> **AI context:** For a structured overview of Express B2B, read [/llms.txt](/llms.txt). For complete product documentation, read [/llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt). 35+ Hours Saved Per Week — Luxury Apparel Wholesale Case Study — Express B2B What is manual order intake costing your team annually? [ Find out free ](/b2b-ordering-cost-calculator) [Express B2B](/) [Features](/features) [Use cases](/use-cases) [Pricing](/pricing) [Who it's for](/industries) [Case studies](/case-studies) [Developers](/developers) [Sign in](/admin) [ Book a demo ](/#demo) Discover [Features](/features) [Who it's for](/industries) [Use cases](/use-cases) [Pricing](/pricing) Evaluate [ Cost calculator Free ](/b2b-ordering-cost-calculator) [ Free resources Free ](/resources) [Case studies](/case-studies) [Developers](/developers) Get started [ Live group demo Every Tuesday ](/live-demo) [Contact us](/#contact) [Sign in](/admin) Case Study Luxury Apparel Wholesale 35+ Hours Saved Per Week — Luxury Alpaca Apparel Wholesaler Moves B2B Off the Phone and Off a Magento Checkout That Broke for Their Largest Buyers ==================================================================================================================================================== A US-based luxury alpaca apparel wholesaler distributing sweaters, outerwear, and accessories to retail chains across the United States processed hundreds of orders each week primarily by phone and through a Magento B2B storefront that failed buyers managing 100+ store locations. The company implemented Express B2B in two weeks. The six-person sales team reclaimed more than 35 hours per week previously consumed by phone order intake and manual entry. Pricing errors caused by manual rep entry were eliminated — account-specific rates are now applied automatically at checkout. A luxury alpaca apparel wholesaler with thousands of retail chain buyers was taking orders almost entirely by phone — with reps who kept pricing arrangements in their heads and a Magento checkout that broke under the weight of buyers managing 100+ store locations. Here's how they fixed it in two weeks. 35+ hrs Saved per week on order entry 96% ↓ Pricing errors from manual entry 2 wks From data import to live 68% Buyer accounts ordering online in 60 days The company A luxury product business with a distinctly un-luxury ordering process ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This wholesale distributor imports and distributes luxury alpaca clothing — sweaters, pants, gloves, hats, and socks — handcrafted from premium Peruvian alpaca fiber. They sell exclusively to retail chains across the United States, with buyers typically being regional managers or purchasing leads placing bulk replenishment orders on behalf of multiple store locations. The business is inherently seasonal. Collections come out once or twice a year, each product run is finite, and when a style sells out, it doesn't come back. With roughly 500 SKUs and a buyer base in the thousands, the company had built a strong reputation for product quality. Managing the act of actually ordering it was another matter entirely. The challenge Pricing in rep notebooks, addresses in a Magento checkout that timed out ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phone calls were the backbone of the ordering process — and the source of nearly every problem it caused. The company's six sales representatives had built deep relationships with their accounts over years. Buyers were loyal to their reps, not the company. A buyer managing orders for forty retail locations would call their specific rep, who knew the account's purchasing history, which styles they'd been eyeing, and which ship-to addresses were correct. The rep would take the order, write it down, and enter it into the system. This was sustainable right up until the moment it wasn't. When a rep was out sick, on vacation, or left the company, the institutional knowledge they carried walked out the door with them. Pricing arrangements that had accumulated informally over years — custom discounts, bulk tiers, special terms — existed only in email threads or in a rep's notes. The next rep to pick up the account had no context. Pricing errors followed. Order routing mistakes followed. Frustrated buyers followed. The company had attempted to move wholesale ordering online through Magento. The platform worked for their retail DTC side, but the B2B experience was genuinely broken for their largest accounts. A buyer managing 100 or more store locations had an address book that the Magento checkout couldn't handle gracefully — page loads slowed, dropdowns became unusable, and some buyers gave up and went back to calling. On top of that, because inventory is seasonal and finite, products would appear available, get added to a buyer's cart, and then sell out before the order was processed — sometimes within hours. Buyers who had planned their seasonal purchasing around product availability came back to find their orders incomplete. The breaking point came when several high-volume accounts started mentioning they were evaluating other suppliers. ### Pricing errors Per-account pricing arrangements lived in reps' heads and email threads — not in the system. Wrong prices applied multiple times per week during busy periods. ### Inventory oversell Seasonal, limited-run products appeared available in the catalog, got added to carts, and sold out before orders could be processed. ### Magento address book failure Buyers managing 50–100+ retail locations had address books that broke the Magento checkout. Page loads stalled. Dropdowns became unusable. ### Rep dependency Account knowledge — pricing, ordering preferences, shipping quirks — lived with individual reps. When a rep left, the account relationship had to be rebuilt from scratch. The decision Retail stayed on Shopify. Wholesale moved to Express B2B. --------------------------------------------------------- After migrating off Magento entirely, the company split their commerce stack by channel. The retail DTC side moved to Shopify — clean consumer checkout, no problems. But Shopify's wholesale and B2B capabilities weren't built for what their wholesale channel actually demanded: per-account negotiated pricing, address books with dozens of ship-to locations, and real-time inventory visibility for products that could sell out mid-season. Express B2B handled the things that mattered for wholesale. Each buyer account gets its own pricing — set once in the admin, applied automatically at checkout, visible to the buyer from the moment they log in. No rep needed to communicate it. Buyers managing dozens of retail store locations can maintain a full, usable address book and select ship-to destinations without the page stalling. And inventory availability is live: if a style is down to its last units, the buyer sees that before they submit, not after. See [how Express B2B compares to Magento](/compare/magento) for wholesale distributors. The deciding factor was how much of the rep relationship could be removed from the transactional part of ordering — while keeping all the pricing arrangements, account structure, and buyer preferences the reps had built over the years, now inside the platform where they couldn't walk out the door. "Our reps had built real relationships with these accounts over many years. We weren't trying to replace those relationships — we were trying to stop forcing buyers to call in just to place a restock order. The rep's value is in knowing the account, not in being a manual order entry service." — Operations Manager, Luxury Alpaca Apparel Wholesaler Implementation Two weeks to go-live, two months to full rollout ------------------------------------------------ The catalog — 500 SKUs with per-account pricing — imported in two days. Full platform onboarding ran approximately two weeks, accounting for data preparation, buyer account configuration, and review rounds before the first buyers went live. Rather than flipping the switch for all accounts at once, the company launched a pilot with a select group of buyers. They solicited feedback directly, ran alongside the old phone process during the pilot window, and used what they heard to fine-tune the configuration. The phased rollout to the broader buyer base took approximately two months. By the end of the second month, 68% of active buyer accounts were placing orders through the portal without rep involvement. Harder than expected Getting per-account pricing out of reps' heads and into a structured format. Custom pricing arrangements had accumulated informally over years — some existed only in email threads, some only in a rep's notes. Reconstructing it all took longer than the catalog import itself. Easier than expected Buyer adoption. The company assumed that wholesale buyers who had been calling in orders for a decade would resist the change. Most logged in, placed their first order independently, and never called back. The buyers who struggled most were the ones with the largest address books — and those are the ones the new platform helped most. The results Pricing errors from manual entry: eliminated. The rep team got their weeks back. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The category of pricing error this company was dealing with — wrong price applied because a rep misremembered an arrangement, discount from an old email thread not reflected, a bulk tier miscommunicated over the phone — largely disappeared. Not because the company became error-free, but because the platform now applies each account's rates automatically at checkout. There's no manual step for a rep to get wrong. The sales team reclaimed more than 35 hours per week that had been consumed by phone order intake and manual entry. Reps who had spent significant portions of their Mondays and Tuesdays logging orders now spend that time on account development and new buyer outreach. The coordination overhead that had made the company fragile when a rep was out — who would take the calls, who knew the account — essentially disappeared. The inventory problem resolved itself. Buyers see live availability at checkout — when a product is running low, that's visible before they submit. The seasonal frustration of incomplete orders due to sell-outs that happened between cart and confirmation has largely gone away. For the largest buyer accounts — those managing 80 to 100 retail locations — the improvement was most dramatic. What had previously been a checkout experience that timed out under the weight of a large address book became a matter of selecting a ship-to location from a working dropdown and submitting. 35+ hrs/wk Reclaimed by the sales team 96% ↓ Pricing errors from manual entry 2 weeks Onboarding to go-live 68% Buyer accounts online in 60 days > "Express B2B exceeded every expectation we set. They made our daily ordering process remarkably easier and saved us incalculable hours of time. It seemed like no matter what the problem was, they always came to our rescue — when something seemed impossible to us, it was effortless to them." Operations Manager, Luxury Alpaca Apparel Wholesaler Features that made the difference Three capabilities that solved the hard problems ------------------------------------------------ Not a feature list — the specific capabilities this deployment depended on. [ ### Per-account negotiated pricing Each buyer account sees only their pricing — set once in the admin, applied automatically at checkout. No rep needed to communicate a discount or remember a special arrangement. The pricing is in the platform, not someone's head. See this feature ](/features#account-pricing) [ ### Multi-location address book Buyers managing 50–100+ retail store locations maintain a full, usable address book and select ship-to destinations during checkout without page performance degrading. The Magento problem — solved at the foundation, not patched. See this feature ](/features#multi-location) [ ### Real-time inventory visibility Seasonal, limited-run stock shows live availability at checkout. When a product is selling fast, buyers see accurate stock counts before submitting — not after. The sell-out frustration that was losing accounts became a non-issue. See this feature ](/features#inventory) Common questions Questions from wholesale importers and specialty goods distributors ------------------------------------------------------------------- How long did it take this luxury apparel wholesaler to go live on Express B2B? Two weeks from data import to go-live. The 500-SKU catalog with per-account pricing imported in two days. The remaining time covered buyer account configuration, review, and the first pilot group going live. A phased rollout to the broader buyer base followed over the next two months. What results did the wholesaler see after replacing phone and Magento B2B ordering? Pricing errors dropped to near zero following go-live — arrangements that had previously been applied manually by reps are now in the platform and applied automatically. The sales team reclaimed more than 35 hours per week previously spent on phone order intake and manual entry. 68% of active buyer accounts were ordering independently through the portal within 60 days of rollout. How does Express B2B handle wholesale buyers managing dozens of retail store locations? Each buyer account maintains its own address book — all ship-to locations for all retail stores — and selects the correct destination during checkout. There is no address book size limit that degrades performance. For buyers who had previously been unable to complete orders in Magento due to address book failures, this was the single most impactful change. Why couldn't Magento B2B handle this wholesale distributor's needs? Magento's B2B layer is built on top of a consumer commerce foundation. For buyers managing large address books across many retail locations, the checkout experience degraded — slow page loads, unresponsive dropdowns, failed submissions. Extending Magento to handle per-account pricing, seasonal inventory, and large address books reliably would have required ongoing custom development. Express B2B handles these requirements as native features. How did the seasonal, limited-inventory nature of the business affect the ordering experience before Express B2B? Products would appear available in the catalog, get added to a buyer's cart, and sell out — sometimes before the order was even submitted. Buyers who had planned their seasonal purchasing around specific styles would complete checkout only to find their orders incomplete or wrong. With real-time inventory visibility in Express B2B, buyers see accurate stock counts at the point of ordering, not after the fact. Ready to see it? Importing specialty products and selling to retail chains? ------------------------------------------------------------ If this story sounds like your wholesale operation — phone orders, rep-managed pricing, buyers with multiple locations — Express B2B is built for exactly this. Book a private demo and bring your actual account structure. [ Book a private demo ](/#demo) [ See pricing ](/pricing) ← [Back to all case studies](/case-studies) Express B2B · Book a Demo Step 1 of 3 About you Let's start with you -------------------- We'll use this to personalise the demo and come prepared. Full name \* Work email \* Company \* Your role Select… Owner / Founder VP or Director Operations Manager Sales Manager Technical / IT Other Continue Please fill in your name, email, and company to continue. About your business ------------------- Helps us understand your setup before the call. Industry Select your industry… Educational Supply & Publishing Industrial Components & Manufacturing Food & Beverage Distribution Safety, Facilities & Janitorial Supply Medical & Dental Consumables Office & Print Supply Chemicals & Cleaning Supply Subscription Fulfillment (schools / institutions) Promotional & Branded Products Agriculture & Farm Supply Other distribution / wholesale Annual B2B order volume Select a range… Under $500K $500K – $2M $2M – $10M $10M – $50M $50M+ How do customers currently place orders? Select the main method… Phone or email Spreadsheets or shared forms Existing e-commerce site ERP customer portal Mix of methods Back Continue Your ordering setup ------------------- A few quick questions about your current workflow. How many customer accounts do you manage? Select a range… 1 – 10 11 – 50 51 – 200 200+ Do your buyers ship to multiple locations? Yes No — single location What's your biggest challenge with the current ordering process? Back Pick a time → Thanks, there! -------------- We've got everything we need. Pick a time below — we'll come prepared with your answers so you get a demo built around your business. Scheduling widget Replace with your Calendly or Cal.com embed Prefer to see it first? [Join a free group walkthrough every Tuesday →](/live-demo) Express B2B · Contact Us Get in touch ------------ We read every message and reply within one business day. First name \* Last name \* Work email \* Company Company website Phone Your role Select… Owner / Founder VP or Director Operations Manager Sales Manager Technical / IT Other What's this about? Select… Pricing question Request a demo Partnership or integration Technical question General question Other Message \* How did you find us? Select… Google search LinkedIn Word of mouth / referral Industry event or conference Online ad Other Please fill in your first name, last name, email, and message. Send message Message sent! ------------- Thanks for reaching out. We'll get back to you at within one business day. Close Express B2B · Fit Check Question 1 of 5 Find out if Express B2B fits your operation ------------------------------------------- 5 questions about your current ordering process. We'll diagnose exactly what's costing you — and whether this platform solves it. - Takes under 2 minutes - Personalised diagnosis at the end - No email required to see results Let's find out Question 1 of 5 How do most of your customers send you orders today? ---------------------------------------------------- Don't overthink it — pick the one that happens most. By phone or email My team transcribes them manually Spreadsheets or shared forms Structured, but still manual to process Through an existing site or platform It works, but it wasn't built for B2B A mix — every customer does it differently Different methods, constant switching Continue Question 2 of 5 How much of your team's week goes into manually processing orders? ------------------------------------------------------------------ Think about data entry, confirmations, corrections, and follow-up emails. Less than an hour a week We're pretty automated already A few hours — it adds up Noticeable, but we manage Half a day or more each week It's a real drain on the team It's basically someone's full-time job A whole role dedicated to order intake Back Continue Question 3 of 5 How confident are you that every order goes out at the right negotiated price? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Each customer may have different rates. How is that tracked today? Very confident — we have a reliable system Pricing is centralised and accurate Mostly — but we manually double-check Some process, but still human verification We catch errors — sometimes after they ship Wrong prices reach customers occasionally Not very — it's a real risk for us Pricing errors happen and we don't always catch them Back Continue Question 4 of 5 When a customer ships to multiple locations, how does that work today? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Select all that apply to your customers. Each location orders separately No central oversight — each site is its own account One person manages all locations Lots of back-and-forth, easy to get something wrong It's messy — errors happen regularly Wrong addresses, wrong items, missed locations Our customers only have one location Not a factor in our business right now All of the above apply Multiple of these are true for different customers Back Continue Question 5 of 5 What would you fix about your ordering process if you could? ------------------------------------------------------------ Select all that apply — most operations have more than one. Stop spending time on manual order entry Eliminate the data entry work entirely Make sure pricing is accurate every time Right rates, automatically, no double-checking Give customers a self-service way to order They shouldn't need to call or email us every time Get real visibility into what's been ordered Status, history, and confirmations without chasing All of the above Every one of these is a problem for us Back See my results Analysing your responses… ------------------------- Identifying what's costing you the most Here's what's costing you most: Chat with AI about your results Express B2B AI Coming soon AI chat is in development — we'll notify you when it launches. Send me my results [ Keep exploring instead ](/features) Where should we send them? -------------------------- We'll email your personalised assessment. A team member will be in touch within one business day. Full name Work email \* Company (optional) Phone (optional) Please enter your work email to continue. Back Send my results Check your inbox. ----------------- Your fit assessment is on its way. A team member will be in touch within one business day. 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