Why wholesale pricing should stay off your public store
A consumer store and a wholesale catalog serve different people. Retail shoppers should see retail prices. Retailers need wholesale prices, minimums and pack sizes, and they need to know those terms were offered to them specifically.
Putting wholesale prices behind a hidden page on your consumer store is a common workaround, but it tends to leak: pages get indexed, links get forwarded, and the store’s checkout was never designed for case packs or per-account pricing.
How a private catalog link works
Your LINK catalog is not listed on a marketplace, so buyers do not stumble onto it while browsing other brands. It reaches the people you send it to: by email, SMS, Instagram DM, WhatsApp or a QR code you hand out at a show. You decide who gets it, and you can run separate catalogs for separate audiences, for example one for boutiques and one for distributors.
Buyers open the link in a browser with no account and no app. Nothing to set up on their side means fewer reasons for a busy store owner to put off the order.
Per-customer price lists
Private pricing is rarely one number. A new boutique pays standard wholesale, a distributor gets a deeper tier, a long-standing account has a negotiated deal. In LINK you create as many price lists as you need (unlimited on the Complete plan) and assign them by customer, so each buyer sees their own prices in the same catalog.
When costs move, you update a price in one place and every catalog reflects it. No more old PDF price lists circulating with last year’s numbers.
- Standard wholesale for new accounts
- Distributor or volume pricing
- Key account or negotiated pricing
- A temporary deal for a show or a launch
Terms that travel with the catalog
Approved buyers still need to follow your rules. The catalog enforces your order minimum, per-product minimums and case multiples in the cart, and shows stock so buyers do not order what you cannot ship. You can schedule products to publish on a date and set a catalog page to expire, which helps when you open preorders for a new season or run a limited offer.
A note on access control
Be clear about what a private link is. It keeps your wholesale catalog off the public store and out of marketplaces, and it gives each buyer their own prices. Like any link, it can be forwarded. If an account stops working with you, you can move them to a different price list or retire the catalog they had and share a new one with the accounts that remain.
For most small brands this is the right balance. A heavy approval process with logins and passwords tends to cost more orders than it protects, because the buyer who has to reset a password is the buyer who orders next week instead.
Keeping the catalog current
A private catalog is only useful if buyers trust it. That means the prices are the ones you will invoice, the stock shown is the stock you have, and discontinued styles are gone. In LINK, prices and stock update in one place and every buyer sees the change the next time they open the link, so you never have to tell a store that the price list they ordered from is out of date. Reports and order history show which accounts are active, which is a good prompt to review who still has access.
Approving accounts in practice
The approval step usually happens before the link is sent, not inside the catalog. A simple routine works: a retailer reaches out or you meet them at a show, you check their store (website, Instagram, location, whether they carry brands like yours), you confirm resale details your accountant requires, and then you send the catalog link with the right price list attached. Keep a note of why you approved them; it helps later when you decide who gets your best terms.