B2B Furniture Ecommerce: From Trade Shows to Digital-First Sales

While 75% of B2B customers now prefer to buy online, many furniture brands still rely on trade shows, phone calls, and manual processes to manage wholesale orders. Meanwhile, industry leaders gain ground by modernizing their trade programs to meet today’s buyer expectations and claim market share.

Traditionally, B2B furniture sales relied on relationships, paper trails, and back-and-forth emails. But expectations are changing:

• Designers, contractors, and procurement teams now expect fast, seamless, digitally rich experiences.
• COVID-19 accelerated digital adoption across the interior design and construction industries.
• Millennials and Gen Z now make up 71% of procurement professionals, and they expect transparent, intuitive digital tools that mirror the ones they already use daily

At the same time, commercial demand is climbing. According to a KPMG survey, 79% of CEOs expect their workforce to be fully back onsite by 2027, fueling office redesigns, renovations, and new furnishings. Office furniture manufacturer Steelcase reported a strong start to its fiscal year 2026, with first-quarter revenue rising 7% to support reimagined workspaces.

For brands that move quickly, delivering a streamlined B2B experience can pay off. In a recent study:

• 79% of B2B buyers said they prefer to place repeat orders online.
• 39% would spend more than $500,000 per order through self-serve ecommerce, up from just 28% two years ago.
• 67% are willing to switch suppliers for a more modern, consumer-like experience.

For furniture brands, that digital transition comes with unique challenges, from complex shipping logistics to custom finishes and swatch approvals. But those hurdles no longer stand in the way. The right platform can help simplify operations while giving buyers the fast, flexible experience they’re looking for.

If your wholesale experience hasn’t evolved since 2019, it is likely already lagging. Fortunately, updating your B2B channel is more achievable than ever.

The B2B furniture market opportunity

The B2B furniture space is growing and evolving quickly, driven by digital adoption, generational shifts in procurement, and the increasing popularity of hybrid retail experiences.

Globally, the furniture retail market is projected to grow from $257 billion to over $430 billion by 2029. Ecommerce adds to the momentum, with North America leading the market in 2024. Average online order values reached $422 in late 2023, showing increased buyer confidence in making large purchases online.

The broader B2B ecommerce market, valued at over $12 trillion, is growing eight times faster than total B2B sales. For furniture brands, this represents more than a shift in channel. It's a fundamental transformation of how trade relationships are built and maintained. B2B already made up 30% of furniture industry sales in 2019, and that number continues to climb as more businesses digitize their wholesale operations. 

What’s driving the demand?

• Interior design is booming
  The interior design industry is on track to reach $269.2 billion by 2033, with a projected annual growth rate of 8.3% starting in 2025. As project volumes rise, so does the need for fast, reliable sourcing and reordering.
• Younger buyers, new expectations
  Gen Z and millennials now account for the majority of online furniture purchases: 44% and 40% respectively. As digitally native generations, they expect polished, intuitive ecommerce experiences.
• The rise of hybrid buying journeys
  Furniture buyers no longer follow a single path. Nearly half begin their search online before visiting a showroom, while nearly a third browse in person before buying online. Brands like Restoration Hardware respond with immersive showroom galleries that blend digital discovery with hands-on design.
• Digital-first workflows for trade professionals
  Designers, contractors, and specifiers increasingly need fast, flexible systems for ordering, reordering, and managing approvals. Self-service portals, live inventory data, and digital swatch selection are now baseline expectations.

Ecommerce challenges facing B2B furniture ecommerce businesses

The expectations for B2B furniture ecommerce are high, and rising fast. B2B buyers want the same seamless experience they get in their personal shopping: fast checkout, intuitive navigation, and a digital interface that’s clean and easy to use. But furniture adds a layer of complexity that many ecommerce platforms struggle to support. Both DTC and B2B buyers expect to:

• Customize dimensions, materials, and finishes
• View multiple product images, videos, and 3D renderings
• Understand every technical detail before committing to a large purchase
• Manage quotes, orders, and reorders through robust account portals

For businesses operating on outdated ecommerce systems, meeting these expectations can be expensive, or sometimes outright impossible.

Pricing adds another layer. B2B sellers often need to support complex structures, including trade discounts, volume pricing, and customer-specific terms. Those rules must be built into the platform in a way that feels seamless to the buyer and manageable for the team.

Custom furniture workflows create further pressure. Brands must coordinate lead times, production schedules, and logistics in real time to avoid overpromising and underdelivering. White glove delivery is now expected—especially for high-value commercial projects—making fulfillment and service coordination essential to the digital experience.

And while ecommerce is often self-serve, relationships still matter. Interior designers and decorators need specialized experiences that help them work efficiently at scale. That means offering tools for project-based ordering, not just inventory purchasing, and supporting collaboration across multiple stakeholders.

Finally, for retailers with physical showrooms, delivering a consistent omnichannel experience requires unified point-of-sale systems and real-time inventory visibility across all channels.

B2B furniture ecommerce requires more than a website, and sets a higher technical bar than many other ecommerce sectors. That’s why forward-looking brands need a platform that can integrate commerce, customer experience, operations, and fulfillment without compromise.

Build a great B2B furniture ecommerce experience with the right platform and provider 

Creating a modern B2B ecommerce experience for furniture doesn’t have to mean building from scratch. While the technical demands can be high, the right platform and provider can make it faster, easier, and more cost-effective to meet your buyers’ expectations.

A platform like Shopify offers B2B furniture brands powerful features right out of the box, along with access to thousands of pre-integrated apps built to scale with your business. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Custom catalogs for specific buyers
  Offer trade-only products and designer pricing, visible only to approved accounts. Personalized catalogs make it easy to show the right products and terms to the right buyers.
• Streamlined bulk ordering
  Simplify repeat orders with “Quick Add” buttons that make purchasing faster for large projects or multi-room installs.
• Robust customer accounts and self-serve portals
  Give trade buyers access to their full order history, project-specific carts, and transparent tracking. A customizable, optimized checkout experience reduces friction and builds trust.
• Seamless ERP and inventory integration
  Sync real-time product availability, fulfillment timelines, and warehouse data with your back-end systems. This ensures accurate lead times and avoids overcommitting inventory.
• Built-in support for product customization
  Easily enable workflows that support finish selections, dimensional changes, or configuration options, without custom development.
• Advanced SKU and inventory management
  Easily manage complex product catalogs, including multiple variants, custom attributes, and real-time inventory across warehouses and showrooms.
• Support for hybrid B2B and B2C operations
  If you sell both to the trade and to consumers, Shopify lets you manage both sides of the business from a centralized back end. You can deliver distinct front-end experiences while maintaining unified inventory, orders, and reporting behind the scenes.

With the right platform, your ecommerce infrastructure can become a strategic advantage, not an expensive drain full of technical headaches. Your business gets a faster, more flexible path to growth, improved buyer satisfaction, and lower operational overhead.

A modern experience that’s easier to manage: Industry West’s ecommerce transformation

For Industry West, delivering a memorable, unique online experience is central to their brand. They sell curated furniture collections to business owners, designers, and wholesale buyers who expect a seamless digital path to purchase. Industry West also supports a growing B2C audience, which adds complexity to their ecommerce needs.

On their previous platform, Magento (Adobe Commerce), maintaining that experience was costly and time-consuming. Simple updates required custom development, while performance issues distracted the team from growth.

“We were just spending time and money on urgent, back-end things. We poured money into a sunsetting version of Magento, then had to spend even more on the upgrade. Every quarter brought new patches. That’s where our time and money were going,” said Ian Leslie, chief marketing officer at Industry West. 

After switching to Shopify, the team unified their B2B and B2C operations. They streamlined the customer experience and reduced the technical overhead weighing down the business. Today, they have fully modern ecommerce operations, fulfilling many major milestones for their business:

• Trade buyers can now purchase in quantity with tiered discounts, directly from the storefront.
• The team unlocked a long-standing goal: making swatches available to B2C buyers, with optional shipping fees.
• Campaigns are now tailored based on whether the customer is part of the trade program or a consumer.
• Tasks like creating draft orders, PDF quotes, price catalogs, and custom discounts take less time and fewer resources.
• Shoppers can now go from Instagram or Pinterest to purchase seamlessly.

The migration to Shopify paid off with real results:

• 90% increase in web revenue from trade accounts
• 10% lift in new trade account sign-ups
• 20% increase in average order value
• 15% increase in average items per cart
• Fewer developer hours and lower operating costs

“I've become a Shopify superuser. I can create product templates, page templates, and category templates—something we could never do in Magento. It’s been a huge win,” said Ian.

With Shopify, Industry West now delivers a modern experience that’s easier to manage, supports both B2B and B2C buyers, and scales with their business.

Key steps for furniture brands looking to implement better ecommerce operations

Rebuilding your ecommerce experience doesn’t have to be slow or complex. With the right platform and a phased approach, you can go live quickly and scale with confidence.

Phase 1: Set the foundation

B2B furniture buyers span a wide range, from individual designers to wholesale accounts. Start by setting up trade account structures and approval workflows, so each buyer sees the right products, pricing, and purchase options.

Next, build your custom catalogs and pricing rules. Whether for retail or trade, your platform should make it easy to manage product visibility and discount tiers without requiring custom development.

Phase 2: Enhance the buying experience

Furniture buyers expect customization. Your site should support product configuration tools with options for materials, sizes, finishes, and real-time previews. Look for platforms that support this natively or through a strong app ecosystem.

Real-time availability is also key. Integrating with your ERP ensures buyers see accurate inventory and delivery timelines.

For high-value orders, white glove delivery is a must. Make sure your shipping setup supports scheduled drop-offs, inside delivery, and status tracking.

Phase 3: Scale with personalization and data

Once the basics are strong, shift focus to helping your trade buyers work smarter. Let designers and commercial buyers spec, quote, and order directly through your site as part of their workflow.

Marketing automation can help you grow these relationships without scaling your team. Examples include:

• Welcome journeys for new trade accounts
• Segmented emails by buyer type
• Reorder reminders for high-volume SKUs
• Early access and promotions tied to account status
• Triggered sales outreach when accounts go quiet

Finally, optimize using real data. Your platform should show you what’s selling, where buyers drop off, and which segments drive the most value, so you can prioritize what moves the needle.

With the right platform, scaling becomes less about solving problems and more about accelerating growth.

The ROI and business impact of a great B2B furniture buying experience

A well-executed B2B ecommerce experience has many benefits. It’s more efficient, cost-effective, and drives results across your business. 

Loyal B2B customers reorder 4.2 times more often than direct-to-consumer (DTC) buyers, according to Shopify research. And with the right self-serve tools in place, businesses often see a 33% increase in digital orders within just six months of launching a new experience.

When executed well, modern ecommerce operations on a unified platform deliver:

• More effective sales teams
  Self-service ordering frees up your team to focus on high-value conversations and new client acquisition, rather than processing repeat orders.
• Higher retention and repeat business
  Simplified reordering, paired with smart automated nudges, helps keep trade buyers engaged and coming back.
• New customer acquisition through digital discovery
  With streamlined campaigns and automation, your ecommerce channel becomes a cost-effective engine for reaching new markets.

When all of this comes together, you’re not only improving operations, you’re also building long-term loyalty and future-proofing your business. Designers and buyers can place orders at any time of day or night, even from a job site. Your product catalog becomes a mobile-optimized, on-the-go resource. And your platform integrates directly with the workflows your customers already use.

When done right, the right ecommerce buying experience means fewer technical headaches, more revenue, and happier customers at every step.

How Lulu and Georgia transformed their B2B buyer experience 

Today, Lulu and Georgia’s ecommerce site features more than 40,000 home furnishings and accessories, including exclusive in-house designs. The brand partners with local artists and renowned designers to offer one-of-a-kind pieces, and the online experience reflects that care, with advanced filtering by product type, height, color, material, and sustainability.

But before migrating to Shopify, the team struggled on Adobe Commerce.

“Our site would slow down in performance or, in some cases, even go down—and this was without high-traffic, high-scale events. We were growing, and our system couldn't handle it. We had severe issues even just taking and fulfilling orders. The business couldn’t fulfill its mission,” said Anis Tayebali, VP of engineering at Lulu and Georgia.

They knew migrating more than 40,000 SKUs wouldn’t be simple. But with Shopify’s tools and partner ecosystem, the process was faster and smoother than expected. The team integrated their back-office systems, enhanced site search, and launched a more stable experience, all without high technical costs or overhead.

With Shopify’s flexible checkout, Lulu and Georgia now support both B2B and direct-to-consumer customers from a single platform. They can differentiate pricing, workflows, and experiences by customer segment, all while maintaining a unified back end.

The team also elevated the product catalog by adding 3D views. Designers and buyers can now view items from every angle—above, below, close-up, and rotated—creating a more immersive and informed shopping experience.

“Looking ahead, we aim to expand the variety of options available to our customers, particularly in our furniture range, like couches and beds. While we pride ourselves on our curated selection, we recognize the need to diversify our offerings and involve our customers more directly in the customization process,” said Anis.

Don’t let outdated ecommerce tech hold your business back

The shift to digital-first buying is well underway. Future-ready B2B furniture brands that embrace it are pulling ahead. From simplified ordering to customized catalogs and seamless fulfillment, a modern ecommerce experience isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a competitive edge.

Buyers are no longer willing to tolerate clunky systems or outdated processes. In fact, 86% of B2B buyers say they’re willing to switch suppliers for a better online experience. Whether you're selling to designers, contractors, or commercial buyers, the expectations are clear: fast, flexible, and frictionless.

Shopify gives trade furniture retailers and manufacturers the tools to meet those expectations and grow. With robust B2B features, scalable architecture, and a thriving partner ecosystem, Shopify helps brands go live faster, manage complexity with ease, and create experiences that keep trade buyers coming back.