Company Stores
What Is a Company Store?
A company store is an online storefront created for a specific organization, program or group of users.
Instead of sending people through a general product catalog, the store gives them a defined place to order the products that belong to their program.
That might include employee apparel, promotional merchandise, printed materials, uniforms, event items or other approved products.
For the person ordering, the idea is simple: go to one place and see what is available to you.
What can a company store be used for?
Company stores take different forms because the programs behind them are different.
A business might use one for employee merchandise. A franchise organization could provide approved materials to individual locations. A sales team might order event materials and promotional products. Another company may need a controlled catalog of branded items available throughout the year.
Some stores are permanent. Others exist for a particular campaign or ordering period.
The common thread is that the assortment and ordering experience are built around a particular customer or program rather than a general public catalog.
Who gets access?
That depends on the program.
A store might be available to everyone in an organization or limited to approved users. Different groups can also need different access.
For example, a regional team may have products that do not apply to other locations. Managers may be allowed to order items that employees cannot. A franchise program may need to control which materials individual operators can access.
Those rules can be handled through the storefront rather than relying on people to remember what they are permitted to order.
The ordering experience can reflect the products and permissions that apply to that user or group.
What can people order?
A company store can contain stocked products, customized items, print-on-demand materials or products sourced for the program.
The catalog does not have to behave like a static list.
An apparel item may have size and color options. A printed piece might require the shopper to provide information or upload a file. A promotional product may allow approved personalization.
The store can collect those choices as part of the order instead of sending them through a separate email or form.
That is especially useful when the information is needed later by production, a supplier or the distributor's fulfillment team.
Can a company store control spending?
A company may give employees, departments or locations a defined amount to spend through the program. Other orders may require approval or use another payment method.
Commerce supports spending accounts that can be assigned to users or groups and applied to eligible orders.
This is one of the reasons a company store is different from simply publishing a private product catalog. The catalog shows what is available. The program determines how people are allowed to order it.
What happens after someone places an order?
The storefront is only the ordering layer. The distributor still needs to process and fulfill the order.
That is why the connection between the company store and the systems behind it matters. Information collected during ordering should move into the workflow responsible for inventory, purchasing, fulfillment and billing rather than being entered again.
For a closer look at that side of the process, read B2B Ecommerce for Print & Promo Distributors.
Do company stores have to stay open all year?
No.
Some stores support ongoing programs. Others are useful only for a particular period.
An organization might open a store for an employee initiative, conference, seasonal campaign or limited ordering window. Once that period ends, the store can close rather than continuing to accept orders.
That gives distributors and their customers flexibility to use the same company-store model for both long-running programs and shorter campaigns.
Company store or B2B ecommerce?
B2B ecommerce is the broader category. A company store is one way to deliver it.
A company store is usually built around one organization's products, users and program rules.
For a print and promotional products distributor, that makes company stores one practical way to provide digital customer ordering without exposing every customer to the same catalog or purchasing process.
The terminology matters less than the program itself: who needs to order, what they should be able to buy and what needs to happen after the order is submitted.
What should you decide before setting one up?
Before setting up a company store, get clear on the program first: who will use it, what they should be able to order, whether products need customization or approval, how purchases will be paid for, and where the order needs to go afterward.
Those decisions determine much of the store's structure.
Commerce supports company stores and customer ordering for print and promotional products programs, including controls around access, catalogs, ordering and customization.