Is ZenCart Capable of a retail/wholesale store?

Hi Zenners,
I'm trying to see if Zen-Cart is right for a site I want to create. Basically, I want to have a site where both regular shoppers can buy books and wholesalers can place bulk orders. I'm thinking that when a wholesaler logs in, the system will recognise them and assign them the special wholesaler discounts that regular shoppers won't be able to receive. Is there a better way to do it that this?
Can Zen-Cart do this? I know it's great for the retail side but can it do both?
Thanks in advance for your help.
BTW, This forum is the best and most helpful I've been on!
Bearaman

I have three zencarts...all identical except the pricing.....
retail
wholesale
dropship

For both the wholesale and dropship sites the customer needs a password (from me) in order to obtain access.

Note:
I am not zen literate and had a web person do this for me!

My web person decided this was the easiest and most effective way for us to go and I will say it has worked like a charm.

There is a "group pricing" capability you can look at in admin > Customers.

I believe you (the admin) add customers to the group, and when they log in they see/get the discount you have defined.

There is a dual prcing mod which allows you to assign 4 different price levels and then you can assign each customer a "level" of price they are displayed and charge.

There is no reason for multiple installs. That to me sounds like a "designer" that isn't current with Zen or it's abilities / add ons. Either that or one who does stay current and simply chose to ignore the abilities and charge more to install multiple copies.

TinaS:

There is a dual prcing mod which allows you to assign 4 different price levels and then you can assign each customer a "level" of price they are displayed and charge.

Would someone be able to direct me to more information on how to install this patch? It seems to be one big patch that patches a whole bunch of files at once. What unix command(s) do I run on this file, or which application should I use to patch it? I'm on a Mac and can Terminal directly into the server. I can also turn on my PC if need be.

BTW Can I use this mod such that I can have US pricing and CAN pricing per item? My client wants to set the prices per item not based on the automatic exchange rate. For example: Product Abc $14.95 CAN = $13.95 USD. That sort of thing.

Any advice would be stellar!!

My client wants to set the prices per item not based on the automatic exchange rate. For example: Product Abc $14.95 CAN = $13.95 USD. That sort of thing. Have a serious discussion with your client about this. If they can accept an exchange rate differential of some value, you can set this in the admin as these do not update automatically, so any ratio the you enter will remain as a constant unless changed. This makes pricing automatic and is much more manageable. But clients will be clients???

If there are many products, the maintenance for these will be a job, try to impress that making it automatic will ease their ongoing maintenance.

Thanks for your reply kobra.

My client is fully aware of the added work, and I have to agree with them - on a marketing/price-point stand-point. You see, having a price like $14.95 is preferred over a price like $13.87. They'd rather have it at $13.95, and they've even said that some products will have the same price in either currency - their market sort of dictates stuff like this. They really don't care about the exchange rate. They want to go in and manage each product individually (there are only about 50, and most won't change prices often), experimenting with some of the product's pricing to find the right fit for their market.

My only option as I see it, is a mirrored install of the site with all the prices changed (and any units changed from metric to imperial). To me that's a lot more work, especially in long-term maintenance. If only Zencart allowed you to enter additional currency prices just like you can enter different language titles and descriptions within the product info admin page.

That said, do you know if using this Group Pricing patch would be useful? And how I'd implement it? My client would be super happy if I managed to get "Dealer" pricing working. I just don't know how to implement the Dual pricing mod.

Thanks again for your feedback!

Sorry. I downloaded the file again, and this time got the zipped folder with the readme, sql, and patch inside. Last time i only got one big file with no extension. This was confusing, but now that I have the right stuff I should have no problem installing the patch. :lamo:

Great!!! I hink that you will find that with as I recall 6 pricing levels tht you can use this as a workaround for this client.

I am interested in using this module as well. It states that it's for 1.2.5 version of Zen Cart. Can I use it with 1.3.7? And if I can, does it require a lot of tweaking to work with 1.3.7?

Thanks,

Marci

Also looking for a dual-pricing module that works in 1.3.7.

A global discount wont work, I need a separate manually defined wholesale price to display to resellers.

Thanks.