Dealer portal: how manufacturers connect specialist retail

A manufacturer that sells through specialist retail faces a different question than a wholesaler with its own shop. Its first job is not to win end customers but to make life easier for its dealers so they stock, recommend and reorder its products. A manufacturer's consumer shop would compete with exactly those dealers: for customers, on price and for attention. Many manufacturers therefore deliberately do without one or keep it small, for example for spare parts and accessories.

The consumer side also argues for involving the trade. In a representative population survey in fall 2025, 92 percent of the 1,072 online shoppers surveyed said they regularly shop on platforms; 40 percent frequently bought from the online shops of large retailers and 36 percent frequently from manufacturers' online shops (Bitkom). The manufacturer's shop is one channel among several, and for many product groups specialist retail remains the place where products are explained, installed and repaired.

At the same time, retailers themselves increasingly sell through several channels. In 2025, 86 percent of the retailers surveyed sold both in store and online, up from 66 percent in 2019 (Bitkom). Among retailers with both channels, online sales averaged 33 percent of revenue in 2024 (Bitkom). The retailer survey covers 505 companies from wholesale, retail and motor vehicle trade with at least ten employees (Bitkom). Manufacturers are therefore not among the respondents. For a manufacturer, this means its dealers need more than goods: they also need data for their own online channels.

That makes a dealer portal different from a customer portal for direct customers. The self-service customer portal is aimed at companies that use or process the goods themselves; the service page on the B2B customer portal describes that case. In a dealer portal, the other side is a reseller who sets its own prices, has its own customers and expects support in selling from the manufacturer. The supplier portal is another case again: there, a company manages its own purchasing. If you are still weighing whether you need a marketplace or your own shop alongside the trade, the article marketplace or own shop walks through the decision.

Hardly any manufacturer treats all dealers the same. Tiers based on revenue, range breadth, showroom space, trained staff or service offerings are common: a partner dealer with a showroom and workshop gets different terms than a dealer who orders twice a year. In the portal, this classification becomes a technical assignment: each dealer belongs to a tier, and the tier determines prices, quantity breaks, shipping costs, payment terms and visible assortments.

In Shopware CE, this can be mapped with customer groups and the rule builder. One customer group per dealer tier carries the net price display, and advanced prices are tied to rules that check the customer group. For new dealers, each customer group can have its own registration form with its own URL; the dealer is not placed in the group directly but only after approval. That way, sales checks every new partner before they see dealer prices. The terms themselves stay in the ERP: the portal takes them over via the ERP integrations instead of building a second price maintenance process. How price lists, quantity breaks and customer-specific prices work together technically is covered in the article on price lists and tier pricing in Shopware.

What a dealer should see in the portal for each tier fits in a short list:

How volume tiers and bonus status can be shown in the customer account is described in the article on the annual rebate in the B2B shop. For manufacturers, what matters is that tier and bonus come from the same source as the prices, so a dealer orders with the new terms immediately after a tier change.

The most frequent task in a dealer portal is the reorder. A specialist dealer restocks the warehouse or showroom and usually knows its items better than any catalog. The portal should therefore offer routes that are faster than an email: quick entry by item number and quantity, upload of a CSV file from the dealer's own merchandise management system, saved order templates and a list of recently ordered items.

What matters are the details the dealer needs before submitting: available stock or delivery date, packaging unit, minimum quantity and the price of its tier. If stock and delivery date come live from the ERP, the follow-up question that almost routinely follows an email order disappears. For consumables and spare parts with regular demand, automatic reordering on a fixed schedule pays off; the article on automatic reordering in B2B explains how that works.

One point is often overlooked: many specialist dealers order not only for their warehouse but for a specific job. The order then needs a field for the job or project reference that reappears on the delivery note and invoice. That way, the dealer can assign the goods at receipt without searching, and if there is a complaint, it is immediately clear which customer order it belongs to.

When an end customer brings a defective product to a specialist dealer, a chain begins for the dealer that ends at the manufacturer. Legally, two things need to be kept apart. Statutory liability for defects applies between end customer and dealer, and between dealer and manufacturer. A guarantee, by contrast, is an additional promise the manufacturer gives voluntarily; it gives the buyer rights against the guarantor without prejudice to the statutory claims (Section 443 BGB).

For the dealer, recourse is what matters. If it has to repair or replace a newly manufactured item, it can claim reimbursement from its supplier for the expenses it had to bear toward its buyer, provided the defect already existed when the risk passed to the dealer (Section 445a BGB). These claims become time-barred two years after delivery of the item, but no earlier than two months after the dealer has satisfied its buyer's claims (Section 445b BGB). Between merchants, the duty to inspect delivered goods without undue delay and to give notice of defects without undue delay also remains (Section 377 HGB).

A warranty and complaints module in the portal makes this chain traceable. The dealer opens a case with serial number, the end customer's purchase date, a description of the fault and photos; the manufacturer decides on replacement, repair or credit; and both see the status at any time. The portal records the dates the deadlines depend on: delivery to the dealer, notice of the defect, settlement with the end customer. How returns with status and credit notes can be mapped in the ERP is shown in the article on the RMA process in B2B.

Not every dealer wants to keep bulky or rarely sold items in stock. The dealer sells them to its customer, orders from the manufacturer and has them delivered directly to the end customer. In the portal, this means: the dealer enters a different delivery address, the manufacturer ships with a neutral delivery note without dealer prices, and the invoice goes to the dealer. The end customer remains the dealer's customer; the manufacturer uses the address only for delivery.

This is a different case from an order placed by your own sales team in a customer's account. There, an employee of the shop operator orders on behalf of a business customer, for example after a phone call; how Shopware handles this with permissions and logging is described in the article ordering on behalf of the customer. With a direct delivery, by contrast, the dealer orders itself, on its own account, and only the delivery route changes.

For VAT purposes, this is a chain transaction: several businesses conclude supply transactions for the same item, and the goods go directly from the first business to the last customer (Section 3(6a) UStG). If the manufacturer, as the first business in the chain, ships the goods, the shipment is attributed to its supply. Within Germany this is usually straightforward, but for deliveries abroad it is decisive for invoicing; how an individual case is classified is a matter for your tax advisor. The portal should therefore keep the delivery country and delivery address separate from the billing address and pass them to the ERP that way.

A dealer portal rarely fails because of the technology, more often because the trade does not adopt it. Many retailers do not see themselves at the forefront of digitalization: 66 percent of the retailers surveyed rate themselves as laggards, while 87 percent see digitalization as an opportunity (Bitkom). For the rollout, this means starting with a few dealers, keeping operation simple and making the benefit tangible with the very first order.

The metric can only be measured if every order in the ERP carries its incoming channel. It is a small field with a large effect: it shows which dealers use the portal, where field sales should follow up and whether the sales team is actually relieved. If you also record how many follow-up questions arise per order, you can see whether the required fields and checks in the portal are set correctly.