Rising costs from inflation, supply chain issues, and energy price hikes are squeezing margins across manufacturing. The good news? You don’t need to raise prices or cut staff—you need a smarter way to sell.
This article shows how manufacturers can use eCommerce (with platforms like Shopify) to protect profits and grow in any market.
The Profit Squeeze Is Real—and Getting Tighter
If it feels like you’re working harder just to stay in place, you’re not imagining it. Inflation is pushing up the cost of materials. Supply chain delays are increasing lead times and creating waste. Energy prices keep jumping, and interest rates make borrowing more expensive. For manufacturing businesses, especially small and mid-sized ones, every cost increase puts pressure directly on your margins. And in today’s market, passing those costs onto your customers isn’t always realistic.
What’s worse, traditional ways of selling—through reps, phone orders, distributors, and paperwork—don’t give you much flexibility. They cost time. They depend on people. They’re hard to scale. And most of all, they’re slow. When costs go up, speed matters. Speed to quote. Speed to deliver. Speed to get paid. That’s what lets you stay profitable.
Let’s take a hypothetical example. Imagine a small metal parts manufacturer that produces high-volume brackets for industrial HVAC units. Business is steady, but margins are shrinking due to rising steel prices and fuel costs. Every order comes in by email or phone. Quotes get built manually in Excel. Invoices are sent days later. The sales team spends half their time just chasing down paperwork or checking inventory.
The result? Each order costs $45–$75 in admin time and back-and-forth. Multiply that across dozens of orders a week, and it’s thousands of dollars each month—just to take the order. And that’s before the product even ships.
Now compare that to what happens when that same manufacturer sets up a simple eCommerce store with 10 of their top-selling brackets. Customers place orders online. Inventory is shown in real time. Payment is collected at checkout. No back-and-forth. No Excel. That order that used to take 90 minutes to process? Now it takes 5.
The conclusion is simple but powerful: eCommerce is no longer just a “nice to have” for manufacturers. It’s a practical way to reduce cost per order, move faster, and protect margins—especially when every dollar counts. Most business owners focus on trying to sell more. But often, the bigger opportunity is in how you sell smarter. eCommerce gives you that edge. And for manufacturers feeling the pressure, that edge can make all the difference.
Why eCommerce Isn’t Just for Retailers Anymore
Many manufacturers still think of eCommerce as something for fashion brands or consumer gadgets—not industrial components or packaging supplies. But that mindset is outdated. Today, more manufacturers are quietly turning to platforms like Shopify to sell everything from gaskets to gears directly to their customers—and it’s working.
Here’s the shift: eCommerce isn’t about becoming a retailer. It’s about creating a more efficient, profitable way to sell what you already make. Whether you sell to contractors, wholesalers, or end users, a digital storefront gives you visibility, speed, and control. It doesn’t mean shutting down your current sales process. It means supplementing it with a sales channel that runs 24/7, takes zero phone calls, and never gets tired.
Let’s say you’re a packaging manufacturer supplying boxes and custom inserts to a mix of local food producers. Your sales mostly come in through relationships and phone orders. But every week, your team fields dozens of repeat orders for the same standard-sized boxes. Instead of taking each one manually, you could list those items on a Shopify site. Your customers—ones you already have—could simply reorder what they need online, whenever they need it. They get speed. You get time back.
You don’t need hundreds of products or a huge marketing team to start. You just need to identify your top products—especially the ones that are frequently ordered or have clear specs—and put them online. Think of it as building a self-serve menu for your customers.
eCommerce isn’t about replacing your sales team. It’s about freeing them up to focus on what actually grows your business: bigger accounts, complex orders, new partnerships. The repetitive stuff? Let a platform handle it.
1. Sell Smarter: Lower Your Cost to Serve with Online Ordering
The hidden cost in manufacturing isn’t always in materials or labor—it’s in process. Manual quoting, phone orders, customer service follow-ups, and invoice generation add up. When your team is spending hours just taking or processing orders, that’s time you’re paying for. And it’s not scalable.
Online ordering solves this by letting customers handle more of the process themselves. With a good eCommerce setup, customers can check inventory, place orders, and even pay—all without needing to call you. That’s not just more convenient for them. It directly cuts your cost to serve.
Take a hypothetical electrical parts manufacturer. Every time a contractor calls to order parts, a salesperson confirms the stock, builds a quote, and emails it out. The contractor replies the next day, a PO gets created, then an invoice is generated. The whole cycle eats up 1–2 hours per order. Now imagine putting your most commonly ordered products online with real-time inventory. That same contractor logs in, selects what they need, pays, and gets an invoice automatically. Done in 5 minutes.
If your team processes 30–50 of these a week, you’re saving dozens of hours—every single week. That’s not theory. That’s better margin, right now.
2. Get Paid Faster and Improve Cash Flow
One of the biggest headaches in manufacturing is slow payment cycles. You deliver the goods, then wait 30, 60, sometimes 90 days to get paid. Meanwhile, your suppliers and energy bills don’t wait.
eCommerce helps flip that timeline. By collecting payment up front or at checkout, you can eliminate lag in your cash flow. Even for B2B sales, Shopify offers tools like Net Terms and automated invoicing to create structure while still improving speed.
Here’s a simple scenario. You make specialized packaging for ecommerce brands. Right now, clients send POs, and your payment terms are Net 45. But with eCommerce, you can offer online checkout with an optional 2% discount for paying at the time of order. Many businesses will take that deal—especially when it’s easy and automated. Even if only 30% of your customers pay early, your cash flow just got healthier.
And the benefits go beyond speed. You reduce time spent on chasing payments, reconciling invoices, and tracking down late payers. That’s admin cost you no longer have.
Faster cash means more control. You can invest in raw materials ahead of time, cover price spikes without stress, and even negotiate better terms with your suppliers. That’s a big deal in today’s unpredictable market.
3. Use Online Sales to Test Prices, Offers, and Product Mix
When costs are rising, you might need to raise prices or tweak what you sell. But making those changes across your full sales channel is risky. With eCommerce, you get a low-risk way to test ideas quickly—before rolling them out more widely.
Let’s say you’re a specialty plastics manufacturer, and resin costs just went up 15%. You need to increase pricing on a few SKUs, but you’re not sure how customers will react. Instead of changing everything at once, you update pricing on your Shopify store and monitor response. If orders stay consistent, you roll it out to the rest of your channel. If not, you can adjust or bundle products to offset.
Or say you’ve got overstock on a slow-moving product. List it online with a limited-time discount or a value-add bundle. You’ll clear inventory, gain new orders, and get data on what actually moves.
This kind of real-time experimentation is almost impossible through traditional channels. But online, you can test, learn, and act fast—without needing to commit your whole business.
4. Build a Direct Relationship with Your Customers
Manufacturers who rely entirely on distributors or wholesalers often face a key issue: they don’t actually know their customers. That means they have less control over pricing, feedback, product experience—and less ability to respond when things change.
eCommerce changes that. When a customer buys from your online store, you get the order data, contact info, and purchase history. You can use that to improve service, offer repeat deals, or even launch new products based on real buying behavior.
You don’t need to bypass your current channel partners—but adding a direct channel gives you leverage and insight. It also makes your business more resilient. If one distributor cuts volume or goes out of business, your online channel is still running.
And let’s be honest: when you sell direct, you keep more margin. In today’s market, where every percentage point counts, that can be the difference between profit and loss.
Getting Started Is Easier (and Cheaper) Than You Think
If this all sounds like a massive project, it’s not. You don’t need to hire a developer or overhaul your ERP. Start small.
Pick your top 5 or 10 most re-ordered products. List them on a Shopify store with photos, descriptions, and pricing. Link it to your existing inventory or accounting system. Add online payment options. That’s it.
Within a week, you can be up and running—and start testing with a few trusted customers. Ask them to use it. Get feedback. Make tweaks. Then expand. You don’t need to “launch” anything. You just need to begin.
The biggest mistake most manufacturers make is waiting for the perfect setup. But in reality, speed beats perfect. The faster you learn, the faster you save—and the faster you grow.
3 Practical Takeaways Manufacturers Can Act On Today
- Set up a simple Shopify store with your top 5 or 10 products—focus on high-margin or frequently re-ordered items. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It just needs to work.
- Use online sales to shorten your payment cycles—enable instant checkout or digital invoicing to get cash in faster, and offer small incentives for upfront payment.
- Cut your order-taking overhead in half—let online orders flow straight into your system and reduce phone calls, back-and-forth emails, and quote building.