About This Project
At some point in running an EC site, this request tends to come up: "Regular users should see the standard price, but our business partners should see member pricing." That is B2B (business/dealer) support. Shopify does offer an official B2B feature, but it requires the Shopify Plus plan, which moves the monthly cost into a different bracket entirely. For a store with only a handful of business partners, that contract is honestly hard to justify.
So we built something different: a B2B auto-discount and invoice payment system that runs on the standard Shopify plan, implemented on a Shopify + headless EC site (one where the storefront pages are custom-built with Next.js).
The building blocks are two features Shopify already has: customer tags and coupons (discount codes). Users simply log in and member pricing appears automatically, and at checkout the discount is applied without anyone typing a coupon code. Invoice payment (net terms) is supported as well.
Adding a new business partner takes one tag in the admin screen. No program changes are ever needed, so non-engineering staff can handle the day-to-day operation on their own.
Learn More
We've written three articles explaining this system in detail, ordered so you can read from design thinking, to Shopify configuration, to the website-side implementation.
Overview & Design Philosophy
Why we chose this design, the tag-name-equals-coupon-name trick, and the challenges unique to headless setups.
Shopify Configuration
Detailed setup steps for customer tags, segments, collections, and coupons.
Headless Implementation & Invoice Payment
Tag reading, price calculation, auto-coupon application, and invoice payment via draft orders.
How It Works
standard-35 → B2B Standard 35 → standard-35 (35% OFF)
Tag name = Coupon name (exact match)
On the Shopify side, three things are set up together: attach a tag, build a group from that tag, and create a coupon only that group can use. The key is keeping the tag name and the coupon name exactly identical.
The website reads the logged-in user's tags, works out the discount rate from them, and displays member pricing — that is the whole flow.
The moment a user heads to checkout, the coupon sharing the tag's name is applied behind the scenes, so they pay the discounted amount without entering any code.
Key Results
- Operational efficiency: Adding a new B2B customer takes only a tag
- User experience: Member pricing applies automatically on login
- Flexibility: Supports different discount rates across multiple categories
- Cost savings: Full B2B functionality without Shopify Plus
Tech Stack
- Shopify Storefront API (customer tag retrieval)
- Shopify Admin API (draft order creation)
- Next.js (App Router)
- Customer tag / segment / coupon integration