At many animal health labs and distributors, selling to the trade channel still works as it did twenty years ago: orders by phone, by email or through the sales rep, price lists in PDF and lots of manual work to enter everything into the ERP. Meanwhile, veterinary clinics and specialist stores buy more and more online in the rest of their lives.
A well-designed B2B eCommerce solves that mismatch: trade customers order whenever they want, with their prices and history, and your team spends its time selling instead of typing in orders.
What a B2B portal for the veterinary sector needs
- Private access per customer with professional validation (clinic, store, breeder, distributor).
- Custom pricing and terms for each customer or group: volume discounts, price breaks, promotions and payment terms.
- Quick ordering: repeat the last order, order by part number or upload a list in seconds.
- Technical catalog: product pages with composition, indications, presentations and downloadable documentation.
- History and documents: orders, delivery notes, invoices and shipment status in one place.
- ERP integration so stock, prices and orders are always in sync and nobody has to key in data by hand again.
If you also sell to end consumers, the ideal is a single system with two experiences, B2B and B2C, on the same product data. It’s what we call Unified Commerce: ERP, PIM, CRM and store connected with a single source of truth. You can see our approach on our B2B eCommerce page.
Regulations: what can and can’t be sold online
The veterinary sector has one important particularity: medicines. According to information from Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food:
- Distance selling of veterinary medicines is limited to non-prescription products.
- They can only be sold by authorized pharmacies and retail establishments.
- Royal Decree 666/2023 regulates this distance selling and sets requirements for these establishments’ websites and apps.
- The website must display the details of the competent authority, a link to the Ministry’s page and the common EU distance selling logo, linked to the official list.
This doesn’t affect food, hygiene, accessories or care products, but it does require careful design of the catalog, permissions by customer type and legal texts. Before launching, it’s worth reviewing the regulations that apply to your case with your regulatory advisor.
How to implement it step by step
1. Organize product data
A B2B portal is only as good as its catalog. SKUs, presentations, composition, images and documentation must be complete and in a single place, ideally a PIM.
2. Define business rules
Pricing, discounts, minimum orders, shipping, payment methods and which products each customer type sees. The more you automate, the fewer manual exceptions.
3. Integrate with the ERP
Real-time stock, customer-specific pricing and orders that go straight into the ERP. It’s the part that adds the most value and requires the most care.
4. Get customers on board
A portal doesn’t get used just because it exists. Invite your customers, train your sales team to recommend it and offer perks to those who order online: priority picking, special terms or early access to new products.
5. Measure and improve
Share of online orders, average order value, purchase frequency and best-selling products. With that data you fine-tune assortment, terms and campaigns.
Beyond the order: marketing and service for trade customers
- Recommendations and replenishment: alerts when a customer usually orders and hasn’t.
- 24/7 support with AI Agents that answer questions about stock, orders or datasheets.
- Technical content for professionals: training, new products and documentation.
Conclusion
Digitizing sales to the trade channel is one of the investments with the clearest return for animal health labs and distributors: less manual work, fewer errors and customers who buy more and more often. The key is to integrate the portal well with the ERP, comply with online selling regulations and support customers through the change.
At TRILOGI we work with brands in the pet and animal health sector such as VetNova and Cotecnica. If you want to digitize your trade channel, let’s talk.
