Wholesale Portal for a Small Brand: 5 Ways to Build One

Quick answer

A wholesale portal is a login-only area of your website where approved trade buyers see trade prices, minimum order quantities and payment terms, and reorder without emailing you. Start simple: an application form, manual approval, one trade price list and clear minimums. WooCommerce and Shopify can both do this; fully custom portals are a bigger, separately quoted build.

Small brands usually start wholesale by accident. A gift shop asks to stock your candles, a farm shop wants your chutney, a salon wants to retail your hair oil. At first, a PDF price list and an emailed invoice work fine. By the tenth stockist, you are retyping orders, chasing who is on which price and answering “what is the case size again?” every week. This guide covers when a portal is worth it, the ways to build one, how to set trade prices and terms, and what trade buyers actually need from it.

Do you need a wholesale portal yet?

The deciding factor is admin time. If you spend more than an hour or two a week turning emails into orders, a portal pays for itself quickly.

What a good wholesale portal does

• Hides trade prices from the public and shows them only to approved accounts.
• Applies minimums: a minimum first order value, a minimum quantity per product, or sales in case packs of six or twelve.
• Supports price tiers if you offer better rates to larger stockists or distributors.
• Offers the right payment options: card upfront for new accounts, invoice terms for established ones.
• Keeps order history so buyers can reorder last month’s order in a few clicks.
• Provides trade resources: product photos, descriptions, barcodes and spec sheets for the stockist’s own shop or website.

Five ways to build one

The Shopify route

If your shop already runs on Shopify, check what your plan includes before building anything. At the time of writing, November 2026, Shopify’s help centre on B2B says the B2B features are available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans, but not on Starter or Retail. B2B customers are set up as companies in the admin, and you can personalise pricing, products and payment methods for each one. Plans and features change, so confirm the current details with Shopify.

The WooCommerce route

On WordPress, WooCommerce handles wholesale through customer roles: a “trade” or “wholesale” role that sees different prices, different minimums and sometimes different payment methods from retail customers. The core shop does not do all of this out of the box, so it usually involves a well-supported wholesale extension or some custom development.

Keep it to one shop where possible. A single product catalogue with retail and trade prices on each product is far easier to manage than two shops with two stock counts. Our Shopify vs WooCommerce guide compares the two platforms more broadly.

Setting trade prices and minimums

Trade buyers need room for their own margin, so trade prices sit well below your retail price. Many brands publish a recommended retail price (RRP) alongside the trade price, so the stockist can see their margin at a glance. Whatever split you choose, work it out from your own costs, including packaging, postage and card fees, not from what a competitor seems to charge.

1. Set a minimum first order by value, so small orders do not cost you more to pack than they earn.
2. Sell in case packs where it suits the product, such as six jars or twelve candles.
3. Decide on carriage: free above a set order value, a flat charge below it.
4. Keep tiers simple: standard trade and distributor is enough for most small brands.
5. Write it all on one page inside the portal, so nobody has to ask.

Approving trade accounts

Do not let anyone see trade prices just by registering. Use a short application form that asks for the business name, website or social profile, shop address, type of business and expected order size. Approve accounts by hand: it takes a minute and keeps trade prices away from members of the public looking for a discount. Once approved, the buyer gets a login and sees trade prices immediately.

Payment terms and invoices

New stockists usually pay by card at checkout. Established ones often ask for invoice terms, commonly 30 days. If you offer terms, put them in writing. GOV.UK’s guidance on late commercial payments says that if no payment date is agreed, payment is late 30 days after the customer receives the invoice or the goods are delivered, whichever is later, and you can then claim statutory interest.

Your invoices need the basics set out on GOV.UK’s page on what an invoice must include: a unique number, your business and the customer’s details, a description, the supply and invoice dates, and the amounts. It also says you must use VAT invoices if you and your customer are both VAT registered, which is common with trade buyers.

What trade buyers need from you

Stockists sell your products to their own customers, so give them what makes that easy:

• High-resolution product photos on plain backgrounds, plus lifestyle shots.
• Short and long product descriptions they can reuse.
• Barcodes, case sizes, dimensions and weights.
• Ingredients, allergens or safety information where relevant, matching the packaging. Our product label design guide covers what labels must show.
• Point-of-sale material such as shelf cards or a small display.

Consistent branding across the range helps a small brand look established on a busy shop shelf. If your packaging is a mix of styles from different stages of the business, our packaging guide for small brands is a good place to start.

Moving existing stockists onto the portal

A portal only saves time if your stockists use it, and people who have emailed orders for two years will keep emailing unless you make the switch easy. Set up their accounts yourself, with their pricing and terms already applied, and send each buyer a short personal email with their login link and a one-paragraph explanation of what has changed.

Give them a reason to log in: their full order history in one place, live stock levels, new products shown to trade first, or a small incentive on their first portal order. For a month or two, accept email orders but reply with a link to the same products in the portal, so the habit shifts without anyone feeling pushed.

Ask two or three of your friendliest stockists to try the portal before everyone else and tell you what is confusing. Trade buyers are busy shop owners ordering between customers, often on a phone, so anything that takes more than a couple of minutes will send them back to email. Fix what they find, then invite the rest.

What it costs to build

Our e-commerce website is £499 one-off for up to 20 products on WooCommerce or Shopify, with Stripe and PayPal. A trade area with approved logins, separate prices and minimums is a member area, so it is quoted in writing before any work starts, and you know the full figure first. Fully custom portals that connect to stock, accounting or warehouse systems fall under our web applications, from £1,999. Our guide to client portals for small businesses explains how login areas work more generally, and all our prices are on the pricing page.