Hide collections or products from retailers and show to wholesale only

Shopify Apps
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Topic summary

A merchant is struggling to hide specific products and collections from retail customers while keeping them visible to wholesalers. They’re using two apps: one for wholesale management and another for filtering.

Current Issues:

  • Hidden products appear as blank spaces in the retail storefront
  • Two wholesale-only collections briefly flash (2-3 seconds) in filter URLs before disappearing
  • Locksmith app was tested but doesn’t integrate properly with their filter system

Proposed Solutions:

  • Separate stores approach: Running distinct retail and wholesale stores for better control, though this requires syncing inventory and other data
  • Theme customization: Deep modifications to prevent restricted items from rendering at all, rather than hiding them with CSS/JavaScript
  • Alternative apps: Shoplock, Wholesale Lock Manager, and filter apps with merchandising tools that support customer tag-based visibility
  • Advanced options: Shopify Plus B2B features or headless commerce (requires dedicated developers)

Key Consideration: The merchant requires wholesalers to have accounts, but retail customers can browse without logging in, complicating visibility control.

The discussion remains open with multiple app recommendations provided but no confirmed resolution.

Summarized with AI on October 30. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

I’m using two apps for a store.

One is for wholesalers.

We also have a complex filter so we are using app.

We need to hide some items from regular retail customers. We may be able to do it by product, but ideally we’d like to do it by collection.

WG has that option, but the filter is still showing the collection to both retailers and to wholesalers.

When there are hidden products, then there are blanks where the items should be.

Then also, there are two collections that are to be totally hidden on retail. However, they still show in the filter URL and then disappear after a few moments. So the client can see that there were items for a brief 2-3 seconds, and then it disappears.

We tried Locksmith but that doesn’t work with filters and we haven’t been able to code our way around it. I am trying to find pictures or video to add. Let me know what will help and I will do so. Thanks!

2

Two stores is the sanest overall strategy for better control over access to purchasing.

Hi @s4 If using one store most of the time regardless of apps it’s a matter of additional advanced theme customizations.

There’s only so much any content gating apps like locksmith https://apps.shopify.com/locksmith can do in giving you a starting baseline before deeper customizations are needed to address compounding edge cases.

When there are hidden products, then there are blanks where the items should be.> Then also, there are two collections that are to be totally hidden on retail. However, they still show in the filter URL and then disappear after a few moments

This may or may not be just an app issues but performance issue where the javascript or CSS of the theme meant to hide such things has to wait for everything else to run that possibly shouldn’t even be running or not developed to have proper priority.

Again deeper theme customizations and taking control of the themes business logic ends up being the path of sanity; so these items blanks, or flash of showing/hiding doesn’t happen because under the hood they don’t render in the first place for people that shouldn’t see theme.

Ultimately keep in mind shopify’s online-sales channel frontend is leaky and is not natively built for these usecase so everything will always be a workaround when trying to make one stores online-sales channel theme do everything.

At minimum also make sure there is backend automation to valid order eligibility if contractual obligations or regulations are business risks.

More sanely run separate stores to have better control over access per customer account ; or see shopify Plus for B2B or expansion store features.

That approach should be research so it’s headaches are understood in trying to keep everything but customer accounts sync’d.

Or a little less sanely and more expensive is going headless with fully custom frontend stack but merchants should only do that if they plan to have inhouse developers or development retainers.

If you need customization services for app integrations then contact me for services.
Contact info in forum signature.
ALWAYS please provide context, examples: store url, theme name, post url(s) , or any further detail in ALL correspondence.

3

Are customers required to have an account to shop the site?

4

Hi @s4

I think your requirements can be fulfilled by any of the app

  1. Locksmith

  2. Shoplock https://apps.shopify.com/required-login-for-customers

5

Wholesalers are, but not the retailers.

6

We tried locksmith, but not the other. We’ll try that one. Any others that you know of? Thanks!

7

Hi @s4

Some filter apps have the merchandising tool to hide product based on customer tags or log in status.

8

@s4 In case if you’re still looking for an app for hiding products from specific tagged customers and also hiding it from search and filters, you can check this app: https://apps.shopify.com/wholesale-lock-manager

hope this helps.