Transform Your Shopify Store into a Wholesale Powerhouse (Without Breaking the Bank)
How HigherRing Helps Clients Scale Smart with Cost-Effective Wholesale Solutions
Your Shopify store is more than just a place for direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales—it can also become a powerful, efficient engine for your wholesale business. At HigherRing, we've helped dozens of clients transform their existing stores into streamlined wholesale hubs that lighten their workload without the staggering expense of upgrading to Shopify Plus.
Here's what most store owners don't realize: Shopify's native B2B features are exclusive to Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,300+ per month. Through years of working with growing brands, HigherRing has developed a practical, affordable approach that gives you robust wholesale functionality at a fraction of the cost.
The Smart Alternative: Building Wholesale on Standard Shopify Plans
The most effective way to scale your Shopify storefront for wholesale orders is to strategically integrate key apps from the Shopify App Store and implement thoughtful manual processes. Whether you want a special wholesale-customer-only portal, access to third-party marketplaces, or partnerships with other businesses for drop-shipping, there's a cost-effective path forward.
HigherRing Lesson #1: Choose the Right Portal Solution
The App We Recommend: Wholesale Gorilla
After testing multiple wholesale portal solutions with our clients, Wholesale Gorilla consistently delivers the best value. This app is perfect if you want to create a private, branded wholesale portal directly within your Shopify store without the Shopify Plus price tag.
What We Love (Based on Real Client Experience):
Secure customer logins that give wholesale buyers their own dedicated experience
Tiered pricing and quantity breaks for flexible volume-based pricing that handles complex pricing structures
Order minimums to protect your margins
Excellent support team that helps with custom setup needs
Our Pricing Recommendation: While the lowest cost plan runs around $35 a month, we typically suggest the $150 monthly plan for businesses expecting steady order flow. This investment pays for itself quickly when you compare it to the $2,000+ monthly cost of Shopify Plus.
Tiered Pricing Made Wholesale Scalable for a Growing Sticker Brand
One of our clients—a fast-growing sustainable sticker company—transitioned to Wholesale Gorilla after realizing they needed tiered pricing, a wholesale-only shopping portal, and quantity breaks that Shopify’s default setup couldn’t support.
By implementing Wholesale Gorilla, they were able to:
Give wholesale customers the ability to place custom quantity orders directly through their Shopify store in the same easy-to-manage way as D2C orders.
Protect production capacity and costs by restricting special orders under 250 units and over 5,000 units (which would otherwise require outsourcing to manufacturing partners outside of the US).
Make reorders effortless for distributors with their own accounts, and the ability to see order history with their own Wholesale accounts.
Offer automatic tiered pricing and discounts for special wholesale accounts for customer retention.
The result: fewer manual quotes, faster order turnaround, and a scalable wholesale model that maintained control over production and pricing—without the complexity or cost of Shopify Plus. This saved the client not only time, but thousands of dollars a month.
HigherRing Lesson #2: Leverage Faire Marketplace for Growth
The Platform That Changed the Game
Getting started with Faire Marketplace has been an incredibly successful step for many of our clients to grow their wholesale customer base exponentially. If you haven't set up your wholesale products there yet, we highly recommend prioritizing this integration.
Why Faire Works:
Access to thousands of retailers worldwide actively searching for products like yours
Built-in marketing tools that increase discoverability and visibility.
Seamless Shopify integration for inventory management—you manage everything from your Shopify dashboardFavorable payment terms (including Net 60) to improve your cash flow
Low barrier to entry. No upfront cost; you only pay commission and processing fees per order.
The Faire + Shopify Integration Advantage: When you connect the Faire app to your Shopify storefront, you can easily import your products from Shopify to Faire and manage your inventory using only Shopify. This automation eliminates the headache of managing multiple systems and reduces the risk of overselling.
HigherRing Insight: Demonstrating Real Impact: Many of our clients in sustainable goods, home goods, and specialty products begin by optimizing both their marketplace presence and marketing workflows. For example:
Faire Marketplace Optimization (Oct-Nov 2025 vs. 2024):
Order volume increased ~68% ($45,135 vs. $26,937)
Conversion rate improved +34% (8% → 10.7%)
Maintained Top Shop status through consistent product optimization and engagement
Email Marketing via Klaviyo (Dec 2024–Jun 2025):
Optimized segments, sign-up forms, flows, and campaigns
Conversion revenue totaled $29,168.46, supporting both wholesale and D2C channels
Increased engagement and repeat orders without adding manual workload
By combining platform optimization with marketing automation, brands see higher order volume, improved conversion rates, and a more efficient wholesale workflow. Even if your wholesale setup is already running, refining your Shopify + Faire + Klaviyo ecosystem can drive measurable growth and operational efficiency.
If you’re hesitant to get started with Klaviyo, Faire has a built-in email marketing system. The above Faire success results for our organization and home goods client were largely achieved in part by using the native Faire email marketing templates to push sales, promote abandoned or open cart conversions, and market collections of overstocked inventory. Faire’s native marketing tools are free to vendors and can boost sales radically with consistent attention, management, and effort.
Lesson #3: Master the Manual Methods (Free Wholesale Optimizations)
While apps unlock powerful capabilities, some of our most impactful wholesale strategies don't require any apps at all. We have clients who manage wholesale ordering perfectly fine with minimal apps and strategic custom configurations.
Three Strategies We Implement for Every Client at No Additional Cost:
1. Create Wholesale-Specific Products
Set up different product configurations for wholesale customers—larger packs, cases, or bundles with wholesale pricing and specifications. The key? In Shopify's product settings, remove these items from your "Online Store" sales channel. This gives you complete control over who can access wholesale SKUs while keeping your retail and wholesale catalogs cleanly separated.
Pro Tip: Use clear naming conventions like "[WHOLESALE] Product Name - Case of 12" to keep inventory organized across channels.
2. Implement Smart Customer Tagging
Add a 'Wholesale' tag to each wholesale customer profile in your Shopify admin. This simple step unlocks powerful benefits:
Custom reporting to track wholesale vs. retail performance
Automatic order tagging (every order placed by a tagged customer inherits the tag)
Segmented email marketing for wholesale-specific campaigns
Easy filtering when you need to quickly review wholesale accounts
Client Impact: This tagging system helped one of our CPG clients identify that wholesale customers had a 3x higher lifetime value than retail customers, informing their entire growth strategy.
3. Configure Tax Exemptions Properly
For any wholesale customer with a resale license, update their customer profile to remove taxes from their orders. There's a setting on every customer profile that handles this automatically—no app required.
Why This Matters: Getting tax exemptions wrong is one of the fastest ways to lose wholesale customers. We build this into our onboarding checklist for every new wholesale account to ensure compliance and maintain trust.
The HigherRing Approach: Strategic, Not Just Technical
Transforming your Shopify store for wholesale isn't just about adding new features; it's about making your business more efficient and intentional. By utilizing the right apps and implementing smart, simple strategies, you can create a smooth experience for your wholesale partners while lightening your own operational load.
Our Philosophy: HigherRing believes in using business as a force for good. That means helping you find solutions that allow you to focus on what you do best—creating amazing products and building relationships—while we handle the systems that make wholesale scale sustainably.
Real Cost Comparison: Our Approach vs. Shopify Plus
B2B Solution Comparison
💡 Save over $24,000 annually with the HigherRing approach
The Bottom Line: For growing brands that aren't yet doing $1M+ in annual revenue, our approach delivers 80-90% of the wholesale functionality at less than 10% of the cost.
Ready to Scale Your Wholesale Operations?
If you need a partner to help you navigate these changes, HigherRing's experienced team is ready to assist. We can help you with:
Shopify wholesale setup and optimization using cost-effective tools
Faire marketplace integration and strategy
Custom wholesale workflows tailored to your business model
Wholesale order management and fulfillment processes
Ongoing support as your wholesale business grows
We've walked this path with many ‘better for you’ brands, from artisan food producers to home goods companies to specialty beverage brands. The lessons we've learned along the way are now part of our proven playbook for wholesale success.
Let's lighten your load and take your wholesale operations to the next level—strategically, sustainably, and affordably.