Branded live portals for retail partners, wholesalers, and distributors.
Trade Portal is the B2B portal inside Apimio. Give each retail partner, wholesaler, distributor, or dealer a branded private portal with access to the products relevant to them. Catalog data stays current through Catalog Hub, eliminating outdated PDFs, manual updates, and onboarding friction. It’s the B2B distributor portal for Shopify — a branded dealer portal per partner, scoped to the products they buy, replacing static PDF pricelists with always-current catalog data.
One portal model. Four B2B partner types.
Trade Portal isn't built just for one kind of B2B relationship. The same portal mechanic handles the four B2B partner types brands actually distribute through, each with its own scoping, pricing, and export needs.
Retail partners
Boutiques, specialty stores, multi-brand shops
Brick-and-mortar retailers who carry your line alongside others. Need curated assortments by season and store, MSRP enforcement, marketing-asset access, and a clear view of what's new. Care about lookbook-style browsing as much as ordering.
- Curated assortment per store (seasonal, regional, or by category)
- MSRP visibility + retail-tier pricing enforcement
- Marketing assets bundled with the catalog (images, copy, alt text)
- New-arrival surfacing without quarterly pricelist emails
Wholesalers
High-volume B2B buyers, multi-line resellers
High-volume buyers who carry your line across many of their own customers. Care about wholesale-tier pricing, bulk export of the full catalog into their own systems, inventory visibility, and minimum-order signals.
- Wholesale-tier pricing per agreement (via Catalog Hub overrides)
- Bulk catalog export to their ERP / order-management system
- Real-time inventory visibility (toggleable per portal)
- MOQ + case-pack signals + lead-time info per SKU
Distributors
Regional distribution networks, country-exclusive partners
Distributors who hold inventory and onward-sell to retailers in a region or country. Need country-locale pricing in local currency, region-specific assortments, regulatory data per market (INCI lists, certifications), and bulk export to their downstream-retailer-facing systems.
- Per-locale catalog (currency, language, regulatory fields)
- Region-restricted assortments (country-exclusive lines)
- Bulk export shaped for their downstream-retailer workflow
- Compliance fields (INCI, certifications) surfaced per locale
Independent dealers
Single-shop dealers, sales reps, agents
Independent dealers, sales reps, or local agents who represent your line in their relationships. Care about a clean, low-friction browsing experience, the ability to send curated subsets to their own customers, and order placement in the format their downstream platform needs.
- Frictionless browsing (no account, just open the URL)
- Curated sub-export ("send these 30 SKUs to my customer")
- Order placement / format aligned with their downstream platform
- Activity log so the sales team knows who's active
Trade Portal in production
Numbers from B2B partner networks running on Trade Portal, across furniture distributors, fashion wholesalers, beauty brands serving retail partners, and home décor lines managing 10–50+ independent dealer relationships.
How B2B distribution breaks with PDF pricelists
B2B distribution breaks the same four ways across every retailer + dealer network. Each one costs you orders or trust. Trade Portal is the operational answer to each.
How B2B distribution fails today
What Trade Portal does about it
24 dealers, quarterly PDFs, half ignore them
The team produces a quarterly PDF pricelist. Marketing exports, sales emails it to 24 dealers, half open the email, half print the PDF and pin it to a wall, the other half order from last quarter's version. Stale pricelists drive wrong orders. The team spends time on order-correction calls instead of acquisition.
Branded live portal per dealer
Each dealer gets a private URL (your domain, your brand identity). They open the URL, optionally enter an access code, and see your current catalog scoped to what they carry. The PDF email goes away. The portal becomes the canonical source the dealer trusts.
Every product update means re-emailing every dealer
A new product launches. Or a price changes. Or a SKU is discontinued. The team re-exports the pricelist, re-emails the 24 dealers, half don't see the email, the correction takes weeks to settle. Updates accumulate faster than dealers can absorb them.
Live data, updates flow in real time
Trade Portal reads from Catalog Hub. Any product update, price change, new SKU, or discontinued line surfaces in every dealer's portal within seconds. No re-emailing required. The dealer who opens the portal at any moment sees current truth.
Dealer-specific catalogs become spreadsheet hell
Dealer A carries only the kids' line. Dealer B carries lifestyle. Dealer C is wholesale-only. Different SKUs, different prices, different visibility per dealer. Maintaining 5 customized pricelists by hand becomes a quarterly project that nobody enjoys.
Per-dealer scope rules + branded variants
Scope each dealer's portal to the SKUs, collections, tags, or vendor lines they carry, by agreement. Each portal can use a different brand variant if you distribute under multiple labels. Pricing per dealer respects the per-store override layer in Catalog Hub.
No visibility into what dealers actually see
You sent the PDF. Did the dealer open it? Did they export the data into their POS? Did they update their pricing? You don't know. Sales calls become "have you got the new pricelist?" instead of "let me show you what's new." Trust erodes.
Per-portal audit log + dealer activity
Every portal interaction is captured: which dealer opened it, what they browsed, which products they exported, in what format, at what time. Sales conversations move from "have you got the pricelist?" to "I see you exported the spring line, let me walk you through what changed."
The six capabilities, in operational detail
These are the surfaces your sales + ops team will configure, and your dealers will interact with daily. Each capability described here is what production looks like, not the marketing version.
Branded per-dealer URLs
Each portal lives at a private URL under your domain, your brand identity, your logo, your color system, your typography. The dealer experience reads as your brand, not Apimio's. CNAME-supported for fully white-labeled deployments.
- Custom subdomain or path per dealer (dealer-x.yourbrand.com)
- Your logo, colors, typography, fully theme-customizable
- CNAME / custom-domain support for white-label deployments
- No Apimio branding visible to the dealer
- Open Graph + favicon configured per portal
- Optional dealer-specific welcome message + content blocks
Per-dealer catalog scoping
Scope each dealer's portal to the subset they carry, by SKU list, collection, tag, vendor line, or custom rule. Pricing respects the per-store override layer in Catalog Hub, so wholesale prices stay separate from D2C.
- Per-dealer SKU list / collection / tag / vendor scope
- Custom rules: "products tagged 'wholesale-only'" or saved queries
- Per-dealer pricing (wholesale tier, MSRP override)
- Per-dealer visibility: hide products under agreement-restricted categories
- Scope changes propagate to the portal in real time (no re-publish)
- Default templates for common dealer agreement types
Live data from Catalog Hub
Portals read from the Catalog Hub in real time. Product attributes, images, variants, inventory levels, and pricing are all current. No "Q1 2026 pricelist" snapshot to update. Every dealer sees today's catalog every time they open the portal.
- Reads canonical record + dealer-specific overrides in real time
- Inventory levels surface if you enable them per portal
- New product launches appear in dealer portals without re-publish
- Discontinued SKUs disappear from dealer portals automatically
- Image alt text + INCI lists + dimensions all current
- Per-locale rendering if dealers operate in multiple markets
Optional access code + audit
For sensitive pricing or restricted catalogs, gate the portal behind a per-dealer access code. Every access is logged with timestamp, IP, and user-agent. Combined with the activity audit, you have full visibility into dealer engagement.
- Optional access code per portal (or open portals with public URLs)
- Access log: timestamp, IP, user-agent per session
- Rotate access codes without re-issuing URLs
- Optional time-bound access (e.g., access expires 90 days after issue)
- Block / unblock a portal without deleting the dealer config
- Notification webhook on first access (Slack, email, CRM integration)
Multi-format export per dealer
Different dealers use different POS systems and import tools. Trade Portal exports to the format the dealer needs, CSV, Excel, Shopify-import schema, or a custom dealer-POS shape, without the dealer touching a spreadsheet.
- Default exports: CSV, Excel, Shopify-import schema
- Custom dealer-POS shapes (saved per dealer)
- Per-locale + per-currency export options
- Filtered exports: "show me what changed since Q1" / "only this collection"
- Image URLs included or files-packaged ZIP exports
- Audit captures every export (when, which format, which dealer)
Per-portal activity + dealer scorecard
Every dealer interaction captured: which portal, who accessed, what they browsed, what they exported, in what format. Over time, dealer scorecards surface which dealers are active, which are stale, where the relationship needs attention.
- Per-portal: views, exports, last-access timestamp
- Per-dealer scorecard: activity trend, export frequency, top categories
- "Stale dealer" alert when activity drops below threshold
- Sales-team integration: surface activity in CRM via webhook
- CSV export of dealer scorecards for QBR / commercial reviews
- Filter by dealer, format, date range
Five steps from PDF emails to live dealer portals
From the existing email + PDF workflow to a branded live portal per dealer. Most teams onboard their first 3 dealers in week 1 and scale to the full network in the first month.
Configure brand identity
Upload logo, set color system, typography, favicon, Open Graph image. Apimio renders Trade Portal in your brand identity by default, no per-dealer reconfiguration needed.
Define dealer agreements
For each dealer, define the scope: SKU list, collection, tag, vendor, or saved rule. Set the wholesale pricing tier (reuses Catalog Hub's per-store override layer). Optional access code. The agreement becomes the portal config.
Generate the portal URL
Trade Portal generates a private URL, custom subdomain under your domain (CNAME-supported for white-label). Send the URL + access code (if used) to the dealer via email. They open it like a website.
Dealer browses + exports live
The dealer opens the URL, sees your current catalog scoped to their agreement, browses, filters, exports to the format their POS needs. No account creation. No app to install. The PDF email is gone.
Sales team reads activity
Sales reads the per-portal activity log, which dealers are active, what they're exporting, what's changed in their engagement. QBR conversations move from "did you get the pricelist?" to "I see you're exporting the spring line, let's talk."
Outcomes from running B2B distribution on live portals
The operational changes teams report within a quarter of moving their dealer network from PDFs + emails to branded live Trade Portal deployments.
PDF pricelist emails stop
The quarterly PDF export + email workflow disappears. The team reclaims ops + marketing hours. Dealers stop ordering from stale pricelists. Order-correction calls drop measurably.
Updates flow to dealers in real time
A price change, a new SKU launch, a discontinued line, all surface in every dealer's portal within seconds. No re-emailing. No staleness. Dealers see current truth every time they open the portal.
Adding the next dealer = 5 minutes
Onboarding dealer 25, 30, 50 becomes a 5-minute configuration in Apimio: define scope, generate URL, send to dealer. Dealer-network expansion stops being a quarterly capacity project.
Branded experience reads as your brand
Dealers see your logo, your colors, your typography, not Apimio's. The portal becomes a brand asset, not a third-party tool. Custom-domain (CNAME) support makes the white-label deployment fully transparent.
Sales gets dealer engagement visibility
Per-portal activity surfaces who's active, who's stale, where the relationship needs attention. Sales conversations move from chasing "did you get the pricelist?" to data-driven "I see your team is exporting more lately."
Curated assortments without spreadsheet hell
Different dealers carry different subsets. Trade Portal's scope rules handle 5 / 10 / 50 different dealer agreements without manual pricelist maintenance. The spreadsheet hell of per-dealer customization disappears.
Trade Portal vs PDF pricelists and dealer portal apps
Three ways to distribute your catalog to dealers. Trade Portal is the only one with branded URLs + live Catalog Hub data + no dealer onboarding friction together.
PDF + email pricelists | Generic dealer portal apps | Branded + live + frictionless Trade Portal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Branded per-dealer URL (your domain) | |||
| Live data (real-time from PIM) | |||
| Per-dealer catalog scoping | |||
| Dealer onboarding friction | Email PDF | Account + invite | Open URL (no account) |
| Multi-format export per dealer | |||
| Access code / private gating | |||
| Per-portal activity + dealer scorecard | |||
| Time to onboard next dealer | Manual every cycle | Account setup | 5 minutes |
Questions from teams running B2B dealer networks
The questions we get most often from sales + ops + B2B leaders evaluating Trade Portal.
No account, no app to install. Each dealer gets a private URL, they open it like any website. For sensitive pricing or restricted catalogs, the portal can be gated behind an access code that you set per dealer (rotatable, optionally time-bound). Dealers experience zero friction; you get full audit visibility.
Your domain. CNAME-supported white-label deployments put the portal at dealer-x.yourbrand.com (or any subdomain you choose). The dealer experience is fully branded as yours, no Apimio branding visible. Default deployments use a portal.apimio.com path but most teams set up the CNAME within the first week.
Define each dealer's scope by SKU list, collection, tag, vendor line, custom saved query, or category. Pricing respects Catalog Hub's per-store override layer, so wholesale tier prices stay distinct from D2C. Scope changes propagate to the portal in real time without re-publishing. Templates exist for common agreement types (full catalog / sub-line / region-restricted).
Default exports include CSV, Excel, Shopify-import schema, and a customizable dealer-POS shape (per dealer if needed). Image URLs can be inline or files-packaged ZIPs. Filtered exports support "since last access," "only this collection," "delta since Q1." Custom shapes save per dealer so the dealer's download workflow stays consistent.
Block / unblock a portal without deleting the dealer config, so the URL stops working without losing the agreement history. The audit log persists. Reactivating is one click. For complete removal, delete the portal and the URL 404s; the dealer's audit history is retained for compliance.
No. Trade Portal generates a branded URL (CNAME white-labeled to your domain, e.g. dealers.yourbrand.com/[dealer-code]) that dealers open in any browser. No Shopify account, no Apimio account, no app install. Optional access code for additional security.
Replace your PDF pricelists with branded live portals
Install Apimio, configure your brand identity, spin up the first dealer portal in 5 minutes. The 14-day trial includes the full Trade Portal stack, branded URLs, per-dealer scoping, live Catalog Hub data, multi-format exports, audit + scorecards. No credit card required.