One product page that shows a different price to every account

The problem

A pump manufacturer sells through dealers and regional distributors, and they do not all pay the same price. That is normal in the trade, but it means the real numbers can never go on the website: a dealer does not want his own customers seeing what he paid. So the site shows a list price or nothing at all, and the actual price lists live in a spreadsheet that someone emails out. The result is a sales desk answering the same question forever — what is my price on this one — while dealers dig through old email to find the current list, and the marketing pack the company paid to produce sits in a folder nobody can find.

What we built

We left the product page exactly where it was and put a rule layer on top of it. The list price still shows for anyone who walks in. Sign in and the same figures on the same page are recalculated for that account: the price, the amount in stock, which of the four documents can be downloaded. The ones above the account tier are not hidden — they say which tier does have them, because that sentence is the one that gets a dealer to ask about the next tier up. Nothing reloads, so it is the page changing, not the visitor being sent somewhere else. The catalogue, the accounts and the enquiry route are ordinary WooCommerce; what has to be built is the rule layer, because the tiers, the margins and who gets what are this company’s own.

Try it yourself

• The demo signs itself in as a dealer once — watch the price change from $1,580 to $1,280 in place.
• Use the tier switch at the bottom of the panel to become a VIP distributor. The price moves again and a reserved-stock line appears under it.
• Scroll down to the resource cards. A dealer unlocks two of them; the third tells him which tier does have it.
• Sign out. The price locks again and the downloads go back behind it — the same page, three different versions of the truth.

Who this suits

Any business where the same product is not the same price to everyone: dealer and distributor networks, trade accounts against retail, contractor pricing, regional exclusivity, tiered membership. If your price list travels as an attachment, this is the shape of the fix.

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