If you have frequent customers who buy large quantities of your products to resell, you might want to cut them a deal with wholesale pricing. You can mark them as a wholesale customer in their contact record and they'll receive your defined wholesale pricing when you create an order for them.
Wholesale pricing is available for the orders you add administratively and is not reflected when your customers shop in the online store or point of sale system. Looking for that? Let us know it's important for you. Also, be aware that wholesale pricing is different from volume pricing, which is based on quantity purchased. Any customer, regardless of wholesaler status, is eligible for volume pricing if they purchase the required quantity of an item.
Setting Wholesale Prices on Products
Your first step to getting your customers wholesale pricing is to define it on your products. You can supply this when creating a new product or updating an existing one. Wholesale pricing can also be used for product variations. Additionally, you can mark a product as wholesale only, which will prevent it from being sold in the online store.
Labeling a Contact as a Wholesaler
Next, you'll want to label your customer as a wholesaler in their contact record. You can create this customer under the Contacts section, or when you create a new order. Just choose the contact type "Wholesale Customer" and Farmbrite will know to apply the wholesale price when you create an order for this customer.
Online Store Messaging and Pay Later Options
While the wholesale price is not available in the online store, there are two options you might explore to alert your customers to this, and maybe even still have them submit a draft order.
- You can add an Online Store Announcement to put a banner/alert at the top of the store. You might say something like "Contact Us for Wholesale Prices" in this message.
- You can enable the Pay Later payment method, which essentially lets your customers submit an order online without supplying a payment method. This allows you to adjust and change the pricing on the order before sending them an invoice. Note: if enabled, this option would be available for all online store customers, not just your wholesale customers.
- If your wholesale prices are the same percentage off for all items, you can create a discount code in Stripe and provide it to your wholesale customers. This code would be valid on all items for that percentage, so something like a universal "10% for wholesalers" might work. Be aware this would only be applicable for customers paying with credit card as the promo code is set up in Stripe.
Why can't the store apply wholesale prices?
The Online Store does not currently have a login to access an existing customer record. Your customers can certainly supply their contact info for shipping, delivery, and confirmation emails, but they do not supply a password and access an existing account to place orders. Because of this, the store does not recognize them as a wholesale customer and thus cannot apply the lower cost. Overall, the wholesale price is likely something that you control administratively, and you might have more personal interactions with these customers - texts, calls, personal emails, etc - when they want to purchase more bulk items. We like the idea of expanding this in the future though, let us know if you're looking for this!