VIP Supply Co. sells packaging, gloves, chemicals, and other restaurant disposables. Founded in 2022, they serve about 1,800 restaurants. Jay Earley is a managing partner.
The public write-up is a BigCommerce customer story, so it is a vendor page. Access Solutions did the implementation. Brendan Roberts, their CRO, is quoted throughout.
They left Shopify for BigCommerce B2B Edition. Contract to launch took four months. They launched more than 1,100 SKUs in less than a year on the new stack. Access’s portfolio write-up says they had been running two Shopify sites, each with its own QuickBooks file.
If you are looking at the same route, start with the Shopify → BigCommerce playbook. VIP’s story is an operating-model rebuild, not a lift-and-shift of a Shopify theme.
Why Shopify stopped fitting
Restaurant groups wanted one company account with many users, shared order history, and purchasing across locations. Jay said Shopify kept failing at multiple users tied to one physical entity.
Sales reps needed to set up accounts, keep order guides, enter orders for a customer, and send quotes. Workarounds piled up. Some regional chains said they would not buy if Shopify was the storefront.
The page does not publish a Shopify or BigCommerce bill, so I am not quoting a platform saving. They do say Stripe cost less than the previous Shop Pay setup. That is a payments line, not the commerce license.
They redesigned the account model first
Brendan’s line is the one I would print on the project brief. They did not treat it as a lift-and-shift. They re-architected how VIP operates digitally.
BigCommerce B2B Edition let them attach many users to one company, with roles and location hierarchies. A chain admin, a local buyer, and a sales rep can see different slices of the same account.
They now run 302 customer groups and 219 customer-specific price lists used by more than 500 companies. Those counts are BigCommerce’s published operating numbers after the move.
Reps configure accounts and order guides. Sales admin reviews the setup so the data stays clean. Quotes live in the storefront and can turn into orders.
What else they wired
The storefront was not enough. They connected Fishbowl for inventory and fulfillment, QuickBooks for accounting, Avalara for tax, and Stripe for payments. Orders hit BigCommerce, sync to Fishbowl on a schedule for pick and pack, then land in QuickBooks after ship.
The old Shopify-to-Fishbowl API link had been limited and incomplete. The migration was also a chance to clean the data.
They built extra buyer-portal work for people ordering from a phone at the end of a shift. BigCommerce says that work helped site speed and produced about a 20% increase in successful product finding. That 20% is the vendor page’s figure.
Custom-print packaging, pizza boxes and branded bags, stays visible only to the buyers who should see it. Those items are not on the public catalog.
Mailchimp and Method CRM are listed as other tools in the stack. The page does not describe moving those.
What they gained
They launched in four months. They could sell to regional chains that had refused Shopify. Jay said BigCommerce opened a whole new world of customers.
The longer claim is a foundation for more complex accounts, plus a roadmap for an invoice portal, better product cross-reference, and print workflows with artwork uploads and quantity pricing.
I am not treating “engine for growth” as a measured result. That is Brendan on a vendor page.
What the vendor page skips
BigCommerce does not publish a failed catalog import, a missing order, or a customer who could not sign in. Passwords do not travel between these platforms. Historical Shopify orders may come across without becoming live payment records. The playbook already treats theme, checkout, apps, and Markets as rebuilds.
They do not say how long Shopify stayed up after launch, or how redirects were handled.
If you need to go back, the reverse playbook is BigCommerce → Shopify. 4ocean took that return trip. VIP is the opposite pressure: company accounts and price lists.
What I would copy
List the B2B shapes you cannot fake on Shopify before you sign a BigCommerce contract. One company, many buyers, location roles, and per-company price lists were the blockers here.
Do not copy the Shopify catalog into a B2C BigCommerce theme and hope the accounts appear. Design the company hierarchy, then load SKUs.
Inventory every system the order has to touch. Fishbowl, QuickBooks, Avalara, and Stripe were in scope on day one. A storefront-only pilot would have hidden the old Fishbowl API gaps.
Give sales admin a review step after reps create accounts. Dirty customer data will follow you to the new platform if you do not stop it.
The Shopify → BigCommerce playbook is the checklist I would run. Use the BigCommerce interview for the company-account rebuild, and remember it is a vendor page.