B2B (licensed salons) vs B2C (consumer-grade Wella Pro buyers), should you carry both?
Almost always no, for two reasons:
- Brand-portal contracts forbid it. Wella Pro, L’Oréal Pro, Olaplex Pro authorized-dealer agreements explicitly prohibit consumer sales. Diversion (selling pro-only products to consumers) is the #1 reason brands terminate dealer contracts. Auditors check.
- Tax and license logic diverges fully. Consumers don’t have resale-cert exemption. Consumers don’t get trade pricing. The customer-group + price-scope + tax-class logic has to fork on the customer type; the architectural complexity doubles.
If you must carry consumer-grade product (e.g. retail brands that don’t require pro license, like at-home gloss or scalp care), the right architecture is:
- Two Magento store views on the same instance,
pro.yoursalonsupply.comfor licensed pros (license-gated, trade pricing, brand-portal catalogs),consumer.yoursalonsupply.comfor retail (public catalog, MSRP only, no license required, no resale-cert workflow). - Different SKU pools per store view, the consumer store view ONLY shows brands that allow consumer sales; the pro store view shows everything.
- Shared inventory at the source level via Magento MSI (multi-source inventory) so you don’t double-count stock.
- Different checkout flows, pro checkout asks for resale cert ship-to-state; consumer checkout doesn’t.
This is more complexity but it’s the only contract-compliant way. The vast majority of B2B salon-supply stores I work with stay pure B2B and avoid the consumer fork entirely.