B2B Ecommerce Agency for Manufacturers & Distributors

Most B2B companies that call us don’t have an ecommerce problem. They have an operations problem that shows up in ecommerce. Contract pricing lives in the ERP but not on the storefront. Quotes take two days because three systems don’t talk to each other. Customers tried the portal once, saw the wrong price, and went back to emailing their rep. The platform gets blamed, but the platform was never the real issue.

Web Solutions NYC is a B2B ecommerce agency founded in New York in 2007 by Yitz Lieblich. We design and build commerce systems for manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers on Magento (Adobe Commerce) and Shopware, as official partners of both platforms, with the ERP integration depth a real B2B operation requires. Across 50+ B2B implementations we’ve learned that the storefront is the easy part. The hard part is encoding how your business actually sells into a system your customers will actually use.

B2B Ecommerce in 60 Seconds

B2B ecommerce is online ordering between businesses, and it behaves nothing like retail. Orders carry negotiated contract pricing, purchase orders, credit terms, buying committees, and approval workflows, and the data that drives all of it lives in your ERP, not your website. A serious B2B build is therefore systems architecture first and web design second: the platform must mirror how your customers already purchase, or they will go straight back to phone and email. We build these systems on Magento (Adobe Commerce) and Shopware, integrate them bidirectionally with NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Acumatica, Sage, and Epicor P21, and deliver them in phases so ordering never stops. Typical engagements run $75K to $250K+ over 8 to 24 weeks, with integration complexity as the main cost driver.

Who We Serve

We work with mid-market and enterprise B2B companies whose selling motion is too specific for template solutions. Three profiles cover most of our work, and each brings its own operational problems. For a deeper look at how we work inside specific B2B sectors, see our B2B commerce industry page.

Manufacturers

Manufacturers come to us with configurable products, dealer networks, and spec accuracy requirements that generic carts can’t hold. One industrial manufacturer we built for had thousands of valid product permutations with component-based pricing, and quoting took 24 to 48 hours because engineering had to validate every configuration. We built a rules-based configurator that prices and validates in real time, and manufacturing spec accuracy on configurator orders now runs above 99%. The recurring manufacturer problems: channel conflict between direct and dealer sales, made-to-order workflows, spec documentation at the product level, and protecting negotiated dealer pricing. We wrote up the full playbook in our guide to B2B ecommerce for manufacturers.

Distributors

Distribution is a pricing and availability business with thin margins, which means the platform has to be ruthlessly accurate. Tens of thousands of SKUs. Customer-group pricing layered with master agreements and volume tiers. Real-time stock across multiple warehouses. Approval rules when orders exceed credit limits. For M.E. Campbell, an industrial and electrical distributor, we built a pricing engine on Magento that applies contract, volume, category, and seasonal rules simultaneously with real-time calculation, plus net-30 terms and ACH at checkout. As they told us at the start: “Every customer has different pricing. None of the standard platforms work.” More on the pattern in B2B ecommerce for distributors.

Wholesalers

Wholesale brings case packs, minimum order quantities, prepacks, seasonal pre-order windows, and reps writing orders from the road. The storefront has to speak in the units your buyers think in (cases, inners, eaches), enforce MOQs without making ordering feel hostile, and give reps a fast assisted-ordering path. Many wholesalers also run hybrid B2B/B2C models, which adds channel-specific pricing and inventory allocation on top of everything else.

What We Build

Every engagement is scoped to your operation, but the work clusters into five build types.

B2B storefronts

Full catalog commerce with contract pricing, quick-order pads, CSV order upload, requisition lists, and reorder flows. Built for buyers who order the same 40 SKUs every month and need it done in ninety seconds, not for leisurely browsing.

Customer portals

Self-service account centers: order history across every channel (web, phone, EDI), invoices and statements, open quotes, credit status, returns, and one-click reorder. This is usually the highest-adoption piece of any B2B build because it removes the “call us to find out” tax on both your customers and your service team. We’ve broken down the full scope on our B2B customer portal development page.

Punchout catalogs

If you sell into enterprises that buy through Ariba, Coupa, or Jaggaer, punchout makes you orderable inside their procurement system. We implement cXML and OCI punchout with account-specific catalogs and pricing, plus PO and invoice automation, so an enterprise buyer can purchase from you without ever leaving their procure-to-pay environment.

Quoting and RFQ workflows

Quote-to-order with negotiation rounds, expiring quotes, rep-assisted carts, and approval routing. Done right, a quote becomes a cart your customer can accept at 9pm without calling anyone. We covered the architecture decisions in B2B quoting and RFQ workflows.

ERP-integrated catalogs

Product, pricing, inventory, customer, and credit data flowing bidirectionally between your ERP and your storefront, with a PIM in the middle when product data needs enrichment. For MDmaxx we used Alumio to sync manufacturer specs, images, and regulatory data automatically. The catalog your buyer sees is the catalog your ERP believes, all day, every day.

Platforms We Use and When

We are official partners on both Magento (Adobe Commerce) and Shopware, and we deliberately keep both in the toolkit because they fit different operations. We don’t have a default answer. The platform follows the requirements.

We’ll say this on the record: Shopware was architected for how B2B actually works rather than retrofitted for it, which is why it wins more of our recommendations for B2B-first operations. The full argument is on our Shopware B2B ecommerce page. And if your requirements are genuinely simple, a Shopify Plus or BigCommerce build from another agency may serve you better than an over-engineered platform from us. We’ll tell you that in discovery, not after the invoice.

ERP Integration: Where B2B Projects Are Won or Lost

In our projects, ERP integration routinely consumes more budget and calendar than the storefront itself, and we scope it that way on purpose. The integration is the product. If pricing, inventory, and order data are wrong, nothing about the design matters. As we put it after the Transcat build: when your ERP and your storefront speak different languages, orders break.

Architecturally, we decide three things before writing any code: which system is the source of truth for each data type, how often each flow syncs (real time versus batch), and what happens when a sync fails. We integrate directly via API where volumes allow and through middleware such as Alumio or MuleSoft where transformation logic or multiple endpoints demand it. And we start integration months before launch, because it is the long pole in every B2B schedule. The full reasoning is in our guide to B2B ecommerce development.

Why B2B Is Different From B2C

If you’ve only run B2C, the differences are structural, not cosmetic:

• Buying committees, not buyers. A requestor builds the cart, a manager approves it, and accounts payable pays the invoice. The platform needs roles, permissions, and approval routing, not a single login.
• Price is an account attribute, not a product attribute. Contract pricing, volume tiers, and master agreements mean two customers see two different numbers for the same SKU, and both must be exactly right, every time.
• Credit terms instead of credit cards. Net-30 and net-60 terms, PO numbers at checkout, credit limits enforced in real time, and invoices that reconcile cleanly in the ERP.
• Reordering dominates. Most B2B revenue is repeat purchase of known SKUs. Speed to reorder matters more than discovery and merchandising.
• Offline channels persist. EDI, phone, and rep orders don’t disappear at launch. The platform must coexist with them and show customers one unified history.

We keep a running list of what separates the B2B builds that get adopted from the ones that get abandoned in our B2B ecommerce best practices guide.

Proof: Real B2B Builds You Can Read

We publish real, named case studies, not anonymized composites. Three that show the range:

• Transcat (industrial test and measurement, Magento). A B2B/B2C hybrid where customer-group pricing, volume discounts, service bundles, and rental rates made unprofitable orders a real risk. We made their A+ ERP the single source of truth with bidirectional sync of customers, pricing, inventory, and orders; built a strict pricing hierarchy so promotions can’t stack onto negotiated rates; and routed service, equipment, and rental fulfillment automatically. Inventory changes now hit the storefront within minutes. Read the Transcat case study.
• MDmaxx (medical equipment distribution, Shopware 6). Outgrew Shopify’s app-fragmented architecture while selling across direct, Amazon (Buy with Prime), and healthcare partner channels under regulatory compliance requirements. We replatformed to Shopware with Alumio-driven product data sync from manufacturers, unified multi-channel inventory that decrements everywhere simultaneously, compliance validation logic, and intelligent fulfillment routing. Read the MDmaxx case study.
• M.E. Campbell (industrial and electrical distribution, Magento on AWS). Customer-specific contract pricing, approval workflows over credit limits, real-time multi-warehouse availability, multi-jurisdiction tax, and net-terms payment, all on auto-scaling infrastructure built for seasonal peaks. Read the M.E. Campbell case study.

How We Work

The engagement model hasn’t changed since 2007 because it works:

• 1. Sales process discovery. We map how orders actually happen today: every pricing rule, every approval, every workaround your order desk has invented. Discovery that happens during development costs ten times what it costs during planning, so we do it first.
• 2. Platform and workflow design. Requirements drive the platform choice, not the reverse. We design the pricing engine and integration architecture before anyone touches a storefront theme.
• 3. Phased implementation. Integration spine first, storefront second, with testing built around real business scenarios: your most complicated customer’s actual orders, not a generic QA checklist.
• 4. Adoption and optimization. Launch in waves, starting with friendly accounts. We track digital order share, reorder rate, time to order, and quote-to-order conversion, then iterate. Launch is the beginning, not the end.

The team is senior-led and founder-involved. The people who scope your project are the people who build it.

Typical Investment

Real numbers, with the honest caveat that integration complexity is the primary cost variable, followed by custom business logic and data migration volume.

A focused B2B catalog with clean data and one integration can land near the bottom of these ranges in 8 to 12 weeks. A multi-channel operation with complex pricing and a fragile legacy ERP will not. We’ll tell you which one you are after discovery, in writing.

What We’ve Learned From 50+ B2B Implementations

The expensive lessons, so you don’t have to repeat them:

• B2B pricing is architecture, not configuration. Build the pricing engine before the storefront, because retrofitting contract logic into a launched site is the most expensive change order in this industry.
• The ERP integration will consume more resources than the storefront. Budget and schedule accordingly, and start it months before launch.
• A beautiful storefront with wrong pricing or broken inventory data is worse than an ugly storefront with accurate data. Trust, once lost to a wrong price, is nearly impossible to win back.
• Test with real business scenarios. Have your order desk place your most complicated customer’s last ten orders on the staging site. If the build survives that, it will survive launch.
• Launch to all customers simultaneously and you’ll firefight every edge case at once. Wave rollouts surface problems while they’re still small.
• Enable your sales team or they will quietly tell customers to keep emailing them. Reps need to see the platform make their numbers better, not threaten them.
• The workarounds are the signal. When your team maintains spreadsheets to compensate for the current platform, those spreadsheets are the requirements document for the next one.

Questions to Ask Any B2B Ecommerce Agency (Including Us)

If you’re evaluating partners, these questions separate agencies that have shipped B2B from agencies that have shipped websites:

• Which ERP integrations have you built into production, and can we talk to the client running one? Slideware integration diagrams are free; production sync with failure recovery is not.
• Show us a contract pricing implementation. Ask exactly how customer-group rates, volume tiers, and promotions interact, and what prevents a promotion from stacking onto a negotiated rate.
• How do you test? The right answer involves your real order data and your most complicated customer, not a generic QA checklist.
• Who actually does the work? Senior-led pitches with junior-led delivery are the most common failure mode in this industry. Our answer: the people who scope your project build it.
• What happens after launch? B2B platforms earn ROI through adoption over quarters, not through a launch announcement. An agency without an adoption plan is selling you a website.

We hold ourselves to the same list, and our case studies are public so you can check our answers against real builds.

Who We’re Not a Fit For

We’d rather lose a project than misfit one. We’re the wrong agency if you’re an early-stage startup still finding product-market fit, if you want a template storefront stood up in three weeks, if you’re running a price-driven RFP where the cheapest compliant bid wins, or if you sell a simple catalog direct to consumers with no account complexity. There are good agencies for all of those situations. We’re built for operational complexity.

Talk to Us About Your Operation

Bring us your messiest account: the customer with the strangest contract pricing, the order your ERP always mangles, the quote that took a week. That conversation tells both of us more than any pitch deck. Book a consultation and you’ll talk to a senior person who has built this before. We respond within one business day.

Frequently Asked Questions