Shopify just unlocked
B2B for every merchant.
Most haven't noticed.

In early 2026, Shopify extended its B2B feature set — previously locked to Shopify Plus at $2,000/month and up — to Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans at no additional cost. Net payment terms, company accounts, custom price lists, minimum order quantities, draft orders, tax-exempt purchasing. All of it, now available to any Shopify merchant regardless of plan. The full breakdown of what changed — and what's still Plus-only — is in Shopify B2B Without Plus: What the 2026 Expansion Changes.

Most merchants missed this. The announcement was buried in a product update, not headlined at a Unite keynote. But for DTC brands at $5M+ looking for a higher-margin growth channel that doesn't require more paid media spend, this is one of the most meaningful feature expansions Shopify has shipped in years.

The data point that puts the opportunity in context: merchants using Shopify B2B see 4.1x higher reorder frequency compared to DTC orders. Not 4.1x higher first-order AOV — 4.1x higher repeat purchase rate. That's the compound effect of B2B buying behavior. Wholesale buyers reorder on a schedule. DTC buyers reorder when they feel like it.

The announcement most
merchants missed.

The practical implication: you can now run a complete wholesale operation through Shopify without a separate platform, without Plus pricing, and without a developer to build custom B2B flows. The infrastructure that was previously only accessible to seven-figure ARR merchants is available to every merchant on the platform. What you do with it depends entirely on whether there's a genuine B2B buyer segment for your products.

Before you set up B2B pricing,
answer this question: why would
a buyer order from you wholesale?

The mistake most DTC brands make when they open a wholesale channel: they do it because they can, not because there's a buyer segment that would meaningfully use it. The B2B infrastructure is table stakes. The strategic question is whether your products, your margins, and your brand positioning create a real proposition for wholesale buyers.

Three B2B buyer segments are actually worth pursuing for most DTC brands:

Corporate gifting is often the most overlooked and most accessible entry point for DTC brands. You don't need a buyer relationship with a retail chain. You need to find the HR or procurement lead at 5–10 companies where your DTC customers work, and make a compelling case for gifting. High AOV, low relationship maintenance once you've established the account, and repeat behavior at company milestones (holiday gifts, onboarding kits, milestone awards).

The pricing structure
that works for both channels.

The fundamental B2B pricing equation: your wholesale price needs to leave the buyer enough margin to sell profitably, while leaving you enough margin to run the channel profitably. Most DTC founders assume wholesale is a margin compression story. It's often the opposite — once you remove the customer acquisition cost from the equation.

B2B orders also run significantly larger than DTC orders. The typical B2B order is 8–12x the DTC average order value. A DTC customer who orders one unit generates $40 in revenue. A wholesale buyer who orders a case of 24 generates $480 in revenue at the same unit economics. The concentration of revenue per relationship is a meaningful operational simplification — fewer transactions, fewer fulfillment events, fewer customer service interactions, for the same revenue.

The operational side most DTC
founders underestimate.

Net terms are not a nice-to-have. For most B2B relationships, they're required. Net 30 is the minimum a wholesale buyer expects. If you can't extend credit, you'll lose accounts to competitors who can. This is a cash flow decision, not just a pricing decision. You need to model how much working capital you'll have tied up in receivables at steady state before you commit to net terms at scale.

Minimum order quantities matter more than you think. Too low (under 6–12 units for most categories) and you get small orders that don't justify the account management overhead. The fulfillment cost and account management time on a 3-unit wholesale order isn't meaningfully different from a DTC order, but the margin dollars aren't there to support it. Too high and you exclude the boutique buyers who would carry you but can't commit to large initial orders.

B2B customer success is a different discipline than DTC customer service. Wholesale buyers need product training so they can sell effectively. They need sell-through data so they know when to reorder. They need marketing assets so they can feature your product appropriately. If you treat B2B support like DTC support, you'll have high buyer churn after the first order.

The first 90 days of B2B
on Shopify.

B2B is not a strategy for every DTC brand. If your product is highly personal, doesn't have obvious resale channels, or your COGS don't allow a 40–50% margin at wholesale, the math doesn't work. But for brands in lifestyle, beauty, wellness, home, food and beverage, or personal care at $5M+ DTC revenue with healthy unit economics, the B2B channel has just become meaningfully more accessible. 4.1x higher reorder frequency is the number worth taking seriously. That's not a channel uplift. That's a different kind of customer relationship entirely. When B2B revenue scales past $400K–$500K annually, the Shopify Plus upgrade math starts to close quickly — unlimited catalogs, direct company pricing, and Flow automation make the economics clear. As you also look to diversify revenue away from single-channel dependency — a theme explored in the TikTok Shop channel brief — B2B is one of the most durable diversification moves available.