What is wholesale pricing?
Wholesale pricing is the lower price one business pays another for products it buys in bulk to resell. You charge it to shops that stock your products, and pay it to your suppliers. A mug that costs you $12 might wholesale at $22, so the shop can sell it for $44.
How do you calculate wholesale price?
Start from one unit's cost to make and pack.
| Formula | $12 mug | Wholesale price |
|---|---|---|
| Markup on cost: cost × (1 + markup) | $12 × 1.75 | $21 |
| Margin on price: cost ÷ (1 minus margin) | $12 ÷ 0.60 (40% margin) | $20 |
| Back from retail: retail price ÷ 2 | $44 ÷ 2 | $22 |
A 75% markup leaves a 43% margin, as markup vs margin explains. Shopify's wholesale guide puts a good wholesale margin at 15% to 50%.
Wholesale vs retail price
The shopper pays the retail price. The gap between the two is the shop's markup. Doubling your wholesale price, called keystone pricing, is a common one. At $22 you keep $10 a mug, a 45% margin. Sell the same mug on your own store for $44 and you keep $32, before shipping, card fees and ads. Wholesale trades margin for bigger orders. List $44 as your suggested retail price, so shops can match your store's price.
How do you set wholesale pricing and minimums in Shopify?
A minimum order quantity makes each wholesale order worth packing: say 24 mugs, in cases of 6. Set it to cover each order's share of your fixed costs, from your break-even point. A price break rewards a bigger order: 48 mugs or more at $20 each still leaves $8, a 40% margin.
Shopify B2B runs on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, not Starter or Retail. Your wholesale prices live in a catalog, under Markets then Catalogs. Set the catalog's "Price adjustment", the cut or rise against your store prices, to Decrease 50%, and wholesale buyers who sign in pay $22 for the $44 mug.
The same catalog holds the 24-mug minimum, the cases of 6 and the $20 price break at 48. Each color or size counts alone toward the minimum and the break. Adding a price break gives that product a fixed price, so the catalog's 50% stops applying to it. Below Plus, you get 3 active catalog assignments, and one catalog in 2 B2B markets uses 2 of them. The older Plus wholesale channel has been gone since April 30, 2024.
Buy-more prices for retail shoppers, with Sledge
Sledge does not set wholesale prices, price lists or B2B catalogs, and its offers can't be limited to wholesale buyers. A Sledge volume discount shows every shopper the same tiers on the product page: a Buy 2, save 10% tier sells two $44 mugs for $79.20. Growth Intelligence turns on when you pick a paid plan. It sums the sales its suggested fixes could add into one dollar figure, labeled "Est. potential".
