u/AffableSparsh

My wife and I run a small Shopify clothing store and I'm trying to figure out if we are thinking about retention too late or too early.

Right now most of our energy goes into getting people to the site, improving product photos, fixing sizing questions, and making the product pages feel more trustworthy. That has helped, but we are starting to notice the same pattern every month. A decent number of people buy once, like the product, maybe follow us on Instagram, and then disappear unless we run another discount or new drop.

I don't want to turn the brand into one of those stores that trains people to wait for a promo code. At the same time, clothing is hard because repeat purchase is not automatic. People might love a hoodie but not need another one for months. Reviews help with trust, wishlists seem useful for future drops, and loyalty/referral points sound good in theory, but I'm not sure when they actually become worth managing.

I've been looking at tools like Judge me, Growave, Smile, Yotpo, and a few others, but it's hard to tell what is actually useful versus what just looks good in app screenshots. Judge me and Growave caught my eye because these combine reviews, wishlist, referrals, and loyalty in one place, but I'm trying not to add another app unless it solves a real problem.

For those running clothing or fashion stores, what actually helped you get more second and third purchases? Was it reviews, loyalty points, referral rewards, wishlists, post-purchase emails, SMS, better product drops, or something else entirely?

I'm especially interested in hearing from stores that moved past the early stage and started caring more about retention. What did you add first, and what turned out to be a waste of time?

Ps: Dont spam please

Genuine question. There are a lot of discussions online about things men should do better during intimacy, but I’m curious about the reverse side too.

What’s something women often do because they think men enjoy it but in reality most guys either dislike it, find uncomfortable, or wish women communicated more about instead?

Could be physical, emotional, or just general behavior. Interested in honest answers, not hate toward women.

I’m thinking of building a small curated WhatsApp group for people actively creating content and growing on LinkedIn.

Mainly for:

• B2B SaaS founders

• B2C SaaS marketers

• Content marketers

• Personal branding creators

• Growth & SEO/AEO folks

The goal isn’t “engagement pods” or fake vanity boosting.

More like:

• Sharing real feedback on posts/carousels

• Helping good content get initial distribution

• Discussing Reddit, LinkedIn & organic growth

• Exchanging positioning/content ideas

• Networking with smart marketers & founders

I’ve personally driven 3M+ Reddit views organically and now focusing heavily on LinkedIn + AI search visibility.

I'm trying to build a quality-first group with active people only. We dont want to spam or do anything, its just pushing organic conversation.

Would you guys be interested in anything like this?

I’m thinking of building a small curated WhatsApp group for people actively creating content and growing on LinkedIn.

Mainly for:

• B2B SaaS founders

• B2C SaaS marketers

• Content marketers

• Personal branding creators

• Growth & SEO/AEO folks

The goal isn’t “engagement pods” or fake vanity boosting.

More like:

• Sharing real feedback on posts/carousels

• Helping good content get initial distribution

• Discussing Reddit, LinkedIn & organic growth

• Exchanging positioning/content ideas

• Networking with smart marketers & founders

I’ve personally driven 3M+ Reddit views organically and now focusing heavily on LinkedIn + AI search visibility.

I'm trying to build a quality-first group with active people only. We dont want to spam or do anything, its just pushing organic conversation.

Just to be safe and dont feel like a spam to mods and AI, commwnt.

We run a Shopify brand out of North Carolina and crossed around $4M ARR mostly through DTC.

For a while, wholesale felt like the obvious next move.

Larger orders.

Repeat buyers.

Less dependency on paid ads.

From the outside it looked simple:

approve accounts, offer better pricing, ship bigger orders.

That’s not how it played out.

The first few wholesale accounts were easy because we handled everything manually:

- discount codes

- tagged customers

- hidden collections

- invoices over email

- spreadsheets for MOQ tracking

Honestly, it worked fine in the beginning.

Then we started getting more accounts and the store slowly turned into a mess.

Retail customers were seeing wholesale products.

Some buyers had different pricing agreements.

MOQ rules kept conflicting with promos.

Support threads were everywhere.

Our team started bypassing parts of the system because doing it manually was faster.

At one point we had:

- one app for pricing

- another for hiding products

- another for forms

- manual approvals happening in Gmail

- sales reps maintaining their own spreadsheets

Technically the setup “worked.”

Operationally it was fragile as hell.

One theme update broke visibility rules for certain collections and we didn’t notice for almost a day.

That was probably the point where we realized wholesale is not really a discount problem.

It’s mostly:

- permissions

- visibility

- account structure

- repeat ordering

- operational consistency

Wholesale buyers behave nothing like retail customers.

Retail customers browse.

Wholesale buyers ask questions first:

- inventory

- lead times

- margins

- shipping windows

- packaging

- custom requests

A surprising amount of B2B ordering is just operational reassurance.

We added Chatway because our support flow became chaotic once wholesale volume picked up.

That helped more than expected because buyers stopped waiting around for email replies just to ask basic questions before ordering.

Another thing we learned quickly:

wholesale buyers care way more about responsiveness and consistency than branding.

Retail buyers care about:

- visuals

- branding

- landing pages

Wholesale buyers care about:

- inventory consistency

- fast replies

- easy reordering

- reliable pricing

Very different psychology.

We eventually cleaned up the backend and moved toward using BMT B2B Wholesale Pricing because we needed pricing rules and visibility controls in the same place instead of stitched across multiple apps.

The important part wasn’t the discounting itself.

It was:

- hiding wholesale pricing from retail traffic

- controlling account access

- customer-specific pricing

- MOQ handling

- reducing app overlap

The biggest improvement honestly came from simplifying the stack.

Before that, every new workflow created another workaround somewhere else.

We also added Growave later because repeat ordering behavior became important once wholesale accounts started growing. We wanted loyalty/reviews/customer accounts handled without adding 3 separate systems.

Poptin ended up being surprisingly useful too.

We noticed a lot of wholesale prospects visited multiple times before ever contacting us.

Simple account request flows and inquiry capture worked better than generic “contact us” pages.

One thing I’d say to any DTC brand thinking about wholesale:

Do not underestimate the operational side.

Wholesale exposes weak systems very quickly.

If your inventory processes are messy, wholesale magnifies it.

If support is slow, wholesale magnifies it.

If your backend workflows rely on manual fixes, wholesale magnifies it.

Also, I would avoid splitting wholesale and retail into separate stores unless you absolutely need to.

We considered it.

Glad we didn’t.

Managing duplicate products, inventory syncing, merchandising, and support across separate stores looked painful pretty fast.

Keeping everything in one Shopify store became much easier once we stopped stacking overlapping tools everywhere.

Wholesale ended up being less about “selling more products” and more about building cleaner systems internally.

That part caught us off guard.

I’ve had conversations with quite a few marketing leaders recently, and some still focus on old metrics, like how many blogs or comments you can churn out each day.

I feel like we’ve moved beyond that, focusing more on impact and outcomes.

Are you seeing this too? And how do you guide conversations toward meaningful results rather than just volume?

A few people asked how I set up wholesale on Shopify without breaking the store, so sharing what I’m running after about 9 months.

The biggest shift for me was thinking in terms of a system, not tools.

The system is simple:

Retail visitors see a normal store.

Wholesale buyers log in, see their pricing, and can order without friction.

Everything runs inside one store without splitting or rebuilding the theme.

Once that was clear, the tools became easier to pick.

The system broken down

1. Access and pricing layer

This is the core. Wholesale is less about discounts and more about controlling who sees what.

I use BMT B2B Wholesale Pricing for this layer. It handles customer tagging, pricing rules, MOQ, and also controls visibility so retail users don’t see wholesale pricing or gated products.

Before this, I tried mixing multiple apps for pricing and locking pages. It worked for a bit but things started breaking around checkout and updates. Having this in one place made the setup much more stable.

2. Customer interaction

A lot of wholesale buyers don’t just add to cart and check out. They ask questions first.

I added Chatway for live chat mainly to handle pre order queries like pricing clarification, stock checks, or minimums. This ended up being more useful than expected. It reduced back and forth over email and helped move buyers faster.

3. Email and retention

Klaviyo for basic flows. Nothing complex here. Abandoned carts and a simple onboarding flow for new wholesale accounts. It is not the main driver but it adds incremental revenue.

4. Trust layer

Judge.me for reviews, mostly useful for the retail side but still helps overall credibility when new buyers land on the site.

5. Catalog experience

Boost AI Search and Filter to make navigation easier. Once your catalog grows, default search is not enough, especially for wholesale buyers who know what they want and want to find it quickly.

What actually mattered

The tools helped, but the bigger impact came from:

Keeping everything in one store instead of splitting wholesale and retail

Not stacking multiple apps that overlap on pricing and access

Spending time on product structure, collections, and tagging

Most issues I faced early were not because a tool was missing, but because the setup logic was messy.

What I would do if starting again

Start with the system first. Who are your users and what should they see.

Then pick tools that fit into that system instead of adding apps one by one.

Keep it lean. Wholesale setups get complicated very fast once you mix pricing, access, and checkout logic.

If you are building something similar, happy to share more details on specific parts.

A few people asked how I set up wholesale on Shopify without breaking the store, so sharing what I’m running after about 9 months.

The biggest shift for me was thinking in terms of a system, not tools.

The system is simple:

Retail visitors see a normal store.

Wholesale buyers log in, see their pricing, and can order without friction.

Everything runs inside one store without splitting or rebuilding the theme.

Once that was clear, the tools became easier to pick.

The system broken down

1. Access and pricing layer

This is the core. Wholesale is less about discounts and more about controlling who sees what.

I use BMT B2B Wholesale Pricing for this layer. It handles customer tagging, pricing rules, MOQ, and also controls visibility so retail users don’t see wholesale pricing or gated products.

Before this, I tried mixing multiple apps for pricing and locking pages. It worked for a bit but things started breaking around checkout and updates. Having this in one place made the setup much more stable.

2. Customer interaction

A lot of wholesale buyers don’t just add to cart and check out. They ask questions first.

I added Chatway for live chat mainly to handle pre order queries like pricing clarification, stock checks, or minimums. This ended up being more useful than expected. It reduced back and forth over email and helped move buyers faster.

3. Email and retention

Klaviyo for basic flows. Nothing complex here. Abandoned carts and a simple onboarding flow for new wholesale accounts. It is not the main driver but it adds incremental revenue.

4. Trust layer

Judge.me for reviews, mostly useful for the retail side but still helps overall credibility when new buyers land on the site.

5. Catalog experience

Boost AI Search and Filter to make navigation easier. Once your catalog grows, default search is not enough, especially for wholesale buyers who know what they want and want to find it quickly.

What actually mattered

The tools helped, but the bigger impact came from:

Keeping everything in one store instead of splitting wholesale and retail

Not stacking multiple apps that overlap on pricing and access

Spending time on product structure, collections, and tagging

Most issues I faced early were not because a tool was missing, but because the setup logic was messy.

What I would do if starting again

Start with the system first. Who are your users and what should they see.

Then pick tools that fit into that system instead of adding apps one by one.

Keep it lean. Wholesale setups get complicated very fast once you mix pricing, access, and checkout logic.

If you are building something similar, happy to share more details on specific parts.