B2B Navigation Logic (Dawn Theme) – Showing Wholesale Catalog for Logged-In B2B Customers

Ask Me Anything Q&A Store Design with Tim
1

What’s your question? What do you want to achieve?

Hi Tim,

We’re running a blended Shopify store (Dawn theme) with B2B enabled, and I’m trying to clean up the experience for wholesale customers without over-engineering it.

Current setup:

  • B2B catalogs and pricing are working correctly
  • Logged-in B2B customers only see their assigned products/pricing (as expected)
  • We have a custom “Wholesale Catalog” navigation item meant to appear only for B2B customers

Issue:

  • The nav item shows correctly for some test B2B accounts, but does not appear for newly created B2B customers, even though their catalog access is working
  • Shopify support indicated this is likely tied to the customer.b2b? logic in the theme code controlling visibility

Goal:

  • Ensure the “Wholesale Catalog” nav item reliably displays for all logged-in B2B customers
  • Avoid unnecessary custom code if Shopify already has a cleaner/native approach

Questions:

  1. What is the best-practice way to conditionally show navigation items for B2B customers?
  2. Is customer.b2b? the correct/reliable variable to use, or is there a better condition?
  3. Would you recommend:
    • Fixing the conditional logic in the theme, or
    • Structuring this differently (e.g., collections, templates, or using Shopify’s Trade theme patterns)?

Appreciate any guidance on the cleanest, most maintainable approach.

(Optional) Store URL

2

The customer.b2b? is indeed the recommended way for Liquid checks as per Shopify dox – Support B2B customers in your theme.

If you have your wholesale set up as a Market, there is no need for liquid checks as you should be able to use specific configuration for this Market in “Edit theme”.
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/themes/customizing-themes/store-contextualization (this is Plan-dependent though).

There is no special b2b checking in free Shopify themes as far as I remember.

Sorry, can’t get more specific without seeing your configuration.
There probably is no single best way.