A flat wholesale discount treats a 10-unit order and a 500-unit order the same, which means you are either leaving margin on small orders or losing big buyers to a competitor who rewards commitment. Quantity breaks fix that by making the discount follow the order size.
Designing tiers that protect margin
Start from your unit economics, not from round numbers. A usable framework:
- Tier 1 at your minimum viable wholesale quantity (often 10 or 12 units): a modest break, around 5 percent below your base wholesale price.
- Tier 2 at the quantity where your fulfilment cost per unit drops (a full carton, a shipping-weight threshold): pass part of that saving on.
- Top tier at the order size you actively want more of: the discount that makes a buyer consolidate their quarterly order with you instead of splitting suppliers.
Two rules of thumb: never let the top tier undercut the margin you need to service the account, and keep the ladder short. Three or four breaks read as a deal; seven read as noise.
The three scopes, and why they matter
Per product: 50+ of this SKU earns the break. Right for hero products with real production economies. Per collection: 50+ units across the Candles collection counts together. Right when buyers mix variants and you care about total volume, not which scent. Whole order: 100+ units across the catalog. Right for distributors who buy wide and shallow.
Most stores need at least two scopes at once, which is where cheap single-purpose break apps run out of road. And the moment two rules overlap (a product rule and an order rule both qualify), you need a priority rule: an explicit setting for whether the highest discount wins, or the lowest, or a defined order. Without it, overlapping tiers produce support tickets.
Wholesale tiers vs public volume deals
These are different tools. Public buy-more-save-more offers (the territory of the many quantity-break widgets on the App Store) are merchandising for retail AOV. Wholesale quantity breaks should be invisible to retail: scoped to tagged customer groups, layered on top of each group's negotiated base pricing, and shown to the buyer as their price, not as a promotion. If a single app cannot tell those two audiences apart, it is the wrong app for wholesale.
Implementation checklist
- Groups first: set up wholesale customer groups and base group pricing before layering breaks. Our customer groups guide covers the model.
- Show the ladder on product pages: a visible tier table ("25+ units: 10% off") measurably nudges order sizes up. Miko B2B renders one via its theme app embed.
- Make sure breaks apply in cart and checkout with no codes: Shopify Functions apps do this; script-tag apps often break at checkout.
- Confirm POS behavior if you sell wholesale in person.
- Sanity-check the stack: group discount + volume break + any sitewide promotion. Decide what stacks and what does not before a buyer finds the combination for you.
- Model the margin impact per tier in our B2B savings calculator before going live.
Measuring whether tiers work
The number to watch is average units per order line for wholesale accounts, before and after tiers go live. If the ladder is working, orders cluster just above your break points. If everyone sits just below a break, the thresholds are too high. With Sidekick connected, "what volume breaks does the Dealer group have?" and "which wholesale accounts are going quiet?" are one-line checks: see how Miko's Sidekick tools answer them.
Ship your first tier ladder
Install Miko B2B Wholesale House free, create a wholesale group, and add a three-tier break on your best-selling collection. The free plan covers one group and ten wholesale orders a month. Questions? Talk to the team.
