--- title: "Wholesale Catalog: How to Build a B2B Catalog Buyers Can Order From" url: https://www.uncap.com/post/wholesale-catalog author: "Denis Dyli" published: 2026-11-05 updated: 2026-11-05 summary: "A wholesale catalog shows business buyers what you sell, their price, and the rules for ordering: SKUs, case packs, minimum order quantities, tiered prices, specs and images. PDFs work for one price level but multiply once you sell at several tiers, which is when an online B2B catalog pays off. On Shopify, B2B catalogs choose which products and prices each B2B customer sees, with quantity rules and up to 10 volume price breaks per product, and Basic, Grow and Advanced allow up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets. Keeping price and stock in the ERP and syncing them to the catalog, as ULE Group does with over 250,000 SKUs and Epicor, keeps the catalog current." --- # Wholesale Catalog: How to Build a B2B Catalog Buyers Can Order From > A wholesale catalog shows business buyers what you sell, their price, and the rules for ordering: SKUs, case packs, minimum order quantities, tiered prices, specs and images. PDFs work for one price level but multiply once you sell at several tiers, which is when an online B2B catalog pays off. On Shopify, B2B catalogs choose which products and prices each B2B customer sees, with quantity rules and up to 10 volume price breaks per product, and Basic, Grow and Advanced allow up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets. Keeping price and stock in the ERP and syncing them to the catalog, as ULE Group does with over 250,000 SKUs and Epicor, keeps the catalog current. A wholesale catalog is the document, or the online store, that shows business buyers what you sell, what it costs them, and the rules for ordering it: SKUs, case packs, minimum order quantities, tiered prices, spec sheets and images. A B2B catalog online does the same job, with each buyer logged in to its own assortment and prices. Last updated: November 5, 2026. ## What a wholesale catalog is and who uses one Manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers all keep some version of a wholesale catalog. The buyer is a business: a retailer restocking shelves, a contractor buying for a job, a purchasing agent placing the monthly order. That buyer reads the catalog differently from a consumer. They want the item number they can match to their own system, the pack they will receive, the price on their account, and the terms that come with it. That is why a wholesale catalog carries information a retail catalog leaves out. Pack quantities, order minimums, trade pricing next to the suggested retail price, lead times and payment terms are the working parts. Photography and copy still matter, but a buyer who cannot tell whether a SKU ships by the each or by the case of 12 will pick up the phone. A good catalog answers that question before the call. The catalog also sets the shape of your online channel later. If you plan to move ordering to the web, the fields you settle on now become the product data your store runs on. Our guide to [wholesale ecommerce](/glossary/wholesale-ecommerce) covers that wider channel. This post stays on the catalog itself: what goes in it, which format to use, how to keep it current, and how to build it online. ## Print, PDF or online: picking a wholesale catalog format A wholesale catalog can take one of three formats, and nothing stops you from running two of them side by side. - Print: a bound catalog for sales reps and trade shows. It travels well and a buyer can keep it on the desk. It is also frozen the day it goes to the printer, so every price change after that lives on an insert or in a rep's memory. - PDF: the same layout, emailed or posted behind a login. It is cheap to produce and easy to send. The trouble starts when you sell at more than one price level. Each tier needs its own PDF, and each PDF needs a new version every time a price, a pack size or a product changes. - Online B2B catalog: the catalog is the store. The buyer logs in and sees the products and prices assigned to them, with stock and ordering rules applied at the cart. Nothing is re-exported when a price changes, because the price comes from the same record the order uses. The practical test is how many versions of the truth you are maintaining. One price list and a few hundred SKUs can live in a PDF for a long time. With several price tiers, contract accounts, or a catalog in the thousands of SKUs, every change has to reach every PDF, and any copy that misses an update shows a buyer the wrong price or pack. That is the point to plan an online B2B catalog. ## What every product in a B2B catalog needs Whatever the format, each product line should carry the same set of fields, because a missing field can turn into a phone call or a wrong order. - SKU: a unique item code per variant. Shopify's product documentation puts it simply: "Stock keeping units (SKUs) identify products within your business." See our SKU definition if you are building a scheme from scratch. - Case pack: how many units ship together. Show it next to the price so the buyer knows whether the price is per unit or per case. Our case pack entry explains the common setups. - Minimum order quantity: the fewest units, or cases, a buyer can order. Define MOQ per product, not just per order, if your packs differ. - Tiered prices: the wholesale price for each buyer level, and the price breaks for volume. Show MSRP beside wholesale where your retailers expect it. - Spec sheets: dimensions, materials, ratings, certifications and anything else a buyer checks before ordering. Keep these as structured fields where you can, with a downloadable PDF for the full sheet. - Images: a clean product shot per variant at minimum, plus any detail a buyer needs to confirm it is the right part. - Ordering terms: payment terms, shipping rules, lead times and returns, stated once for the catalog and repeated where a product differs. Shopify can hold each of these. Structured specs fit product metafields: Shopify's example is a furniture store that adds a Dimensions metafield so that "you can display width, height, and depth in a dedicated section of your theme, with unique values for each product." For full spec sheets, Shopify's metafield guide lists "Add a PDF file for assembly instructions" as a use of the File type. Case packs and minimums map to B2B quantity rules, covered below and in detail in our post on [order minimums, case packs and MOQs on Shopify](/post/wholesale-order-minimums-case-packs-moq-shopify). ## Keeping the wholesale catalog in sync with the ERP A catalog is only as current as its last update. If you run an ERP, prices, stock and customer accounts already live there, and that is where they should stay. The catalog should pull from the ERP so nobody has to retype it. Shopify supports that direction directly. Its help center says: "You can integrate Shopify B2B with your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and other external business systems to sync customer data, orders, inventory, product catalogs, and pricing information." Product content (descriptions, specs, images) can sit in a [PIM](/glossary/pim) instead, which feeds the same product records. In practice the split looks like this. The ERP owns price, stock and accounts. The PIM, or Shopify itself if you have no PIM, owns product content. The online B2B catalog shows both, and orders flow back to the ERP. When a price changes in the ERP and the change syncs, the buyer sees the new price on the next page load, and nobody re-exports a PDF. [Uncap Connect](/products/connect) is built for that link. Its product page describes it as "the real-time data layer between Shopify, your ERP, and the warehouse floor," with "native support for Shopify B2B companies, locations, catalogs, price lists, and payment terms." Uncap Connect starts at $8,000 for onboarding and then a flat $390 per month. [ULE Group](/work/ulegroup) is a working example at scale. The Shopify B2B storefront Uncap built for it carries "over 250,000 SKUs, with product data managed in a PIM so the catalog stays accurate and centralized," and its Epicor integration provides "real-time product, inventory and pricing updates." ## Building a B2B catalog online with Shopify B2B On Shopify, the online wholesale catalog is built from B2B catalogs. Shopify defines them this way: "You can use B2B catalogs to choose which products and prices to offer your B2B customers." Inside a catalog, "You can include or exclude products, apply percentage price adjustments, and set fixed prices." A few facts decide how you set them up: - Plans: "Shopify B2B is available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Shopify Plus plans." - How many: "On the Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans, you can have up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets." Shopify adds that "Assigning the same active catalog to 2 active B2B markets counts as 2 assignments" and that "The 3-assignment limit doesn't apply on the Shopify Plus plan." Our answer on how many B2B catalogs you can have without Shopify Plus explains how the limit counts across markets. - Who sees what: a catalog is assigned to a B2B market, and "On the Plus plan, you can also assign catalogs directly to company locations." - Order rules: "You can set up quantity rules to minimum, maximum, or increments that a variant can be ordered in." An increment rule is how a case pack is enforced at the cart. Shopify's own example is a product boxed in multiples of 10 with an increment rule of 10, so customers buy 10, 20 or 30 at a time. - Volume pricing: "You can add up to 10 price breaks per product which are applied to each variant." - Bulk setup: "You can set quantity rules in the Catalogs section of your Shopify admin, or by importing a CSV." - Terms: "Payment terms define how long a company has to pay for an order." Past a handful of tiers, plan the catalog structure before you start the setup. How to split pricing from assortment, and how to keep hundreds of price lists from drifting, is covered in our post on [Shopify B2B catalogs and price lists at scale](/post/shopify-b2b-catalogs-price-lists-at-scale). ## A build order for moving from PDF to an online catalog Here is the order of work we suggest for moving a wholesale or distribution catalog online. - Step 1: Clean the product data first. One record per variant with a SKU, case pack, minimum, specs and images. Fix gaps here, before buyers find them in the live catalog. - Step 2: Count your price levels and your assortments. How many distinct price levels do you sell at, and how many different product ranges do buyers see? Those two numbers decide your catalog count and whether the plan limit matters to you. - Step 3: Decide the system of record for each field. Price and stock from the ERP, content from the PIM or Shopify. Write it down so nobody edits the wrong copy. - Step 4: Connect the ERP before you invite buyers. That way the first prices buyers see already come from the ERP. - Step 5: Launch with a few accounts. Let a small group of buyers order for a few weeks, fix what they trip on, then open it to everyone. Equipment makers with parts catalogs have one more option. [Uncap Diagrams](/products/diagrams) lets buyers "click the part they need straight off the schematic and add it to the cart, no part number required." For distributors weighing the whole channel, our guide to [distributor ecommerce](/post/ecommerce-for-distributors) covers what comes next, and the [Shopify B2B agency for distributors](/solutions/distributors) page shows how Uncap scopes that work. Industry-specific notes are on our pages for [industrial ecommerce](/industry/industrial-machinery) and [electrical and electronics ecommerce](/industry/electrical-electronics). Uncap is a Shopify Platinum Partner that builds B2B catalogs for manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers. If your PDFs are multiplying faster than your price lists, [Talk to Our Experts](/quote). ## Frequently asked questions ### What should a wholesale catalog include? A wholesale catalog should include, for every product, a SKU, the case pack, the minimum order quantity, the wholesale price for each buyer tier, specs and images. It should also state the ordering terms once: payment terms, shipping rules, lead times and returns. If one is missing, a buyer may have to call before ordering. ### What is the difference between a wholesale catalog and a retail catalog? A wholesale catalog is written for business buyers, so it carries pack quantities, order minimums, trade prices and payment terms that a retail catalog leaves out. A retail catalog sells single units at one public price. A wholesale catalog often shows different prices to different accounts. ### Is a PDF wholesale catalog enough? A PDF wholesale catalog is enough when you sell at one price level with a modest number of SKUs. Once you have several price tiers or contract accounts, each tier needs its own PDF and every change needs a new version. That is the point to consider an online B2B catalog where each buyer logs in to their own prices. ### How many B2B catalogs can you have on Shopify? On the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans, Shopify says "you can have up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets," and assigning one catalog to two markets counts as two assignments. Shopify also says "The 3-assignment limit doesn't apply on the Shopify Plus plan." ### Can Shopify enforce case packs and minimum order quantities? Yes. Shopify B2B quantity rules let you set a minimum, a maximum, or an increment that a variant can be ordered in, so a case of 12 becomes an increment rule of 12: the buyer can order 12, 24 or 36 units, but not 18. Shopify lists quantity rules for the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans. ### How do you keep a wholesale catalog in sync with the ERP? Keep price, stock and customer accounts in the ERP and sync them to the online catalog through an ERP integration, so nobody retypes prices. Shopify says Shopify B2B can integrate with ERP systems "to sync customer data, orders, inventory, product catalogs, and pricing information." Uncap Connect is one way to run that sync. ### Which Shopify plans support B2B catalogs? Shopify says "Shopify B2B is available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Shopify Plus plans," and B2B catalogs are one of its features. Shopify B2B isn't available on the Starter or Retail plans. Plus removes the 3-assignment catalog limit and adds direct catalog assignment to company locations.