Most Shopify merchants who serve both retail and wholesale customers end up building a second store, using Shopify B2B (Plus-only), or relying on honour-system minimum orders that customers routinely ignore. There is a cleaner solution that works on all Shopify plans.
The Problem with Separate Stores
- Double the maintenance — two product catalogues, two themes, two sets of discount codes
- Customers who want to switch between retail and wholesale must create two accounts
- Inventory is split or manually synced between stores
- No Shopify Plus required for the solution below
Customer Tags: The Core of Mixed-Audience Rules
Shopify lets you tag customer accounts. ‘wholesale’, ‘trade’, ‘b2b’, ‘approved-retailer’ — whatever label fits. The tag is set once when you approve a wholesale account and persists on every future login.
Fold reads these tags at checkout and applies different quantity rules per customer group. No app-specific customer portal needed.
Setting Up Tiered Quantity Rules
Rule 1: Wholesale minimum
Minimum order quantity of 12 units. Condition: customer tag = ‘wholesale’. See Shopify wholesale minimum order setup for the detailed walkthrough.
Rule 2: Retail maximum
Maximum order quantity of 2 units per product. No customer tag condition — applies to all non-wholesale customers. This prevents retail customers bulk-buying at retail prices. See maximum order quantity on Shopify.
Rule 3: Wholesale quantity increments
Wholesale customers must buy in case-pack multiples of 6. Pair with Rule 1. See how to sell in case packs on Shopify.
Combined Effect
A retail customer logs in: they can buy 1–2 units of any product. A wholesale customer logs in: they must buy at least 12, in multiples of 6. One store, one product catalogue, one inventory — different rules for different audiences.
What About Pricing?
Quantity rules control how much is bought. For tiered wholesale pricing, pair Fold with Shopify’s native B2B price lists (available on all plans via the wholesale channel) or a volume discount app. Fold handles the quantity enforcement; pricing is separate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need Shopify Plus for this?
No. Customer tag conditions in Fold use Shopify Functions, available on Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans.
Can I approve wholesale accounts automatically?
Tag assignment can be automated via a wholesale application form app or manually from your Shopify admin. Fold reads whatever tags are on the account at checkout time.
Install Fold to serve wholesale and retail customers from one Shopify store with different quantity rules per customer type.
