Wholesale distribution has unique business needs that require customized ecommerce solutions. Inventory management, bulk pricing, and seamless order fulfillment are essential for efficiently running wholesale operations. BigCommerce offers robust features catered to wholesale distributors to help scale your business.
In this blog post, we’ll explore key BigCommerce functionality for managing wholesale orders, plus highlights on why Anchor Group stands out for wholesale focused BigCommerce design and implementation.
BigCommerce Benefits for Wholesale Distributors
BigCommerce is a leading SaaS ecommerce platform built for fast-growing businesses. For wholesale companies, BigCommerce provides:
- Bulk and tiered pricing: Easily set custom pricing levels and bulk discounts. Automate price updates based on order quantities.
- Purchase order management: Create, track, and fulfill purchase orders. Customers can submit POs that turn into orders for fulfillment.
- Role-based user accounts: Designate account access across your team with customizable roles like billing, fulfillment, etc.
- Multi-location inventory: Keep inventory totals in sync across multiple warehouses and locations.
- B2B and B2C storefronts: Manage both wholesale/B2B and individual/B2C customers from a single backend. Customize the experience for each audience.
- Automations: Optimize workflows with order, inventory, and payment management automations. Automate order processing with 3PLs.
- API integrations: Connect other business systems like ERP, accounting, warehousing tools, etc. to centralize operations.
- Branded invoices: Create professional, custom invoices to send customers post-purchase. Add payment terms, notes, etc.
BigCommerce empowers distributors to run both online B2B wholesale programs plus direct-to-consumer ecommerce from one platform. You get enterprise-grade capabilities to support complex distribution needs as you scale.
Now let’s explore some of the top features BigCommerce offers for managing wholesale orders.
Wholesale Order Management in BigCommerce
BigCommerce equips you with the right back-office functionalities to operate efficient wholesale order processing and fulfillment.
Purchase Orders
Wholesalers can allow business customers to submit formal purchase orders (POs) instead of direct online orders. Buyers create POs which distributors later convert into official orders in the system.
By accepting POs in addition to immediate orders, you give wholesale buyers more flexibility. POs allow them to go through proper business approvals before committing. As the distributor, you also gain early visibility into upcoming demand.
In BigCommerce, you customize the PO workflow:
- PO submission form: Collect necessary info like product/quantity requests, shipping address and buyer details.
- PO management: View and edit POs from a centralized dashboard. Update statuses like Pending, Approved, Fulfilled, etc.
- PO conversion: Convert vetted POs into real orders in 1-click to pick, pack, and ship.
By centralizing PO intake and approvals, BigCommerce saves your staff hours of manual back-and-forth.
Order Minimums and Tiered Pricing
BigCommerce makes it easy to set minimum order quantities at a brand and product level. This ensures wholesale buyers meet your order minimums to access custom bulk pricing.
Tier your pricing to reward larger orders with bigger discounts automatically. For example:
| Order Quantity | Price Per Unit |
| ————— | ————– |
| 1-50 units | $5/unit |
| 51-150 units | $4/unit |
| 151+ units | $3/unit |
Bulk pricing tiers apply during checkout to give business buyers increasing discounts. No time-intensive manual order review and price adjustments needed.
You can also hide product pricing and showcase “Request a Quote” options for an extra layer of customization. Large B2B buyers expect a personalized quote.
Shipping and Fulfillment
To keep wholesale fulfillment on track, BigCommerce coordinates order information, inventory changes, and shipping details across your warehouse network.
Rules-based automation coordinates with fulfillment providers to batch shipments for reduced parcel rates. You customize packing slips, shipping labels, tracking info, and more within the platform.
By centralizing fulfillment workflows in BigCommerce:
- 3PLs automatically get order details for prompt processing
- Inventory stays updated across warehouses
- Packages get correctly routed to buyers
This prevents double shipping, depletion issues, and other costly fulfillment hiccups that delay wholesalers.
Analytics for Wholesale Insights
Running an efficient wholesale operation requires watchful analytics to spot trends and prevent problems before they arise.
BigCommerce delivers visual analytics revealing insights like:
- Bestselling products
- Customer purchase history
- Monthly sales by product, category, location
- Inventory turnover rate
- Order cycle times
- Peak sales periods
You gain an overview of performance plus ability to drill-down into specifics. By pairing analytics with BigCommerce’s automation tools, distributors turn insights into immediate optimization across pricing, stock levels, logistics, and more.
Omnichannel Wholesale Commerce
Modern wholesalers sell across multiple sales channels – online stores, marketplaces, sales reps, and brick-and-mortar.
With BigCommerce, you maintain unified inventory, order, and customer data between all channels. Eliminate issues like:
- Out-of-stocks when inventory levels don’t match across channels
- Losing multi-channel customers due to disconnected experiences
ChannelSale is an omnichannel partner for BigCommerce that facilitates unified commerce. Benefits include:
- Unified product catalog, inventory, pricing across all channels
- Single customer profiles with purchase history across channels
- Order management from all channels under one dashboard
- Point-of-sale capabilities for in-store transactions
By reducing disconnects in multi-channel wholesale, distributors enhance customer experience while optimizing back-end efficiency.
Why Anchor Group Stands Out for Wholesale BigCommerce Design & Implementation?
Anchor Group is a BigCommerce Platinum Solution Partner with extensive experience building, migrating, and optimizing complex enterprise stores. Our strategic approach equips wholesale distributors to capture the full potential of BigCommerce.
Hands-on Strategy for Wholesale Success
The starting point is an in-depth strategy session exploring your wholesale business model, operational nuances, and growth goals on BigCommerce.
We guide you to build unique workflows around:
- Wholesale buyer signup and management
- Custom catalogs for segmenting business vs consumer buyers
- Purchase order intake and processing
- Dynamic bulk pricing and quotes
- Multi-warehouse inventory, shipping, and 3PL automation
- Wholesale analytics dashboard creation
Deep Platform Expertise
Our team has executed over 500 enterprise BigCommerce projects. We leverage this experience to construct agile stores purpose-built for wholesale distribution needs.
Our BigCommerce development capabilities unlock platform enhancements like:
- Headless architecture for flexible wholesale experiences
- Custom integrations bridging ERP, WMS, shipping, accounting systems
- Data synchronization across omni-channel sales touchpoints
- Advanced shipping logistics based on business rules
These capabilities tailored to your workflows provide long-term scalability.
Hands-on Management and Support
We don’t just build your initial BigCommerce store then disappear. Anchor Group provides ongoing management and support with:
- Post-launch monitoring to refine performance
- Assistance updating workflows during business growth
- Ongoing platform maintenance and upgrades
- Support transitioning across sales channels
- Quick response from real humans for troubleshooting needs
The Bottom Line
Wholesale commerce needs flexible back-office technology supporting your unique distribution model. BigCommerce provides robust, enterprise-level functionality to manage scaling wholesale orders across channels.
Anchor Group strategically tailors these tools to your workflows for standout wholesale experiences. Let’s connect to explore how BigCommerce can transform your omnichannel distribution operations.
