Shopify B2B Agency in Pittsburgh

Steel is the clearest place to start. In 2024 the Pittsburgh, PA metro averaged 29 private establishments in iron and steel mills and ferroalloy manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). Their share of all local establishments was 5.05 times the national share. The same data counts 30 establishments in steel product manufacturing from purchased steel, at 3.96 times the national share. Both sit inside 116 primary metal manufacturing establishments, 3.50 times the national share.

BLS withholds employment for all three groups in this metro, so the figures count plants and firms. They say nothing about how many people work in steel, and this page does not guess.

The overall picture is more ordinary. Manufacturing as a whole had 2,725 private establishments employing 87,612 people in 2024, and its employment location quotient was 0.97, close to the national share. Wholesale trade is below the national share: 2,856 establishments and 33,990 jobs in 2024, an employment location quotient of 0.78. The concentrations are in particular metal industries: steel first, then the machinery makers in the next section.

The Census Bureau draws the metro as eight Pennsylvania counties: Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Lawrence, Washington and Westmoreland. That puts Cranberry Township, Butler County, inside it along with the city itself in Allegheny County. Uncap's page on rebar and structural steel covers the product side of this work.

The second group worth naming builds the machines that cut, form and finish metal. QCEW counted 102 private metalworking machinery manufacturing establishments in the Pittsburgh, PA metro in 2024, an establishment share 2.47 times the national figure. Employment for that group is withheld. Machinery manufacturing as a whole had 267 establishments employing 10,654 people, with an employment location quotient of 1.35.

Alongside them are the job shops: 251 machine shop, turned product and screw, nut and bolt establishments employing 4,298 people in 2024, at 1.81 times the national employment share.

If you build machinery, your catalog probably mixes configured machines with a long list of spare parts, and a mill's catalog looks nothing like it. On Shopify, that kind of catalog can be set up with:

• Parts by account: a B2B catalog per market or customer, with the right prices for an OEM customer, a distributor and a plant buying direct.
• Quoted configurations: machines and tooling packages priced through a quote, then turned into an order once the buyer signs off.
• Exploded diagrams: Uncap Diagrams puts interactive exploded diagrams on the storefront. A maintenance buyer picks the part from the drawing and adds it to the cart without knowing the part number.

For more on this kind of catalog, see Uncap's page on machinery and equipment sellers.

Heavy orders carry freight, and around Pittsburgh some of that freight moves by water. The Port of Pittsburgh Commission, created by the Legislature under Law 1992-133, describes "200 miles of commercially navigable waterways in southwestern Pennsylvania" on the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers, made navigable "by a system of sixteen locks and dams." On its locks and dams page, the Commission states: "Each lock and dam is owned, operated, and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

On the Monongahela, the Commission writes that the river is "now heavily used as a barge route, carrying coal, coke, iron, and steel." Its terminal directory lists terminals by commodity, including steel coils, steel slabs, steel pipe, scrap and ferroalloys. The Commission also notes that the port complex is served by the CSX and Norfolk Southern railroads and by four interstate highways.

One caution on geography: the Commission's port district covers 13 counties, a wider area than the eight-county metro, so the two should not be read as the same region.

What this means for a store is practical. A coil order's freight depends on weight, destination and mode, so a single flat shipping rate may not fit. When freight is priced per order, the storefront has to allow for that. The store's job is the ordering side, so a buyer can request a priced order and approve it online.

Shopify B2B's account structure fits companies that sell to other companies on negotiated terms. It works on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans, and not on Starter or Retail.

• Companies and locations: a fabricator with three plants becomes one company with three company locations, each with its own shipping and billing address and its own payment terms.
• Catalogs: catalogs set which products and prices each buyer sees, with fixed prices, percentage adjustments and volume pricing. On Basic, Grow and Advanced, the store is held to up to 3 active catalog assignments across active B2B markets. Shopify Plus lifts that limit and can attach a catalog directly to a company location, which matters when every large account has its own negotiated price list.
• Quantity rules: minimums, maximums and increments, available on all four B2B plans, keep orders to full bundles, coils or lengths.
• Payment terms: "Payment terms define how long a company has to pay for an order." Shopify offers net 7 through net 90, due on fulfillment, and fixed-date terms.
• Deposits: deposit requirements are available only on the Shopify Plus plan, which is worth knowing before a seller promises a deposit on a large mill order.

Two checkout notes. Shopify names Shop Pay, Shop Cash and Shop Pay Installments as incompatible with B2B, so business buyers pay through other methods or on terms. And because catalog assignments are capped below Plus, the plan decision should follow an account count, made before the build. Uncap's fixed-scope Shopify build work starts from that count.

A steel or machinery order often starts as a question: what will 40 tons of this grade cost delivered to our yard, or what does this machine cost with these options? Uncap Quotes is built for that step. Buyers get quotes priced for their own account, which they can configure and check out themselves, and reps are no longer rebuilding the same quote in a spreadsheet.

The quote work stays inside the Shopify admin. Once the buyer accepts, a single click converts the quote into a Shopify order, and the price the rep agreed is the price on the order.

Your sales team keeps the conversations that need a person, the large or unusual orders, while repeat buyers of standard grades and sizes reorder from their own catalog. Reps spend their time on accounts instead of rebuilding quotes.

For buyers who order every week, Uncap Portal gives each trade account its own self-serve area on Shopify for catalogs, pricing, reorders, invoices and users. A plant's purchasing manager can pull last month's invoice or repeat a standing order without calling inside sales.

A metals store is only as accurate as the ERP data behind it. Uncap's integration list covers ERP and back-office platforms from 13 vendors. Epicor, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Oracle, SAP, Sage and Syspro are among them, and the integrations directory lists all 13 with a page each.

There are two routes: Uncap Connect, or a managed integration. The Uncap team checks fit against your ERP and its version before recommending either. Connect is priced at $8,000 to set up and a flat $390 per month.

For a metals seller, the integration questions are usually concrete. Which customer number maps to which Shopify company? Do grade, size and length live as separate items or as variants? Where does the price for a negotiated account come from? Is stock shown by mill, by warehouse, or not at all? Blueprint's ERP mapping answers them before the build, so the integration is scoped to your data as it actually exists today.

Uncap is headquartered in Chicago. Uncap's team, based at its Chicago headquarters, travels on site for kickoff and key milestones, whether the plant is in Allegheny County, Cranberry Township or out in Westmoreland or Washington County.

1. Start with Uncap Blueprint. Uncap Blueprint is a fixed $7,500 engagement that runs four weeks and covers architecture, data taxonomy, SEO and ERP mapping. The plan is yours whether or not Uncap builds, and if Uncap does build, the fee is credited toward implementation.
2. A fixed scope. You and Uncap sign off on the budget and the timeline before any build work begins.
3. The build. A senior Uncap team takes the store from architecture and design through theme and app development, ERP integration and data migration with SEO redirects, to launch.
4. Launch and hypercare. The project runs to completion, with hypercare at launch.

Timelines depend on the starting point. For a business leaving another platform, expect 10 to 16 weeks, with a median cutover of about 14; the Shopify migrations page explains how. A new build is about 12 weeks end to end. A business already on Shopify that is adding B2B to its store needs 4 to 8 weeks.

After launch, Uncap's monthly growth engagement keeps improving the store, working on conversion, order value, retention and operations, with monthly plans from $2,500.

Uncap has no verified client in the Pittsburgh metro. The closest example is a business that sells to metalworkers.

Welding Store. Before this project, WISCO (Welding Industrial Supply Company), a Chicago welding supply business, had served welders and technicians from a physical store for more than half a century. Uncap built weldingstore.com from the ground up as its new B2B store. Three parts of the build carry over to a metals seller. Custom checkout scripts give each customer group its own shipping and payment capabilities. Custom collection filters and a navigation strategy help buyers find the right item in a broad catalog. Reward and payment plan platforms support loyalty and installments. See what Uncap built for Welding Store.

Uncap is a Shopify Platinum Partner rated 5.0 on Clutch across 77 reviews and 5.0 on Google across 64 reviews. Clients' own words are on the testimonials page.

If you make or process steel or build metalworking machinery in western Pennsylvania, Talk to Our Experts about your accounts, your quotes and your ERP.