How to Offer Free Samples to Trade and Professional Customers in Shopify

We often get asked how merchants can offer free samples to approved trade, professional, or wholesale customers while continuing to charge a nominal fee (e.g., €2 or $2) to retail customers.

With Shopify’s customer segmentation and automatic discount features, you can easily set up this tiered pricing logic alongside Product Samples without touching a single line of code.

Why Set Up Free Samples for Trade Customers?

Charging regular retail shoppers for samples helps cover packaging and shipping costs while preventing sample abuse. However, for approved trade professionals (such as architects, interior designers, contractors, or B2B buyers), providing free samples is essential for winning large-volume orders.

With this setup, you can:

• Reward approved trade professionals: Automatically provide free samples (€0) when eligible customers are logged in.
• Maintain retail sample pricing: Keep your standard sample fee for non-logged-in visitors and regular retail customers.
• Keep regular product prices unchanged: The discount strictly applies to sample products and never affects full-sized items.
• Automate checkout discounts: Eliminate manual discount codes—Shopify automatically applies the discount at checkout when the customer tag is detected.
• Combine with order limits: Use Product Samples app limits (e.g., maximum 3 or 5 samples per order) to prevent excessive ordering.

How the Logic Works

Shopify evaluates customer tags at checkout and automatically applies a 100% discount on sample products if the customer is eligible:

Step-by-Step Setup Guide

Setting this up takes less than 5 minutes and consists of three simple steps in your Shopify Admin.

Step 1: Create an Automated “Samples” Collection

First, group all your sample products into a dedicated automated collection.

1. In Shopify Admin, go to Products > Collections.
2. Click Create collection.
3. Set the Title to Product Samples (or Samples).
4. Under Collection type, choose Automated.
5. Set the condition rule:
   • Product type is equal to Samples
     (Or if your sample products have titles containing “Sample”, set Product title contains Sample).
6. Click Save.

Step 2: Create a Customer Segment for Trade Accounts

Next, create a customer segment that identifies your approved professional customers by their tag.

1. In Shopify Admin, go to Customers > Segments.
2. In the search/filter editor bar, enter your customer tag filter:
   customer_tags CONTAINS 'trade' OR customer_tags CONTAINS 'professional'
   (Replace 'trade' or 'professional' with the exact tag(s) you use in your store).
3. Click Apply filter, then click Save segment.
4. Name the segment: Trade & Professional Customers.
5. Click Save.

Step 3: Create the Automatic Product Discount

Finally, create an automatic discount rule that links the customer segment to the sample collection.

1. In Shopify Admin, go to Discounts.
2. Click Create discount and select Amount off products.
3. Under Method, select Automatic discount.
4. Set the Title (e.g., Free Trade Samples).
5. Under Value:
   • Select Percentage.
   • Set the value to 100%.
6. Under Applies to:
   • Select Specific collections.
   • Search for and select the Product Samples collection you created in Step 1.
7. Under Customer eligibility:
   • Select Specific customer segments.
   • Choose the Trade & Professional Customers segment created in Step 2.
8. Under Minimum purchase requirements, choose No minimum requirements.
9. Click Save discount.

Configuration Scenarios & Examples

Example A: Free Samples for Trade & Wholesale Accounts

• Customer Segment Query: customer_tags CONTAINS 'trade' OR customer_tags CONTAINS 'wholesale' OR customer_tags CONTAINS 'b2b'
• Discount Value: 100% off
• Applies To: Samples collection

Example B: Discounted Samples (50% Off) for Tier-1 Accounts

• Customer Segment Query: customer_tags CONTAINS 'tier1_partner'
• Discount Value: 50% off (e.g., €1 instead of €2)
• Applies To: Samples collection

Enforcing Sample Limits with Product Samples App

To ensure trade customers do not add hundreds of free samples at once, use the built-in limits inside Product Samples:

1. In Shopify Admin, open Apps > Product Samples.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Scroll to Limit samples per customer/order.
4. Configure:
   • Maximum samples per order: Set to your preferred limit (e.g., 5 samples).
   • Maximum samples per item: Set to 1 (prevents adding 5 of the exact same sample).
5. Click Save settings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do trade customers need to be logged into their account?

Yes. Shopify must identify the customer to read their customer tags. When a trade customer logs in before or during checkout, Shopify automatically detects their eligibility and discounts the samples to €0.

Will this affect my regular, non-sample products?

No. Because the automatic discount rule is restricted specifically to the Product Samples collection, normal products in the cart will always remain at full price.

Can I use multiple different tags for my professional customers?

Yes. In Step 2, you can combine multiple tags using OR (for example: customer_tags CONTAINS 'trade' OR customer_tags CONTAINS 'pro' OR customer_tags CONTAINS 'architect').

What happens if a regular customer tries to order samples?

Regular customers who are either not logged in or do not have the designated trade tag will simply pay the regular sample price (e.g., €2) configured in your Product Samples settings.

Can I combine this with free sample shipping?

Yes. You can create an additional Free Shipping automatic discount targeting the same Trade & Professional Customers segment if you also wish to cover delivery costs for trade members.

Need Help?

If you need any assistance configuring your sample collections, customer segments, or sample order rules, feel free to reach out to our support team at lucdkny@gmail.com.