Wholesale & B2B Commerce

Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.

An AI-native, API-first wholesale commerce platform that enforces negotiated pricing, custom catalogues, and procurement workflows across every sales channel.

Wholesale and B2B commerce is fundamentally different from consumer ecommerce: transactions involve negotiated price lists, customer-group-specific catalogues, order minimums, approval chains, and trade credit terms. Existing platforms are either expensive enterprise monoliths or consumer platforms with B2B features bolted on. This project builds a purpose-built, headless-first B2B commerce engine that treats AI-powered ordering, pricing enforcement, and procurement integration as first-class capabilities rather than afterthoughts.

Why Wholesale & B2B Commerce?

Enterprise platforms carry prohibitive TCO. Mid-market B2B platforms carry 3-year total costs ranging from $100K to over $1M depending on customisation requirements. Adobe Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud demand significant implementation investment and complex licensing (per-org, per-user, or GMV-based).
Consumer platforms retrofit B2B poorly. Shopify and BigCommerce have extended B2B features to broader tiers, but lack depth in approval workflows, multi-org hierarchies, and procurement integration (punchout/EDI) without third-party add-ons.
The only open-source option is limited. OroCommerce (OSL-3.0) is purpose-built for B2B but has an aging storefront UX, a smaller community than Magento, and higher operational overhead. Magento Open Source gates most B2B features behind the commercial Adobe Commerce licence.
Procurement integration remains fragmented. Punchout (cXML/OCI) and EDI connectors are expensive, rarely turnkey for SMB sellers, and typically require third-party middleware even on enterprise platforms.
No platform addresses AI-native B2B workflows. Conversational reordering, automated PO ingestion from PDFs and emails, AI-assisted price-list maintenance, and real-time credit-risk scoring are underserved across the entire market.

Key Features

Accounts & Pricing

Company/account model with multiple buyers and role-based permissions
Customer-group price lists with fixed prices, percentage discounts, and quantity breaks
Contract pricing enforced across storefront, sales rep portal, and order management
Net-30/60/90 payment terms, credit limits, and purchase-order payment methods
Order minimums, case-pack multiples, and minimum line quantities at checkout

Catalogues & Ordering

Custom catalogues restricted by customer group, geography, or channel
Quick reorder and saved order lists for regular replenishment
Sales rep "order on behalf of" mode with account history access
Quote/RFQ workflow with negotiation history and counter-offers
Approval workflows with configurable thresholds and chains

AI-Powered Capabilities

Reorder prediction from purchase history and seasonality patterns
PDF/email purchase-order ingestion into structured draft orders
Natural-language ordering and product discovery for long catalogues
Anomaly detection on order patterns (fraud, mistakes, demand shifts)
AI-generated quote responses and negotiation drafts for sales reps
Auto-classification of new SKUs into customer-specific catalogues

Integration & Extensibility

REST and GraphQL APIs with webhooks; headless-first architecture
ERP integration adapters (NetSuite, QuickBooks, SAP B1, generic CSV bridge)
Tax engine integration hooks (Avalara, Vertex)
Punchout (cXML, OCI) and EDI 850/810/856 connectors (backlog)
Same-storefront B2B and DTC or B2B-only deployment

AI-Native Advantage

Current B2B platforms treat AI as a bolt-on recommendation engine at best. This project embeds AI at the workflow level: buyers can reorder using natural language ("send the usual order plus 20% on SKUs trending up"), inbound purchase orders from PDFs and emails are automatically parsed into platform orders, and price-list maintenance is continuously audited for drift between contract terms and active prices. These capabilities address real friction points -- manual PO re-keying, stale price lists, and missed reorder windows -- that existing platforms leave to human operators.

Tech Stack & Deployment

The platform is designed as a headless, API-first engine supporting self-hosted, cloud, and hybrid deployment. The storefront layer is decoupled, allowing teams to build with frameworks like Next.js or Remix. EDI X12 protocol implementation is unencumbered, though ASC X12 specification documents require a subscription for reproduction. The OSL-3.0 licence used by OroCommerce and Magento Open Source is copyleft and incompatible with permissive distribution, so this project will not bundle OSL-licensed code into its core.

Market Context

The B2B ecommerce market continues to grow rapidly, with platforms at every price point competing for mid-market and enterprise buyers. Three-year TCOs for mid-market solutions range from $100K to over $1M, while enterprise platforms like Salesforce and SAP carry complex subscription and GMV-based licensing. Primary buyers are manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers selling to business accounts who need negotiated pricing, procurement integration, and trade credit -- capabilities that consumer ecommerce platforms only partially address.

Project Status

This project is in the research and specification phase.
Contributions, feedback, and domain expertise are welcome.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.

Licence

Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.