For years, B2B sites were the forgotten sibling of ecommerce: functional, clunky, and built for systems, not humans. But AS Colour’s Joe Sharplin is flipping that script. A designer turned digital lead, he’s bringing craft and customer-first thinking to wholesale. And those subtle differences are making a world of impact.
Everyone comes to the site as a D2C customer until they log in as B2B: then the subtle differences appear.
Joe Sharplin
AS Colour
The Customer Is the System
Brett Sinclair from the B2B E-commerce Association reminds brands that “seamless B2B isn’t just about tech.” True transformation happens when technology, pricing, processes, and teams all align around serving the professional buyer. And Joe Sharplin embodies that idea. He didn’t rebuild AS Colour’s site around its ERP. He rebuilt it around customer behaviour: fast reordering, bulk selection, transparent pricing tiers. So if your B2B project still lives in IT, this is your sign to move it into the hands of your operations and commercial teams. Digital experience starts with structure, not software.
Designing for the Professional Buyer
Darren Gunton from Total Tools once said, “We know exactly who our customers are, everything about them, and can target them one-on-one like never before.” That mindset defines great B2B commerce. AS Colour applies it through simplicity. Its professional buyers don’t want a thousand-page catalogue. They want speed, stock visibility, and control. “A huge percentage of our B2B customers self-serve,” Joe said. “The stock is there, the information’s there, they just check out and go.”
Knowing your professional buyer means designing for their pace, not your process.
Blurring the Lines Between B2B and D2C
Joe’s team intentionally built a site that feels D2C. The photography, layout and tone reflect AS Colour’s premium aesthetic, while backend features (bulk add-to-cart, loyalty tiers, multi-login) power wholesale efficiency. It’s not a separate world; it’s one unified experience. That balance between beauty and utility keeps professional buyers coming back because it respects both their time and their taste.
Build on What Already Scales
Dan Ferguson at Adore Beauty shared how they tripled their wholesale customers by using Shopify Plus’s native B2B features instead of costly custom builds. AS Colour took a similar path with BigCommerce. Joe explained, “BigCommerce could handle our variant levels and customer-group pricing right out of the box.” Instead of bending technology to fit legacy rules, AS Colour simplified its structure to fit the future.
The takeaway: don’t rebuild what already works. Redirect that energy into experience.
The Power of Self-Service
One of the quiet revolutions in B2B is how much customers don’t want to talk to sales. Joe estimates that the vast majority of AS Colour’s wholesale orders now come through self-checkout. “It’s pretty self-service, which is awesome,” he said. That’s not cold efficiency, it’s modern hospitality. By giving customers the tools to manage their own accounts, AS Colour frees up its team to focus on strategic relationships, not repetitive tasks.
As Brett Sinclair warned, treating B2B as just another channel is missing the bigger picture. Ecommerce brands are realising that wholesale is where scalable, stable growth lives… if they can make it feel effortless. AS Colour’s approach shows the future: clean design, transparent data, empowered buyers. When your professional customers can order, track and grow with you easily, your B2B channel stops being a backend process and starts being a brand experience.
In this Playbook:
- Why the customer (not the tech stack) should drive every B2B decision
- How AS Colour blends D2C simplicity with wholesale power
- The importance of knowing your professional buyer and their real purchasing behaviour
- Lessons from Total Tools on using data and loyalty to personalise B2B at scale
- How Dan Ferguson grew B2B revenue by leveraging platform-native features
- Why self-service is becoming the default expectation for modern B2B buyers
🎧 Listen to the full Playbook with Joe Sharplin from AS Colour, now on Add To Cart.
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