VIP and Wholesale Pricing Without Leaks

A VIP price and a wholesale price have the same weakness: a rule that depends on a secret. If the secret is a code, it will be pasted somewhere you did not choose. If the rule depends on who the customer is, the secret goes away. This page lays out the three routes Shopify documents for vip and wholesale pricing, with the plan limit each one carries as Shopify's Help Center states it, and then shows a floor calculation that keeps any of them from selling below the margin you need. The numbers in the floor example are assumptions. The Help Center facts were read on the date shown in the sources and Shopify changes plan limits, so check the page before you commit to a plan.

Why a shared VIP code leaks

A code is text, and text gets forwarded. The cost of that is a different topic with its own post, unique discount codes, which covers per-recipient codes. This page covers the other fix: do not use a code to identify the customer at all.

Route 1: a discount limited to a customer segment

Shopify's Help Center says you can group customers who have similar characteristics into a customer segment. A segment is a saved query on your customer list: you build it by combining filter names, operators and values, run the query, and save it with a name. The Help Center's page on customer segmentation says customers are automatically added or removed to the segment list based on whether they meet the segment criteria. For a VIP group, you write the rule once, for example your own definition of spend or order count, and the group updates itself.

When you create a discount, the customer eligibility setting lets you choose all customers, specific customer segments, specific customers or markets. The limits are different for the two discount methods: for automatic discounts you can have up to 5 customer segments on a single discount, and for discount codes up to 100. The Help Center says customers in a segment can be identified when they check out using a valid email address or phone number.

That last sentence is the practical one. The VIP price does not require a shared code, because Shopify recognizes the customer by contact details at checkout. Test it before you advertise it: place an order as a customer in the segment and one outside it, and compare the totals. The Help Center page does not say how a shopper who has never ordered, or who checks out with a different email, is treated, so do not promise a VIP price to a customer who has not yet been added to the segment.

Route 2: wholesale with Shopify B2B

For true wholesale buyers, Shopify has a separate feature set. The Help Center page on B2B says you must set up your B2B customers as companies in your admin, and that you can tailor each company's experience, including pricing, currency, products, payment and shipping methods. The page does not name plans; it says only that B2B features are included on plans that support B2B capabilities. The page on B2B catalogs does, and says what a catalog is: catalogs determine the products and pricing your B2B customers can access.

On plans, the catalogs page reads as follows:

• On the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans, you can assign up to 3 active catalogs across all your B2B markets.
• The Shopify Plus plan offers an unlimited number of catalogs and direct assignment to companies and locations.

The same page says you set prices and product availability by assigning catalogs to companies and company locations, that quantity rules can restrict the number of items a B2B customer can buy in an order, and that volume pricing lets you offer price breaks to B2B customers. When a product has more than one catalog and price, the page says the lowest price displays to the customer. That last rule is a margin point: a product listed in two catalogs that reach the same buyer is sold at the lower price, so check each product in each catalog before you assign it.

Plan details like these are the part of this topic that changes most often. We state them as the Help Center words them on the date in the sources, quote no prices, and recommend you open the page again before you decide whether a plan upgrade is worth it.

Route 3: volume tiers as a price anyone can earn

If your wholesale customers are small shops that order a few cases and you do not want to manage accounts, a quantity ladder does most of the job without a login: buy 6, pay less per unit than buying 1; buy 12, pay less again. The price is visible to everyone, so there is nothing to leak, and a wholesale buyer reaches it by ordering in volume. The setup and the margin math at each step are in volume discounts on Shopify. The trade-off is that a retail customer who wants twelve of something gets the wholesale price too, which is a feature if you want larger baskets and a bug if wholesale must stay private.

A floor, so no route sells below margin

Whichever route you pick, set the lowest price you will accept before you set the discount. Assume a product with a retail price of 40 dollars and a unit cost of 18 dollars, and a target margin of 35 percent on the price.

Floor price = cost divided by (1 minus target margin) = 18 / 0.65 = 27.69 dollars

Now test the routes against that floor:

The third line is the trap. 40 dollars with 15 percent off is 34 dollars, and a further 20 percent off 34 dollars is 27.20 dollars, which is under the floor of 27.69. Whether both discounts can apply depends on the combination settings on each discount. Shopify's Help Center says discounts combine only when the setting on each one allows it, and that product discounts on the same line item can combine only on Shopify Plus; if they cannot combine, the store applies the best discount for the customer's cart. So on a plan below Plus, two product discounts will not stack on one item, and on Plus you must set the combinations yourself. The full procedure for setting a floor from your own costs is in the discount margin floor.

The wholesale line shows the opposite problem. Take a wholesale price of half of retail: at an 18 dollar cost it leaves a 10 percent margin. If that is acceptable because wholesale orders are large and cheap to pack, fine; if it is not, the wholesale price is a floor question before it is a catalog question.

Choosing a route

• Repeat customers you want to reward: a segment discount, with the floor test.
• Businesses that resell and need terms, invoices and their own price list: B2B catalogs, within your plan's catalog limit.
• Everyone who orders in volume, no account needed: a volume ladder.

Building a volume discount

Open the Volume discount template, which the app describes as "The more shoppers buy, the less each costs." Set each step so its price stays above the floor you calculated, schedule no end date for a standing wholesale ladder, and test each step with a real cart before you tell anyone about it.