Wholesale Gorilla offers two approaches for your wholesale storefront: a standalone wholesale shop managed entirely by the app (wholesale portal), or a theme integration that overlays your existing theme with wholesale functionality (unified storefront). Each method has unique advantages—choose based on your desired flexibility, design preferences, and risk tolerance.
Wholesale customers can either shop through a dedicated area built and maintained by Wholesale Gorilla, known as the wholesale portal, or alongside retail customers via the unified storefront (aka theme integration), which layers wholesale pricing features onto your existing Shopify theme. This guide helps you understand both options and make an informed decision about which setup suits your store’s needs.
Unified Storefront (aka Theme Integration)The Unified Storefront overlays wholesale pricing and rules onto your existing Shopify theme. This approach gives your wholesale customers the same branded experience as your retail shoppers, ensuring consistency across your store. It also offers the most flexibility, allowing you to customize layouts, support advanced purchasing workflows, and use other apps alongside Wholesale Gorilla.
The unified storefront is fully compatible with Shopify Markets and ensures that wholesale fits smoothly into your overall storefront. Because it relies on your theme, there’s a chance that updates to Shopify or third-party apps could cause conflicts. However, these issues are typically straightforward to resolve, and our team is always available to help. For most stores, the benefits of flexibility and consistency far outweigh the potential risks.
- The Wholesale Portal
The Wholesale Portal is a separate, simplified storefront built and maintained by Wholesale Gorilla. It’s reliable, independent of your theme, and unaffected by third-party apps or customizations. This makes it a low-maintenance solution, and updates are applied automatically.
However, the Wholesale Portal is more limited. You have less control over layout and design, and it cannot accommodate more complex shopping experiences. For stores that value branding control and integrated customer journeys, the Unified Storefront (aka theme integration) is typically the stronger option.
Which wholesale setup is right for me?
We recommend using the Unified Storefront (aka theme integration) if you want wholesale to feel fully integrated with your retail store and need flexibility to customize design, layout, and customer experience. The Wholesale Portal can still be a good fit if you prefer a lightweight, low-maintenance option, but it sacrifices control and branding consistency.
When in doubt, reach out! Our support team is happy to advise which option is best considering the unique needs of your business.
How to enable the Unified Storefront (aka Theme Integration)
- In the Wholesale Gorilla app navigation, click Online Store.
- In the Unified Storefront card, click Activate.
- If you do not see the Unified Storefront card near the top, you likely have already activated it.
- When the confirmation modal appears, click Activate.
- Your shop will be entered into our theme integration queue. One of our Shopify experts will set up the theme integration on your store within 1-2 business days. The Wholesale Shop will continue to run until the Theme Integration is enabled, so your B2B customers won't experience any downtime. We'll email you when the transition is complete.
- Keep an eye on your email. If we encounter any issues we'll reach out.
Enabling the Wholesale Portal
When you install Wholesale Gorilla the Wholesale Portal is enabled automatically.
If you are running the Unified Storefront (aka Theme Integration) and want to switch to the Wholesale Portal:
- In the Wholesale Gorilla app navigation, click Online Store.
- At the bottom of the page, find the Wholesale Portal section.
- If you do not see the Wholesale Portal section at the bottom, you likely have already activated the wholesale portal.
- Click Activate.
- When the confirmation modal appears, click Activate.
- Done! Now you can click the Settings page button to set up your Wholesale Portal.