Mercer Leathers supplies premium Italian leather and hair-on-hide to interior designers, furniture makers and contract projects. That buyer does not shop the way a consumer does — they arrive with a specification, and they need to know whether a hide qualifies before they consider the colour.
A storefront that answers the specifier first
The brief was to serve two audiences from one catalogue: a designer browsing for character and colour, and a specifier checking whether a material clears a contract requirement. Both had to be able to order a physical sample before committing, because leather is never bought from a screen alone.
So the product page was built around specification data rather than around persuasion. Grain, thickness in millimetres and fire protection sit in a table above the description — a specifier can clear or reject a hide without scrolling. Sizing follows the same logic: leather is not sold by the metre, so the selector offers Full Hide at roughly 45 square feet, with the figure stated rather than implied.
Trade access built as an account, not a discount code
- Forty collections organised into two top-level paths — Leather and Hair on Hide — with Commercial & Hospitality surfaced separately for buyers who arrive with a project rather than a preference
- Colour presented as a swatch row inside each collection, so moving between eight colourways is one click rather than eight page loads
- Trade built as an approved account rather than a discount code, with trade pricing applied automatically across every collection
- Reserved dye-lots for phased installations, Net-30 terms on approved accounts, and specification support with tear sheets and Crib 5 documentation
- Free samples across every collection, with Cutting for Approval available on any hide before a commitment
What Shipped
A complete Shopify build: custom theme, trade account flow with approved pricing, specification-led product pages, swatch and sample ordering, and a collection structure that keeps forty collections navigable from two menu items.
What a Shopify store for leather and materials suppliers has to solve
A store like this is three pieces of work rather than one. Forty collections have to stay navigable as the catalogue grows, which needs a custom Shopify theme built for a wholesale catalogue rather than theme configuration. The product page has to carry specification data as structured fields, so a buyer can compare hides instead of reading paragraphs. And the trade side has to behave like an account — application, approval, pricing tied to the customer — which is where Shopify B2B and wholesale development begins and a discount code ends.
Shopify trade account setup is the part suppliers most often underestimate. Trade pricing has to apply automatically across every collection, terms have to follow the buyer’s account, and the catalogue has to read the same way to a designer and to a contract buyer without running a second store. We build the same pattern for suppliers in leather, textiles, stone and lighting — Baseline Vision is the same shape in optical wholesale, and if you are weighing whether the trade side needs Shopify Plus, we wrote up the route without it.
About Mercer Leathers
Mercer Leathers supplies premium Italian leather and hair-on-hide for residential, commercial and marine interiors. Collections are sourced for natural character and enduring quality, with free samples on every collection and a trade program for designers, fabricators and contract buyers. Ships from Palm Beach, Florida.
