What distinguishes a B2B shop from a B2C online store?
In short and in plain language
In this kind of shop, firms buy from other firms. They buy often and at regular times.
Each buyer sees their own prices. There are approvals, budgets and lists for repeat orders.
The shop is closely linked to your system for stock and prices. The range of goods is often large.
A B2B shop does not map the spontaneous one-off purchase but recurring procurement processes between companies. It starts with pricing: instead of a single consumer price, every logged-in customer sees their individually negotiated conditions, volume tiers and framework agreement prices. On top of that come multi-tier order approvals, budget and cost-center logic, quote requests instead of instant checkout, and repeatable orders via order lists and CSV upload.
Technically, the biggest difference is integration. A B2B shop is rarely an island; it is tightly coupled with the inventory management or ERP system that supplies stock, prices and order status in real time. Catalogs are usually far larger and require powerful search and filtering.
How these requirements are implemented in practice is described on our B2B portals and Shopware development pages. In a free initial consultation we assess your specific case.