--- title: "Shopify B2B Agency in Birmingham, Alabama" url: https://www.uncap.com/shopify-agency/birmingham-alabama published: 2026-11-11 updated: 2026-11-11 summary: "From its Chicago headquarters, Shopify Platinum Partner Uncap builds Shopify B2B stores for Birmingham, Alabama metal service centers, distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers, sending its team on site for kickoff and key milestones. In BLS QCEW data for 2024, the Birmingham, AL metro area had 76 metal service center and metal merchant wholesaler establishments, 2.32 times the national share of establishments. Shopify B2B runs on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, and the three plans under Plus allow up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets. Uncap Blueprint is a fixed $7,500 plan that takes four weeks, and migrations typically run 10 to 16 weeks." --- # Shopify B2B Agency in Birmingham, Alabama > From its Chicago headquarters, Shopify Platinum Partner Uncap builds Shopify B2B stores for Birmingham, Alabama metal service centers, distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers, sending its team on site for kickoff and key milestones. In BLS QCEW data for 2024, the Birmingham, AL metro area had 76 metal service center and metal merchant wholesaler establishments, 2.32 times the national share of establishments. Shopify B2B runs on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, and the three plans under Plus allow up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets. Uncap Blueprint is a fixed $7,500 plan that takes four weeks, and migrations typically run 10 to 16 weeks. This page is for B2B manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers in Birmingham, Alabama, and especially for the metals and building-material trade: metal service centers, the wholesalers and brokers around them, and the plants that make brick, clay and concrete products. Uncap, a Shopify Platinum Partner, works out of its Chicago headquarters, keeps no office in Alabama, and sends its team to your site for kickoff and key milestones. ## Metal service centers and the accounts that buy from them Federal data picks out the distribution side of the metals business in Birmingham, Alabama clearly. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) shows the metro averaging 76 private establishments in metal service centers and other metal merchant wholesalers in 2024, 2.32 times the national share of establishments. The wider metal and mineral merchant wholesalers group counted 80 establishments, at 2.34 times. The Census Bureau measures the same industry through a different survey. The Census Bureau's 2023 County Business Patterns lists 72 metal service center and metal merchant wholesaler establishments in the Birmingham, AL metro area, with 1,972 employees. Metal making still shows up in the data. In the 2024 QCEW file, primary metal manufacturing establishments ran 2.39 times the national share (43 establishments), and fabricated metal product manufacturing had 296 establishments employing 6,565 people, an employment location quotient of 1.37. If your accounts have their own pricing, ask for job quotes and reorder the same items, the store has to get those right before anything else. Uncap's [rebar and structural steel](/industry/rebar-structural-steel) page shows how pricing by weight and mill certs work on Shopify. ## Wholesale counts, broker counts and the clay and concrete plants In Census County Business Patterns geography, the Birmingham, AL metro area covers seven Alabama counties: Bibb, Blount, Chilton, Jefferson, St. Clair, Shelby and Walker. Census 2020 place codes put Bessemer in Jefferson County and show Hoover and the city of Birmingham each spanning Jefferson and Shelby counties. The Census Bureau's 2023 County Business Patterns count for the metro shows 1,552 wholesale trade establishments and 890 manufacturing establishments. Manufacturing employed more people in that count, 37,779 against 26,586 in wholesale. BLS QCEW figures for 2024 add detail on the wholesale side: - Wholesale trade overall: 2,332 private establishments, 1.23 times the national share. - Merchant wholesalers of durable goods: 1,185 establishments employing 13,692 people, an employment location quotient of 1.21. - Wholesale trade agents and brokers: 765 establishments, 2.21 times the national share. - Machinery, equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers: 322 establishments, 1.39 times. Manufacturing as a whole sits near the national share: QCEW counts 1,413 private manufacturing establishments employing 40,009 people in 2024, an employment location quotient of 0.94. The concentration is in particular niches. Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing (cement, concrete, brick and similar products) ran 2.46 times the national share of establishments, with 129. Clay product and refractory plants numbered 19 and employed 538, an employment location quotient of 4.72, and cement and concrete product makers counted 64 establishments, 2.29 times. Building-material sellers can see Uncap's [building materials](/industry/building-materials) and [construction supply](/industry/construction-supply) pages. The monthly BLS survey for September 2026 (preliminary, not seasonally adjusted) shows 39,900 manufacturing jobs, 28,300 of them in durable goods. The same survey shows 26,900 wholesale trade jobs, against 27,900 a year earlier. ## Turning a job quote into a Shopify order Plenty of B2B orders start as a quote rather than a checkout. With [Uncap Quotes](/products/quotes), configuring, pricing and quoting happen in the Shopify admin your team works in every day. Each account sees quotes built from its own pricing, buyers can configure, price and check out on their own, and reps no longer rebuild one quote over and over in a spreadsheet. Revisions keep their version history. Negotiation and approvals stay inside Shopify with the guardrails in place. Once the buyer accepts, one click converts the approved quote into a Shopify order, so nobody re-keys it into another system. For a service center, that can mean a fabricator asks for pricing on a specific job, a rep adjusts it, a manager approves it and the fabricator places the order from the same record. For a concrete or brick maker, a contractor's quote for one project can become the order once the job is awarded. ## Which Shopify plan a service center needs for account pricing Selling B2B on Shopify does not start with Plus. Basic, Grow and Advanced include Shopify B2B, the same as Plus, and the difference that matters most for a service center is how many catalog assignments, and so how many price lists, you can run at once. Below Plus, the ceiling is up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets; on Plus, there is no such ceiling. Three catalog assignments might cover a contractor tier, a fabricator tier and a plant tier. A service center that negotiates a separate price list with each large account will outgrow that quickly, and Plus is the plan to scope for, since only Plus can assign catalogs directly to companies and company locations. Other Shopify B2B rules to plan around: - Payment terms: in Shopify's definition, terms "define how long a company has to pay for an order." - Shop Pay: one of the payment methods Shopify lists as incompatible with Shopify B2B. - Deposits: for large or custom orders that need money up front, note Shopify's wording: "Deposit requirements are available only on the Shopify Plus plan." So the short answer to standard Shopify or Plus: standard fits when three catalog assignments cover your pricing and you do not need deposits, and Plus fits when either is false. Uncap Blueprint settles it against your real account list before you commit to a plan. ## Linking Shopify to the ERP that prices your metal Account prices, stock and open orders already live in your ERP, so the store has to read from it. Uncap integrates with systems from 13 ERP and back-office vendors: Epicor, Infor, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Sage, Syspro, Acumatica, Odoo, Cin7, Fishbowl and QuickBooks. Each has a page under [integrations](/integrations), and Uncap confirms fit for your system and version on a call. Whether the link runs through [Uncap Connect](/products/connect) or a managed integration depends on your system. Connect is priced at $8,000 for onboarding, then $390 a month, flat. Metal pricing raises an extra question: does the price a buyer sees come from a list, from a weight-based calculation in the ERP, or from a quote? Building-material makers face a similar choice between list and project pricing. Blueprint's ERP integration roadmap decides where each price comes from, and which system wins when two disagree, before the build starts. Settling it early keeps the store and the ERP from showing one buyer two different prices. ## A Chicago team on site in Birmingham, Alabama, from plan to launch You will not find an Uncap office in Birmingham. The company runs from 8770 West Bryn Mawr Ave, Suite 1300, Chicago, IL 60631, serving clients nationwide, and on a Birmingham, Alabama job its Chicago-based team comes on site for kickoff and key milestones. Start by deciding what kind of project this is. Going from discovery to launch on a brand-new store is roughly 12 weeks of work. Leaving another platform for Shopify (a [migration](/migrations)) runs 10 to 16 weeks in a typical case, and the median Uncap cutover lands near 14 weeks. Where Shopify already runs your retail store, folding B2B into it alongside B2C is a 4 to 8 week job. - Scoping call. Share a price list, a recent quote and your ERP name and version. - Uncap Blueprint. $7,500, fixed price, four weeks: architecture, the ERP integration roadmap and a replatforming risk assessment, yours to keep. The fee is credited 1:1 toward implementation. - Kickoff on site. The team comes to you, wherever in the metro the business sits. - Build. Scope for the build is fixed, and you sign off on timeline and budget first. - Milestone visits and launch. The team returns on site for key milestones through launch. - After launch. Optional monthly work on revenue, optimization, retention and operations, with plans from $2,500 a month. ## Welding Store, ULE Group and the ratings behind Uncap Uncap has no published client in the Birmingham, AL metro area. Two projects elsewhere sit close to the metals and industrial supply trade. - Welding Store: after more than half a century selling to welders and technicians from a physical store as Welding Industrial Supply Company (WISCO), the business wanted to serve a larger radius. Uncap built a completely new B2B ecommerce website, weldingstore.com, with custom collection filters, badges and a navigation strategy for its broad catalog, plus custom checkout scripts for shipping and payment options unique to customer groups. - ULE Group: a distributor of electrical, lighting and power products with a catalog of over 250,000 SKUs. Uncap's Shopify B2B build added a cart-level convert-to-quote feature for high-value purchases, customized catalogs with account-based payment terms, and an Epicor ERP integration. Uncap holds Shopify Platinum Partner status. Clutch reviewers rate it 5.0 across 77 reviews, Google 5.0 across 64, and Trustpilot 4.6 across 20. Reviews from clients are collected on the [testimonials](/testimonials) page. ## Next step for a Birmingham, Alabama supplier Service centers, brokers, wholesale houses and building-material plants from Jefferson and Shelby counties out to Walker, Blount, St. Clair, Chilton and Bibb all start in the same place: a call about how your accounts buy today, covering pricing by account, the orders that begin as quotes, payment terms and what your ERP holds. From that call, Uncap can tell you whether standard Shopify or Plus fits, whether you need a new build or a migration, and whether Blueprint is the right first step. If it is, you know the price and the four-week timeline before you sign anything. Bring someone who writes quotes and someone who knows the ERP. A recent job quote, one account's price list and a rough count of how many accounts get their own pricing are usually enough to tell whether three catalog assignments will do or Plus belongs in the plan. To start with your own price list and ERP in front of you, [Talk to Our Experts](/quote). ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Uncap based in Birmingham, Alabama? No. Uncap works from its Chicago headquarters at 8770 West Bryn Mawr Ave, Suite 1300, and takes clients nationwide. When the project is in Birmingham, Alabama, the team travels down from Chicago on site for kickoff and key milestones. The build is fixed scope, with the timeline and budget approved before it starts. ### Do you work with companies in Hoover, Bessemer and the rest of the metro? Yes. The Birmingham, AL metro area, in Census County Business Patterns geography, covers Bibb, Blount, Chilton, Jefferson, St. Clair, Shelby and Walker counties. Bessemer is in Jefferson County, and Hoover spans Jefferson and Shelby, per Census 2020 place codes. Uncap works with companies in all seven counties, and a project in Walker County is priced like one in Hoover, with the same on-site visits. ### Should we use standard Shopify or Shopify Plus for B2B? Standard plans can sell to trade accounts: Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus all include Shopify B2B. The difference is scale. Standard plans cap a store at up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets, while that limit does not apply on Plus, the only plan with deposit requirements. If three catalog assignments cover your pricing and you take no deposits, a standard plan can work. ### Should we start with a new build or a migration? That depends on where you sell today. Expect roughly 12 weeks from discovery to launch for a store built new. A move off another platform is typically 10 to 16 weeks, with Uncap's median cutover near 14 weeks. Already on Shopify? Running B2B and B2C from that one store takes 4 to 8 weeks. Uncap Blueprint confirms the path. ### What does the first phase cost? Uncap's planning phase, Uncap Blueprint, is $7,500 at a fixed price over four weeks, covering architecture, the ERP integration roadmap and a replatforming risk assessment. The fee is credited 1:1 toward implementation. Where your ERP calls for Uncap Connect, budget $8,000 for onboarding and $390 a month after that. Monthly work after launch has plans from $2,500 a month. ### Can buyers ask for a quote instead of checking out? Yes, with Uncap Quotes, which handles configure, price, quote inside the Shopify admin. Quotes are built from each account's pricing, revisions keep their version history, and negotiation and approvals happen in Shopify too. A fabricator or contractor who accepts a quote does not re-enter anything: one click makes the approved quote a Shopify order. ### Can Uncap connect Shopify to the ERP we use for pricing and stock? Yes, if your system is among the 13 ERP and back-office vendors Uncap works with, such as Epicor, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Sage, SAP, Acumatica and Syspro. Uncap Connect handles some of them and a managed integration handles others, and Uncap checks your exact ERP and version for fit. Blueprint decides which system owns each price before the build. ### Has Uncap worked with metals or industrial supply companies? Not in the Birmingham metro. Elsewhere, Uncap built Welding Store's completely new B2B ecommerce website for a business that had sold to welders and technicians for more than half a century, and a Shopify B2B storefront for ULE Group, an electrical, lighting and power distributor, with a cart-level convert-to-quote feature. Uncap is rated 5.0 on Clutch across 77 reviews.