Shopify B2B Commerce for Packaging and Shipping Supplies Distributors

Uncap builds Shopify commerce for packaging, shipping supply and industrial consumables distributors where the unit of measure is treated as architecture rather than a display preference: each, inner, case and pallet priced separately, break pack rules that hold, contract pricing that comes from the system that owns it, and freight handled as freight rather than as an oversized parcel.

Uncap is a Shopify Platinum Partner, on Shopify since 2013, with 380+ Shopify stores launched.

In most catalogs a product has a price. In packaging a product has four, and which one applies depends on how the buyer is counting today. A case price that is not exactly the each price times the case quantity is normal, not an error. Break pack carries a handling premium. Pallet quantity earns a different rate and often ships on a different truck.

Model this as a variant and it half works until somebody orders across two units of measure in one line. Model it properly and it constrains the catalog, the pricing engine, the inventory position and the freight calculation all at once.

Sequencing is what decides this build: unit of measure and pricing architecture should be decided before design starts.

That is the opposite of how most of these projects run.

Packaging is a contract business with thin margins and frequent renegotiation. A national account has item level pricing. A regional account has a tier. A third has a tier plus a rebate that settles quarterly. Freight terms are part of the deal.

That complexity sits in the ERP, which is the real source of truth for pricing and availability. The hard part of the project is pricing, ordering logic, fulfillment and ERP integration, not storefront design.

A pallet of corrugate is dimensional weight, freight class, liftgate, residential surcharge, appointment delivery, and a rate that can exceed the goods. A storefront that quotes parcel rates on a pallet order is producing a number that will be corrected, which means it has produced a phone call.

The corrugated box itself is a spec of its own: style code, inside dimensions, flute, wall and the burst or edge crush test on its certificate. That spec, with bundle increments and custom print quotes, is covered on corrugated and shipping box ecommerce.

"Shipping supplies wholesale" draws roughly 390 US searches a month at a cost per click of $14.31 with competition at the maximum index. "Packaging ecommerce" runs about 260 a month at $33.30. Those numbers describe a category where acquiring a customer is expensive, which is exactly the category where a manual order entry process quietly eats the margin the marketing spend was supposed to earn.

Nobody browses for stretch film. They reorder it, on a cycle, in the same quantities, usually because they are already short. The catalog is a reference. The order history is the product.

Whichever platform renders it, the contract pricing and the unit of measure model have to come out of the ERP correctly and land in the cart correctly. Uncap Connect is a Shopify-embedded app doing exactly that, syncing ERP pricing, inventory, customer accounts and orders without a middleware subscription sitting in between and breaking on the next platform update.

One question worth asking any partner: will unit of measure, pack breaks and freight be handled with native features, custom logic or middleware? Ask it of everyone, including Uncap.

Each, inner, case and pallet are modeled as distinct purchasable units with their own price, their own inventory relationship and their own freight characteristics, before a single template is designed. Break pack rules and handling premiums are configured rather than explained. Minimums and multiples use Shopify's native quantity rules where they fit, and custom logic only where they do not.

The order matters. Deciding this after the design is what produces a rebuild.

Item level negotiated prices, tiers, volume breaks and freight terms live in the ERP. Uncap Connect syncs them so the account sees its own number at login and at checkout, not a list price with a promise attached. Uncap Quotes runs the full configure, price, quote workflow inside the Shopify admin, with negotiated prices, tiers and volume breaks applied automatically, approvals routed to the right approver, revisions that keep the version history, and an approved quote converting to a Shopify order in one click, which is what a renegotiation cycle needs to leave behind.

Uncap Portal gives buyers multi-user accounts with roles and permissions, where each buyer sees their own assortment and pricing, alongside order history and reorder tools. For a multi-site customer where each location orders its own consumables against a corporate agreement, that structure is the requirement rather than a convenience.

Uncap built ULE Group, an electrical, power and lighting supply distributor, moving a catalog of over 250,000 SKUs onto a Shopify B2B storefront with a PIM keeping it clean and discoverable, more than 100 on-site search filters, and a real-time Epicor integration syncing inventory and pricing. The published results are 6X increased online sales and 559% increased website traffic year over year.

A packaging catalog is not 250,000 SKUs, but it is dense, near-identical, and hostile to search for exactly the same reasons. The filter architecture is the transferable part.

Multi-level unit of measure. Each, inner, case and pallet as distinct purchasable units with their own pricing, inventory relationship and freight characteristics.

Break pack rules and handling premiums. Configured in the pricing model rather than applied by a rep after the order.

Contract pricing from the ERP. Item level negotiated prices, tiers, volume breaks and freight terms synced through Uncap Connect and enforced at checkout.

Freight handled as freight. LTL and pallet shipments rated as freight, with class, liftgate, appointment and residential handling, rather than as oversized parcels.

Quoting with a revision history. Configure, price and quote inside the Shopify admin, with account pricing applied automatically, approvals routed to the right approver and revisions that keep the version history.

Multi-site account structure. Multi-user accounts with roles and permissions, where each buyer sees their own assortment and pricing, for customers ordering across several locations against one agreement.

Reorder from history, not from search. Order history and reorder tools as the default path, with the catalog as the reference rather than the interface.

Filter architecture for dense catalogs. The PIM and faceted search pattern proven on a catalog of over 250,000 SKUs at ULE Group, applied to a catalog where hundreds of items differ by two dimensions.

ERP integration. Thirteen published integrations covering Epicor, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, Infor, Sage, Acumatica, Odoo, QuickBooks, Fishbowl, Cin7 and Syspro.

Unit of measure gets decided before design. Pricing architecture is settled at the same time, ahead of any template. That is how these builds are sequenced here.

The ERP stays the source of truth. Contract pricing is rendered from the system that owns it rather than maintained twice, through an app embedded in Shopify rather than a middleware subscription.

Catalog density is a solved problem. A catalog of over 250,000 SKUs with a PIM and 100+ filters is live at ULE Group, with 6X increased online sales published alongside it.

Scoped before it is built. The Uncap Blueprint maps the unit of measure model, contract pricing structure, freight logic and ERP integration before any build begins. You leave with an architecture you can take to any agency.

Related pages: Industrial Supply and MRO for distributors selling packaging alongside a broader consumables catalog, Janitorial and Safety for the sanitation programs that usually share the same buyer, and Building Materials for the freight and pallet logic in a construction context.

Bring your price file. Specifically bring the part of it where the case price is not the each price times the case quantity, because that is where the build either works or does not.

Talk to Our Experts, or start with a Blueprint if the first thing you need is a unit of measure model somebody will stand behind.