The customer is a company, not a login
Consumer e-commerce assumes one person, one cart, one price list. B2B distribution breaks every one of those assumptions. We rebuilt a commercial e-commerce platform until it understood companies, branches, and roles — managing a customer base of over a quarter million accounts, with 50,000+ companies actively ordering online.
Three assumptions B2B breaks — and platforms don't
Off-the-shelf e-commerce is built for consumers. For a 100+ branch distributor selling to contractors and companies, three of its core assumptions fail immediately.
"A customer is a person"
Here, a customer is a construction company — with an owner, office staff, and foremen who all order against the same account, with different permissions and different needs.
"There is one price"
Every price depends on which customer you are and which branch serves you. Two contractors viewing the same product see different numbers — correctly.
"Availability is a flag"
In-stock isn't yes/no; it's "at your assigned branch, right now." Computing that honestly across ~110,000 SKUs and 100+ branches is heavy enough to break a monolith.
A commercial platform, rebuilt around B2B reality
We started from a proven .NET e-commerce platform and customized its core until it understood distribution — then moved the heaviest computation out of the monolith entirely.
Illustrative example — company, users, and roles are fictional.
Six-plus notification types, per person
Order acknowledgments, delivery notifications with photo proof, returns, monthly summaries — each user and email address subscribed to exactly what their role needs. The CEO gets a summary; the foreman gets the truck.
Notifications with an agenda
One driver was operational: customers were using branches as free warehouses, leaving paid orders uncollected for 120+ days. Automated "come get your order" nudges freed warehouse space and unblocked stock.
Impersonation for support
Back-office staff can see the store exactly as any customer sees it — their prices, their catalog, their orders — turning "it doesn't work for me" calls into two-minute fixes.
Distribution-grade commerce, running at scale
Almost no platform lets a customer be a company with people inside it. That single modeling decision is what separates B2B commerce from a webshop with big orders.Why the core had to change
More from this engagement
The distributor that stopped typing
The full engagement: 1.5M documents, 5M audited lines, governed pricing, and B2B e-commerce at scale.
Read the story → Solution storyEvery price on purpose
The governed pricing engine behind every number the storefront displays.
Read the story → Solution storyMatched once, remembered forever
How the largest customers order without the storefront at all — straight from their PDFs.
Read the story →Does your e-commerce platform understand who your customers really are?
If your customers are companies and your prices depend on who's asking, consumer-grade commerce will always fight you.
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