefronts, streamlined bulk-ordering user experience (UX), and modern self-service capabilities are capturing growth that once required armies of sales reps to field phone calls and faxes. The technological infrastructure is no longer optional—it's the baseline expectation for doing business.

What's changed most dramatically is the scale of transactions buyers are willing to complete online. McKinsey reports that more than one-third of B2B decision-makers are willing to spend $500,000 or more in a single transaction through digital channels. While 15% are comfortable making purchases exceeding $1 million online. 

Yet despite this momentum, most B2B buyers remain underwhelmed by their current digital experiences. Forrester finds that more than 80% of global B2B buyers say they are "not very satisfied" with their chosen vendor. 

That dissatisfaction represents a strategic opening for distributors who invest in modern capabilities: headless commerce architectures that adapt to any channel, AI personalization that makes product discovery effortless, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration that keeps pricing and inventory accurate in real time. The gap between what buyers expect and what their current distributors deliver has never been wider—or more actionable.

Key challenges distributors face when going digital

Today, B2B ecommerce looks very different from how it looked five—or even three—years ago. Buyers increasingly want the ability to self-serve, along with the personal touches of direct-to-consumer (DTC) commerce. Fortunately for distributors, innovative and affordable solutions do exist. 

Here are four concepts to guide you:

Changing buyer behaviors and rising expectations

B2B buyers are getting younger: 71% are now millennials and Gen Z, a demographic that grew up online. Digital-native buyers expect streamlined, personalized experiences that resemble DTC. Distributors must meet their rising expectations: 74% of global B2B buyers would switch suppliers if another web store offered a better buying experience—and among US buyers, that rises to 91%.

Outdated legacy platforms and rigid workflows

Many traditional B2B platforms use outdated tech that makes it difficult to tell a brand story, run promotional campaigns, and maximize growth. 

A 2025 survey by Sana Commerce showed that 73% of B2B buyers now prefer to make purchases online, while only 27% prefer in-person transactions. B2B has now been moving online for years, making it more and more important for distributors to embrace emerging technologies and learn how to best present themselves digitally.

Managing complexity: Customization, tech stack bloat, and manual processes

To face contemporary challenges, many platforms designed themselves to be infinitely customizable. This provides some flexibility, but burdens ecommerce leaders with setups that are expensive to get going, expensive to maintain, and often unscalable. Out-of-the-box capabilities are key to the success of a B2B platform: They empower distributors to implement features they need right away, without spending themselves into customization debt. 

Additionally, sellers can feel forced to manage B2B and DTC on separate platforms, leading to inefficiency and bloated tech stacks. But with a unified commerce engine, sellers can combine multiple back offices into one central front office, freeing them to adapt to customer needs and expand into new channels. 

Catalog scale and product discovery friction

Distributors routinely manage tens of thousands of SKUs across different pack sizes, case quantities, and product substitutions. 

Without robust SKU search and faceted search capabilities, buyers are left navigating static PDFs, emailing for quotes, or calling sales reps to locate a single part number. This friction slows ordering velocity and pushes high-intent buyers toward competitors with better digital experiences.

The scope of buyer frustration is substantial. Sana Commerce found that: 

• 85% of B2B buyers experience frustrations when ordering online. 
• 85% of buyers encounter significant barriers because of outdated systems and inaccurate data.
• 75% of them have considered switching suppliers because of those barriers.

The Sana survey shows the root causes for buyer frustration trace back to incomplete product information, unreliable stock visibility, and inaccurate pricing—issues that compound when buyers can't filter or search effectively.

High-intent B2B buyers now expect consumer-grade discovery tools, including: 

• Faceted search that filters by specification, compliance certification, pack size, or lead time
• Saved lists and quick-order forms that streamline bulk ordering UX
• AI personalization that surfaces compatible SKUs and alternatives without manual hunting

What modern B2B ecommerce platforms must deliver in 2026

Today’s distributors need adaptability—without the hassles and high costs that come with trying to innovate under an outdated platform. Shopify empowers you to boost sales with a B2B ecommerce site almost immediately, while building your ideal buying experience. 

Flexible wholesale pricing, product catalogs and customer segmentation

Make the wholesaler-friendly features of B2B ecommerce work for you. 

Shopify provides the capability to:

• Tailor pricing, currency, and store content using our core feature set to meet the diverse needs of your buyers across different markets and channels
• Access unlimited catalogs to personalize pricing and product availability for every customer, in any currency, with support for fixed prices, percentage-off discounts, volume pricing, and quantity rules
• Manage companies, buyers, and locations using profiles and permissions in the admin

Self-serve ordering, bulk-ordering tools, reordering, and account portals

Converting large orders at a frequent clip is a core benefit of B2B ecommerce wholesaling. The buying process should be as frictionless and intuitive as possible. 

Shopify makes it easy to: 

• Streamline operations by enabling customers to place orders with quick bulk-ordering tools and manage their accounts with an intuitive and customizable portal
• Drive a higher order frequency with easy reorders for buyers

Content-rich product data: Specs, documentation, search, and filtering

B2B buyers need more than basic product descriptions—they need technical specs, compliance documentation, and accurate inventory data to make purchasing decisions without calling a rep. 

Distributors win when buyers can instantly find the right SKU with complete, trustworthy information. 

Shopify gives you the tools to centralize, enrich, and surface product data across every B2B touchpoint, including the ability to:

• Store detailed technical attributes—dimensions, materials, voltage ratings, pack sizes, certifications—using metafields and variant-level data management
• Attach compliance documentation (MSDS sheets, OSHA certifications, FDA approvals, installation manuals) through Shopify Files or specialized app integrations
• Enable SKU search and faceted search using the Shopify Search & Discovery app, which turns metafields into searchable and filterable attributes for large catalogs

Adaptive storefronts: Headless commerce and mobile-first B2B experiences

B2B buyers interact with distributors across multiple touchpoints: desktop browsers, mobile devices, field tablets, and enterprise procurement systems. 

Your storefront needs to deliver consistent pricing, inventory, and account data across all of them without maintaining separate platforms. 

Shopify provides flexibility through both its native online store and its headless commerce stack, making it possible for you to:

• Launch quickly with responsive online store themes that deliver mobile-first browsing and ordering—supporting company accounts, customer-specific price lists, and B2B checkout out of the box
• Build fully custom B2B ordering experiences using Shopify's Hydrogen framework and Storefront API for field-sales interfaces, customer ordering apps, or multi-brand storefronts
• Support punchout catalog integrations that connect directly to buyers' procurement platforms while keeping pricing and availability consistent
• Enable mobile B2B storefront workflows like one-handed reordering, barcode scanning for replenishment, and saved carts organized by job or project
• Deliver fast page loads across devices with Shopify's global CDN and caching infrastructure—critical for buyers ordering over warehouse Wi-Fi or cellular networks

Integration and data sync: ERP/OMS/PIM/CRM connectivity and real-time inventory management

Successful distribution in B2B ecommerce requires mastering the ins and outs of your own platform and streamlining your ecommerce channels by setting them up to work with the IT that drives your business. 

Here’s how to build an action-ready framework:

• Integrate with your preferred ERP, order management system (OMS), and content management system (CMS) tools for seamless data, inventory, and product syncing—Shopify has partnered with leading ERP providers like Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Brightpearl to build out-of-the-box integrations and simplify your tech stack.
• Use connectors like Boomi, Jitterbit, and Celigo to build custom integrations with your existing systems.
• Use Shopify’s complete set of APIs, primitives, and developer tools to build seamless integrations with your systems.
• Leverage our best-in-class app ecosystem to add new features and functionality to your store in minutes, without the need for complex code.

Personalization, dynamic pricing, and AI-driven experience

The best B2B sales reps know their accounts inside and out—which products a customer reorders, what pricing tier they qualify for, which brands they're contracted to purchase. 

AI personalization brings that relationship intelligence to every digital interaction, scaling the "rep who knows the account" experience across thousands of customers. 

Shopify enables this through unified customer profiles and native B2B segmentation, including the power to:

• Personalize catalogs, pricing, payment terms, and checkout options using company, location, and buyer-role segmentation built into Shopify's B2B functionality
• Tailor product recommendations, merchandising, and content blocks dynamically with Shopify's real-time personalization capabilities
• Deploy AI-driven "frequently bought together" bundles and contextual product discovery using the Nosto personalization app
• Manage customer-specific pricing, volume discounts, contract rates, and multiple currencies with B2B price lists—no custom development required
• Leverage AI in ecommerce for intelligent search that understands product aliases, part numbers, and industry-specific terminology

Australian fragrance label WHO IS ELIJAH implemented custom pricing across their eight expansion stores. Each region had its own catalog and price matrix, which helped their international wholesale revenue to climb 50% year over year.

“One of the reasons we needed custom pricing for our wholesale customers was that many of them fall into different B2B categories; some have hard margins, and some we can control,” says the brand’s technical leader, Brylee Lonesborough. “The custom catalog capabilities in B2B on Shopify meant we could set individual pricing categories and attach them to the various types of B2B customers we have, so they get a more personalized experience.”

Unified B2B and DTC operations: One platform for multiple channels

Applying the buyer-friendly features of DTC to B2B ecommerce becomes second nature when you’re running all your channels from a unified platform. 

Shopify allows you to:

• Streamline business operations, create brand consistency, and cut development costs by running B2B and DTC on the same platform
• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) with a unified platform that allows you to easily deploy and manage all of your channels from a single admin

Trade-offs and implementation considerations

B2B ecommerce platforms eliminate significant operational overhead for distributors, but every implementation involves trade-offs. 

The technology itself is rarely the limiting factor—most implementation risk comes from data quality, integration complexity, and organizational readiness. Understanding these factors up front helps distributors plan realistic timelines, budgets, and success criteria rather than discovering problems after launch.

Integration complexity, migration risk, and data hygiene

If your ERP integration and data hygiene are weak, your ecommerce project will surface every underlying problem in your systems—in public. Dirty customer records, conflicting price lists, and misaligned SKU structures don't disappear when you launch a new storefront. They become visible to buyers in the form of incorrect prices, missing products, and broken checkout flows.

The integration map for distributors typically spans multiple systems:

• ERP integration handles pricing, contracts, inventory levels, credit limits, and tax codes. 
• A product information management (PIM) or master data system manages product attributes and media. 
• CRM connectivity supports customer hierarchies, territories, and account-level personalization. 
• Shipping, tax, and payment systems need to sync, and some distributors also require connections to external procurement platforms for punchout catalog workflows.

Common migration risks include: 

• Duplicate or incomplete customer records (missing tax IDs, outdated contacts, multiple accounts for the same company)
• Legacy price lists that conflict across regions or business units
• SKU structure misalignment between your ERP and ecommerce platform 

Data hygiene doesn't require perfection before launch—it requires clarity about what's "good enough" for customer-facing interactions. 

A phased approach works well for most distributors: 

1. Phase one cleans and validates data for your top customers and highest-revenue SKUs, ensuring the accounts that matter most have accurate information. 
2. Phase two addresses the long tail of products and accounts after launch, with ongoing data quality checks that flag missing attributes, invalid prices, and outdated documentation. 

Building these checks into regular operations prevents data quality from degrading over time.

Internal readiness and governance

Ecommerce for distributors is as much an organizational change project as a technology implementation. Without cross-functional alignment and clear governance, even well-built platforms become siloed projects that sales teams quietly work around rather than adopt. The technology works—the question is whether your organization is structured to use it effectively.

Before launch, stakeholders across sales, operations, IT, finance, and customer service need to align on fundamental questions: 

• Which order types move to self-serve, and which stay sales-assisted? 
• Who has authority to override catalog restrictions or adjust payment terms for specific accounts? 
• What's the escalation path when a buyer disputes pricing or requests terms outside their contract? 

Documenting these decisions—rather than leaving them implicit—prevents the ad-hoc workarounds that erode system integrity over time.

Any B2B platform you select should offer granular permission controls. 

Look for the ability to:

• Restrict price list management by role
• Restrict catalog editing
• Restrict customer account administration
• Restrict order processing

Contract-specific pricing demands tight controls—unauthorized changes create margin-erosion and customer disputes. Your platform should also support tiered buyer permissions so that purchasing managers, location supervisors, and standard buyers each see only what's relevant to their role.

ROI vs. cost: Time-to-launch, TCO, and maintenance overhead

B2B ecommerce requires real investment, but the economics have shifted dramatically in favor of distributors willing to modernize. The question is how quickly can you capture returns by moving order volume online and automating the manual processes that drain margin?

When evaluating total cost of ownership, look beyond licensing fees. 

Legacy platforms often carry hidden costs, such as: 

• Dedicated hosting infrastructure
• Security patching cycles
• Custom module development for basic B2B functionality
• Developer retainers for routine updates 

These expenses compound as your catalog grows or you expand to new locations. Modern software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms shift this burden—hosting, security, and core feature development become the vendor's responsibility, not yours.

Launch strategy directly affects payback timing. A focused rollout—prioritizing your highest-value accounts and most-ordered products—gets you generating returns faster than a comprehensive migration that delays launch by months.

Post-launch, the difference between platform types becomes stark. With legacy systems, version upgrades consume months of planning and testing. Scaling requires infrastructure decisions and capacity investments. 

Your team spends time firefighting technical issues rather than optimizing the business. Modern platforms handle updates automatically, scale without infrastructure planning, and let you focus resources on merchandising, customer experience, and growth—the activities that actually move revenue.

Popular distributor success stories and when ecommerce makes sense

With the right platform, B2B ecommerce can fast-track you toward your goals and outmaneuver competitors who are stuck on analog. 

Let’s take a look at three examples of distributor ecommerce success stories: 

Carrier reduces site costs by 95%

Carrier is the globe’s leading provider of healthy, safe, sustainable, and intelligent building and cold-chain solutions. While their HVAC solutions are especially recognized, Carrier also provides best-in-class refrigeration and building controls and automation. With varying priorities for each buying audience, Carrier sought a streamlined self-service commerce experience for all their customers. 

After migrating from their previous platform to Shopify, Carrier reduced costs from $2 million per ecommerce website to just $100,000 using Shopify’s composable framework.

“If you want a lower TCO, rapid deployment, and a platform that is growing at a rate faster than you can develop it yourself, then I would encourage you to look at Shopify,” says Steve Duran, associate director of global commerce at Carrier. 

Filtrous boosts their conversion rate 27% 

Filtrous is a multimillion-dollar laboratory supply company that serves businesses from small labs to renowned institutions like UCLA. Filtrous wanted to build a modern wholesale experience—with a faster checkout and streamlined order fulfillment—to scale and stand out. However, an outdated ecommerce platform added unnecessary complexity to their B2B order process. 

“BigCommerce lacked the flexibility for us to fully control our site, and managing the customer experience was time-consuming,” says Yin Fu, director of ecommerce at Filtrous. 

After migrating to Shopify, Filtrous boosted their conversion rate by 27%. Additionally, Filtrous saved 12 hours of manual work per week for their teams by using B2B on Shopify’s self-serve purchasing platform. 

“Thanks to an exceptional self-serve experience and features like Shopify Flow, the team can spend more of its time selling,” says Yin.

Brooklinen unlocks their staff’s potential

Since 2014, Brooklinen has surged from Kickstarter success to a trend-setting DTC company offering premium bedding products to digitally-native customers. They’d always taken B2B orders, but through time-consuming, ad-hoc methods. To continue growing, Brooklinen sought to scale their B2B operations as customers placed more large, wholesale orders. 

“When Shopify announced they were going to be releasing B2B functionality, it was really natural for us to just opt in,” says Elizabeth Bell, director of product management at Brooklinen. 

Since teaming with Shopify Plus, Brooklinen staff now spend 80% of their time working with customers instead of back-end admin. “B2B on Shopify allows us to engage with these customers in a new way—kind of like a typical D2C customer but for B2B,” says Elizabeth.

How to evaluate and choose a B2B ecommerce platform in 2026

Choosing a B2B ecommerce solution requires focusing on the features and workflows that actually matter to distributors.

A structured evaluation process—grounded in your specific requirements rather than vendor marketing—helps make sure the B2B ecommerce platform you choose matches your business needs. 

Platform feature checklist for distributors

Vendor demos tend to showcase best-case scenarios. A checklist keeps your evaluation grounded in the functionality you'll actually use daily. 

Organize your assessment around six capability areas, scoring each platform against requirements specific to your business operations:

Catalog and product data

• Structured attributes for technical specs and compliance data
• Native SKU search and faceted filtering that performs well at your full SKU count
• Support for documentation attachments like spec sheets, material safety data sheets (MSDS), and manuals

Pricing and contracts

• Customer-specific price lists and contract pricing
• Tiered volume pricing and discount rules
• Unit-of-measure flexibility (case, pallet, each) that maps cleanly to your ERP
• Real-time sync with ERP pricing updates

Checkout and payments

• Purchase order capture and PO fields your customers actually use
• Credit limit enforcement and net payment terms
• Approval workflows for orders above certain thresholds
• Tax exemption handling for qualified customers

Integrations

• Prebuilt connectors for your ERP system and other core business tools
• API access and webhooks for custom integration requirements
• Reliable sync for inventory, pricing, and order data with clear error-handling

Experience and channels

• Mobile-responsive B2B workflows for buyers and sales reps
• Punchout catalog support where your customers require it
• Multilocation account structures that mirror how your customers buy
• Localization support if you operate across multiple regions

AI and analytics

• B2B-relevant product recommendations and merchandising tools
• Account-level reporting that surfaces at-risk customers and growth opportunities
• Purchase-pattern visibility that helps your sales team prioritize outreach

Questions to ask your vendor/implementation partner

The right questions reveal whether a vendor or implementation partner actually understands distributor complexity, or just speaks in buzzwords. 

Ask for specifics that speak to the real-world scenarios you'll face:

On data and integrations

• How have you handled complex ERP integration for distributors similar to us?
• Can you show examples where you synchronized contract-specific pricing and inventory by location?
• What's your approach when our product data isn't clean? Do you help with data-quality remediation, and how does that affect timeline and cost?

On B2B-specific functionality

• Can you demonstrate bulk-ordering UX and SKU search using a catalog similar in complexity to ours?
• How does your platform support multi-user accounts, approval workflows, and customer-specific catalogs out of the box versus through customization?

On AI and personalization

• What AI personalization capabilities are included natively, and what customer data do they rely on?
• How do you support AI governance?
• Can we control where and how AI is applied in pricing, advanced search, and recommendations?

On scalability and roadmap

• What happens when we add a new brand, product line, or expand to another region, and how does that affect complexity and cost?
• What features on your roadmap are specifically aimed at wholesale ecommerce and distributors?

On success and ROI

• What adoption and ROI metrics do your most successful distributor customers track?
• What's a realistic timeline for us to see a meaningful shift in order volume from offline channels to B2B self-service ordering?

Partners who can answer these questions with concrete examples from comparable implementations—rather than generic capabilities—demonstrate the experience needed to navigate distributor-specific challenges.