Your Coventry parts catalogue has 40,000 SKUs and Shopify's theme gives up at 5,000
Shopify is excellent for a clean consumer catalogue and starts to creak when a Coventry manufacturer or parts distributor needs trade pricing, fitment lookups, and live ERP stock across tens of thousands of SKUs. Custom Shopify development, usually a headless or heavily extended build, costs £35,000 to £110,000 over 3 to 6 months and pays back when your B2B trade customers can self-serve instead of phoning the sales desk.
A standard Shopify theme assumes a few hundred products, one price each, and a shopper who browses by category. A Coventry automotive-parts or industrial supplier has tens of thousands of SKUs, account-specific trade pricing, and customers who search by vehicle fitment or part number, not by pretty collection. The theme slows to a crawl, the pricing logic doesn't exist, and the fitment lookup that drives most of the orders simply isn't there.
Then there's stock. Your trade customers need to see live availability from your ERP or warehouse system, not a number that updates overnight, because a part shown in stock that isn't will cost you the account. Off-the-shelf themes and apps treat stock as a simple field, which is fine for a boutique and useless for a parts operation running real inventory.
The problems nobody warns you about
- Tens of thousands of SKUs make a standard theme slow and the catalogue unmanageable
- Account-specific trade pricing has no native home in a consumer-focused theme
- Customers search by fitment or part number, which themes don't support
- Stock shown isn't live from the ERP, so customers order parts that aren't really available
The case for owning your shopify
A custom or headless Shopify build gives B2B parts sellers what the theme can't: fast browsing across a huge catalogue, account-level trade pricing, a fitment or part-number search that matches how buyers actually shop, and live stock straight from your ERP or warehouse system. Your trade customers self-serve at 2am, and your sales desk stops being a phone-order bottleneck.
Budgeting a shopify build in Coventry
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Extended theme with trade pricing and ERP stock | £35k to £60k | 3 to 4 months |
| Headless storefront with fitment search | £60k to £85k | 4 to 5 months |
| Full B2B portal with quoting and account terms | £85k to £110k | 5 to 6 months |
What your build should include
What we build under shopify in Coventry
The engagements Coventry teams bring us most often:
Exactly what you get
A Shopify storefront built for parts and trade, not boutiques: fast across a huge SKU count, with account-specific pricing, fitment and part-number search, and live stock from your ERP or warehouse system. Trade buyers get quick-order, reorder, and a quote flow for bespoke parts, so they self-serve instead of phoning your desk. It integrates with your ERP for pricing and stock, your inventory management system for availability, and your accounting software for invoicing and credit terms.
How to choose a developer in Coventry
Ask to see a B2B or large-catalogue Shopify build they've shipped, and ask specifically how they kept it fast at scale and how account pricing flows through checkout. The line between a consumer-theme shop and a real B2B storefront is performance and pricing logic, so push on both. A developer who knows Coventry's manufacturing and parts-distribution scene will understand that fitment search and live ERP stock are the features that move trade orders, not the homepage hero image.
- !No large-catalogue experience; ask how they keep 40,000 SKUs fast
- !No B2B pricing story; ask how account-specific trade prices work at checkout
- !They treat stock as a static field; ask how live ERP availability is fed
- !No fitment-search experience; ask how part-number lookup is built
- !App-stacking instead of a coherent build; ask how many apps the cart depends on
Most Coventry teams pricing shopify end up comparing notes on wordpress, pos, project management too; the systems share one data spine.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Can Shopify handle tens of thousands of SKUs?
Yes, but not on a standard theme, which slows badly at scale. A headless or carefully extended build with proper search indexing handles large parts catalogues quickly. The catalogue size is exactly why off-the-shelf themes aren't enough for a Coventry parts supplier.
How does account-specific trade pricing work?
Through a customer-account pricing layer that shows each trade buyer their negotiated price and credit terms at checkout, rather than one listed price for everyone. This is core B2B functionality that consumer themes don't include and that apps handle only partially.
Can the store show live stock from our ERP?
Yes, via an integration that feeds real availability and lead times from your ERP or warehouse system. Showing live stock matters because a trade customer who orders a part marked in-stock that isn't will take their account elsewhere.
What does a B2B Shopify build cost?
An extended theme with trade pricing and ERP stock runs £35,000 to £60,000. A headless storefront with fitment search runs £60,000 to £85,000, and a full B2B portal reaches £110,000, over 3 to 6 months.