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B2B (licensed salons) vs B2C (consumer-grade Wella Pro buyers), should you carry both?

Almost always no, for two reasons:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.com for licensed pros (license-gated, trade pricing, brand-portal catalogs), consumer.yoursalonsupply.com for 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.

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