Business Insights
Scaling B2B Operations to Effectively Serve B2C Customers
Scaling from B2B to B2C unlocks growth by adapting marketing, fulfillment, and technology to meet consumer needs.
3 min read
B2B eCommerce Platform for Your Wholesale Customers
B2B eCommerce platform for wholesale: your catalogue behind a login, with each trade customer’s own prices on it. They place the order themselves, it reaches Qoblex ready to confirm, and nobody retypes an email or a phone call.
Portal order
Harbour Deli
| Item | Qty | Price | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | 48 | £8.50 | £408.00 |
| Sea salt | 36 | £4.00 | £144.00 |
| Glass jars | 20 | £15.00 | £300.00 |
Wholesale ordering without the email in between
Trade customers already know what they want. What they lack is your current prices, your current stock and a way to order outside office hours. The portal gives them those, and gives you an order you only have to check.
01Price
Each trade customer sees their own prices and products
The portal prices everything from the price list on the customer’s record, in that list’s currency, and uses the portal’s default list for anyone without one. Collections, built by filtering on tag, type, brand or supplier, decide which products appear. Customer groups give a set of accounts their own collections and minimum order.
- A price list per customer, in its own currency
- A default price list for everyone else
- Collections by tag, type, brand or supplier
- Customer groups with their own collections
- Exact quantities, or only In stock
Portal · Harbour Deli
Trade price list
| Item | Price | Stock |
|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | £8.50 | In stock |
| Sea salt | £4.00 | In stock |
| Glass jars | £15.00 | In stock |
Another customer sees their own list
02Order
They place the order, you confirm it
Checkout enforces your minimum order quantity and value, emails the customer a confirmation and notifies the staff you chose. The order reaches Qoblex as a quote, with the customer, their prices and the portal’s warehouse already on it. Nothing is reserved until you turn it into an order, so you see every portal order before stock is committed to it.
- Minimum quantity and value, per portal or group
- Confirmation emailed to the customer
- Notification emails to the staff you choose
- Create Order reserves the stock
Quote · from the portal
Harbour Deli
| Item | Qty | Reserved |
|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | 48 | 0 |
| Sea salt | 36 | 0 |
| Glass jars | 20 | 0 |
Create OrderBecomes SO-2318 and reserves stock
03Agents
Sales agents order for the accounts they look after
Invite a sales agent by email from the Customers list, linked to the accounts they handle. Once they join, they order for those customers through the same portal, at each customer’s prices, and the order arrives in the same place as any other. The portal settings show every agent as Pending or Joined, with the customers each one is linked to.
- Invited from the Customers list
- Linked to one customer or several
- Pending or Joined, at a glance
- Removed from a customer’s B2B Agents tab
Sale agents
B2B portal
| Agent | Status | Accounts |
|---|---|---|
| Sam Patel | Joined | 3 |
| Leah Moss | Pending | 2 |
Sam’s accounts include Harbour Deli
Everything else a trade portal needs
Private, by invitation
Customers you invite set up a sign-in; your wholesale prices are not a public page.
Signup requests you approve
A business can ask for access, and approving the request creates the customer for you.
Your logo and colours
Your logo, colours, hero text and subdomain, with a custom domain arranged with us.
Groups of accounts
Assign customers to a group, then give the group its own collections and minimums.
The account behind the login
Price list, payment terms, tax class and business type live on the customer record.
Shipped and invoiced as usual
Once confirmed, a portal order is picked, shipped and invoiced like any other order.
Built for selling to the trade
Wholesale and distribution
Trade accounts order through the portal while phone and email orders join them in one list, invoiced to Xero or QuickBooks.
Inventory for distributorsBrands selling to stockists
Each stockist keeps their own price list and currency, and orders from the portal instead of your inbox.
Inventory for B2B businessesRetail and trade together
Consumers buy on your Shopify store and trade accounts in the portal, both from the same stock in Qoblex.
Shopify integration
When a spreadsheet or your accounting software is enough
If you have a handful of trade customers who order the same thing every month, an emailed price list and the invoices in Xero or QuickBooks will do. A portal earns its place when retyping orders has become somebody’s job.
| Feature | Spreadsheet | Accounting software | Qoblex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customers place their own orders | No | Limited | Yes |
| Each customer’s own prices | By hand | Limited | Yes |
| Catalogue chosen per customer group | No | Limited | Yes |
| Minimum order quantity and value | By hand | Limited | Yes |
| Live stock shown to the buyer | No | Limited | Yes |
| Sales agents order for their accounts | No | Limited | Yes |
…the answer to many inventory and accounting challenges I faced with a slightly complicated type of product…Now I am able to quite easily control the inventory of the packages even if the item is sold individually or in multiple other packages on the website.
Integration ecosystem
Connect your stack
Native integrations and open APIs let you easily connect data across your existing digital toolkit. Enhance your operations without changing the workflows you’ve spent years perfecting.
Claude
OpenAI
B2B eCommerce platform questions
Wholesale ordering, pricing, branding and how the portal works.
What is a B2B eCommerce platform?
A B2B eCommerce platform is an online store for selling to other businesses rather than to consumers. Trade buyers sign in, see the products and prices agreed with them, and order without emailing or phoning. In Qoblex it is the B2B portal, and its orders arrive next to your stock, purchasing and invoicing rather than in a separate system.
What is a B2B portal?
It is a private online store for the businesses that buy from you. They sign in, see the products and prices you have set for them, and place orders themselves. The difference from a normal shop is that nothing is public: access, catalogue and price are decided per customer.
How does an order from the portal reach Qoblex?
It arrives as a quote, with the customer, their prices and the portal’s warehouse already on it, and the staff you chose are emailed. Nothing is reserved until you turn it into an order, for example with Create Order. From there it is allocated, picked, shipped and invoiced like any other order, and invoices sync to your accounting software the same way.
Can each customer have different prices?
Yes. Give a customer their own price list on their record, in its own currency, and the portal shows them those prices. Customers without one see the portal’s default price list. What each buyer sees is their own, and no customer can see another’s.
Can I control which products a customer sees?
Yes. Collections decide what appears in the store, and you build them by filtering your catalogue on tags, types, brands or suppliers. Customer groups can have their own collections, so one set of accounts can see a different range from another. Anything outside those collections is not visible.
Can I use my own web address?
The portal gets its own sub-domain out of the box, and you can point a domain you own at it, such as store.yourbusiness.com. Contact us to set that up.
Do my customers see my stock levels?
That is your choice. Show the actual quantity available, or show only whether an item is in stock. Both read the live figure at the portal’s default warehouse, so buyers see the stock you actually hold there.
Can I set a minimum order?
Yes. Set a minimum order quantity and a minimum order value for the portal, and give a customer group its own minimums where its accounts buy differently. An order below the minimum cannot be placed.
Who can sign in to the portal?
Only the customers and sales agents you invite from the Customers list, plus any business whose signup request you approve. Approving a request creates the customer contact, so check its price list and details before they order. See inviting customers and agents.
Does the portal replace my Shopify store?
No, it sits beside it. The public store sells to consumers at retail prices; the portal sells to trade accounts at their own prices. Both draw on the same stock in Qoblex, and a portal order reserves its stock when you confirm it. See the Shopify integration.
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