INTERNET, EVERYWHERE — Shopify is getting into the wholesale business. The Ottawa-headquartered commerce firm launched new tools on Wednesday including new Web3 features. Here’s what you need to know:

Bulk sales: Clients using Shopify’s enterprise Plus plan will be able to sell products to retailers as well as directly to consumers. New B2B tools include volume-based pricing and integrations with popular business-management and data systems like Oracle’s NetSuite. 

The launch comes as other Canadian tech firms make moves in the wholesale space. Montreal-based Lightspeed launched its own supplier-network product in June, although its existing user base—the independent retailers that use its point-of-sale technology—are more likely to be on the buying than the selling side of any transactions. Faire, co-headquartered in Kitchener, Ont., is a wholesale marketplace for independent stores and brands.

Brands like the footwear firm Allbirds and Kylie Cosmetics, which started out selling directly to shoppers from websites built on Shopify’s technology, have expanded onto other retailers’ shelves in recent years. 

Direct-to-consumer brands rode the pandemic e-commerce boom, but are crashing back to Earth amid supply-chain snags and shoppers returning to real-world stores. More may go the wholesale route, which would deny Shopify the fees it earns for payment processing and other services on sales made using its technology. The company’s new B2B offering means it’s connected to a larger share of its clients’ businesses.

NFT holders only: Merchants will now be able to offer exclusive product drops and experiences to shoppers based on what’s in their (crypto) wallets. Shopify clients were already able to install third-party plugins offering token-gated commerce features, but the tech firm is now bringing that in-house. Shopify executives had teased the tool for a few months. There’s a longer—and tech-galaxy-brain-tinged—explanation here.    

 And another thing(s)… Shopify clients can now: 

• Sell products directly from their Twitter profiles, thanks to a new integration with the bird app.
• Show window shoppers on Google what products the merchant’s nearest brick-and-mortar location has in stock. 

The bigger picture: If Amazon is the Everything Store for consumers, then Shopify is increasingly trying to build an Everything Store for people who run stores, adding a wholesale feature to its forays into fulfillment and customer acquisition. 

These launches also mark another shift for Shopify. Instead of announcing major moves at its annual Unite developers’ conference as in past years, the firm is planning a pair of semi-annual product-update events called Editions (Unite will become a series of developer events held in multiple cities). That follows the lead of Airbnb, which moved to a twice-yearly release schedule in April, after it in turn emulated Shopify in making flexible work permanent.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Shopify’s plans for Unite.