The New Shopify Markets + B2B: Unlocking Global & Wholesale Growth

Shopify’s Markets and B2B Markets together offer powerful tools for businesses wanting to scale globally or sell wholesale. Below is a more detailed breakdown of features, plus strategies for using them.

Deep Dive: What Shopify Markets (New) Offers

These are the capabilities introduced in the latest version of “Markets” in Shopify, along with important constraints to plan around.

Key Concepts & Terminology

• Market: A group of customers you define that share some attributes — e.g., region, currency, language, theme customizations, or product availability.
• Submarket: A more specific subset under a parent market. For example, you have a parent market “Europe” and submarkets like “France”, “Germany”. Submarkets inherit settings from the parent but you can override as needed.
• Catalog: A set of products that you select to offer to specific markets. You can tailor which SKUs are visible in which markets. What’s new is that catalog management is now consistent across all markets.
• Backup region: If a customer doesn’t match any defined market (or submarket), then the fallback “backup region” determines their experience (e.g. default currency, theme etc.).

Customizations & Controls

You can configure per market:

• Currency: Display and transact in region-appropriate currency.
• Language: Localize content (text) to match users in different markets.
• Theme & Customizations: Use customized versions of your primary theme per market — but note: you can’t use totally different themes, only customizations of your published theme.
• Domains: Control whether to use country- or region-based domains or subdomains to help with trust, SEO, etc.
• Taxes, Duties, Shipping: Tailor taxes & duties, shipping rates, carriers etc by market.
• Products / Catalogs: Include or exclude products per market, to reflect what makes sense in those territories (availability, legal, logistical or demand-based reasons).

Administrative & UX Tools

• “Graph View” for Markets: A visual map of your markets and submarkets, showing which settings are inherited vs overridden.
• “View as”: Allows admins to preview what customers from each market see — the catalog, prices, theme elements etc. Also useful for checking what products are visible in each market.

Plan Requirements & Limitations

• Some features require higher-tier Shopify plans (e.g. Shopify Plus). Examples: B2B Markets, creating business entities per market, more advanced catalog/theme customizations.
• Some features limited or with restrictions:
  • Fixed amount discounts are created in the store’s default currency; when used in other markets they are converted based on exchange rates.
  • Gift cards operate only in the store’s default currency.
  • Only one theme can be published globally; customizations per market are possible but must derive from that one theme.

Markets B2B: What They Add & How They Work

If your business sells wholesale, to corporate customers, or operates company locations, these B2B extensions of Markets bring additional capabilities. These are only available on Shopify Plus.

Managing B2B with Markets

• Definition of “B2B Market”: Markets that include “company locations” (i.e. wholesale customers, business clients) instead of just retail/consumers. You can map company locations in different ways:
  1. All company locations globally
  2. All company locations in specific region(s)
  3. Specific company locations manually selected
• Customer experience determination: When a business customer accesses your store, Shopify figures out which markets that company location matches (could be multiple). The experience (catalog, pricing, shipping, theme customizations) is determined by the most specific matching market(s). For example, a company location in Canada might match “B2B All”, “B2B Canada”, “Canada”, and maybe a dedicated “Company Location A” market. The settings from all matching markets combine, with more specific ones overriding more general ones.
• Customizing B2B Markets: Similar controls as general markets: currency, catalogs assigned, theme customizations, taxes & duties etc.
• Backup region: If a company location doesn’t match any B2B market, it falls back to the backup region settings, just like with retail markets.

Selling Internationally in B2B with Markets

• Currency & draft order behavior:
  • Orders, including draft orders, use the currency of the market that matches the business customer (usually based on shipping address).
  • For draft orders, the exchange rate is locked in when the draft is created. If edits are made later, pricing may be updated according to the then-current exchange rate in some cases.
  
• Taxes & Duties: Settings for whether product prices include or exclude taxes depend on the market. Shipping address changes can trigger different tax rules.
  
• Multiple currencies: To sell in multiple currencies you generally need Shopify Payments (or approved processors). The currency shown to the customer is based on their market; but in catalog pricing what you “receive” might differ (due to exchange/processing, etc.).

Catalogs in B2B Markets

• What catalogs can do:
  • Control which products business customers see.
  • Set pricing adjustments: percentage discounts or markups, fixed prices for specific variants, or volume pricing/quantity-breaks.
  
• How to assign catalogs:
  • To B2B markets (so that all company locations within those markets see catalog rules)
  • Directly to company locations (for very specific, individual agreements)
  
• Multiple catalogs & conflict resolution rules:
  • A company location can have multiple catalogs assigned (via markets and/or directly).
  • If catalogs contain the same product at different prices, the lowest applicable price is shown (unless specific pricing rules override or quantity-break rules pull in another catalog).
  • Volume/quantity pricing rules behave in catalogs and apply if specified, but which catalog rules wins depends on how catalogs are assigned.
  
• Limits: Each company location can have up to 25 catalogs assigned (via market + direct assignments combined).

How Brands & B2B Businesses Can Leverage These Features

Here are some tactical ways to use all of this intelligently:

1. Define core markets + submarkets early
   Think about geography, language, regulatory clusters, wholesale vs retail. Use parent+submarket structure so that general customizations are inherited, but fine-tune where needed.
2. Segment B2B customers clearly
   Use company-locations + catalogs so that you can offer tailored pricing, SKUs, and terms to wholesale accounts, distributors, etc. For example, a European wholesale partner may need different prices, shipping, and product availability vs a U.S. distributor.
3. Use catalogs strategically
   • Broad catalogs for large groups (e.g. “All B2B”)
   • More specific catalogs for high-value customers or regionally special cases
   • Volume pricing or fixed pricing for variants for big orders
4. Localize deeply
   It’s not just currency or language — include local tax/duty behavior, shipping options, even theming or messaging for specific markets. All of that helps build trust and drive conversion.
5. Test using “View as” & graph view
   Before going live, preview customer journeys (catalog visibility, currency, product availability, theme changes). This helps catch mismatches or surprises.
6. Be aware of the limitations & avoid pitfalls
   • Fixed amount discounts and gift cards linked to default currency, so pricing adjustments can be less precise.
   • One theme means theme customization per market must stay within that theme’s framework.
   • Multiple catalogs can cause complexity—if you have many overlapping catalogs, understand which pricing wins and how visibility is determined.
   • Logistics overhead: taxes, duties, shipping, returns often get harder when dealing across many regions or with varied duties/taxes.

Get Guidance Leveraging Shopify Markets + B2B

At Absolute Web, we guide brands through leveraging Shopify Markets & B2B in a way that minimizes risk and maximizes ROI. Here’s how we support:

• Audits & readiness assessment: Evaluate your current ecommerce / wholesale setup, identify gaps or opportunities for global markets or B2B catalog strategy.
• Market structure design: Define your markets + submarkets; map which product lines, pricing, currencies, and SKUs make sense for each.
• Catalog / wholesale strategy: Setup B2B catalogs, assign them to company locations or markets, configure pricing rules (volume breaks, fixed vs percent adjustments), and manage overlapping catalog logic.
• Localization & user-experience design: Theme tweaks, localization of language, messaging, checkout experience, shipping & duties visibility.
• Technical implementation & integration: Integrate with payments (multi-currency), shipping, back-office systems, tax services, and build processes for ongoing updates (e.g. catalog changes, new market rollouts).
• Testing & optimization: Use all admin tools to preview (View as, graph view), test draft orders, run experiments with pricing / product visibility, monitor performance per market, adjust iteratively.

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