Capital Hair & Beauty Ecommerce Case Study

Multi-site, B2B Ecommerce for the UK's largest independent supplier to the hair and beauty trade.

Founded in 1954, Capital Hair & Beauty has grown to become the UK’s largest independent supplier to Hairdressers, Beauty Therapists and Nail Technicians with 59 cash and carry stores throughout the UK & Ireland. Following the acquisition of several other businesses and stores over the last few years, and a recent rebranding, they refocused their efforts on updating their website.

"Red and the tradeit platform have suited us perfectly over the years, supporting our growth by ensuring our sites are reliable, fast and offer our customers all the functionality and user-friendliness they require. Through regular updates tradeit has grown with us, and proved super reliable and scalable through the recent lockdowns when we relied heavily on our websites to serve our customers."

Ecommerce Manager, Capital Hair & Beauty

Project Highlights

Click & Collect
Same day Click & Collect from 59 stores across the UK & Ireland
Native B2B functionality
Two B2B specific sites running from the same installation of tradeit
Global ecommerce
Localised international sites for both the UK and Ireland administered from a single instance of tradeit
Call centre/MOTO
In-built call centre capabilities for offline orders and customer support
Store stock checker
Online stock checker delivers live stock levels on every product, at every store, for immediate collection
Store locator
Advanced store locator with integration to Google maps, store opening hours and store imagery.
Integrated blog
Integrated blog with content all kept within the same site, boosting SEO performance
PDF magazine
Site embedded with Issuu PDF viewer for seasonal magazine
Integrations
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics Navision ERP system, Trust payments, Feefo reviews, and Live Chat

Project Integrations

Project Overview

Having been a customer of Red's for years, they've continued to evolve their ecommerce site in line with the growth of their business, taking advantage of tradeit's ability to scale. It's meant that they've been easily able to add a separate Irish channel, expand to include Click & Collect, and showcase their stunning blog, all from a single installation of tradeit, and all from tradeit's native feature set.

Capital Hair & Beauty ecommerce site on iMac

women using Capital Hair & Beauty ecommerce site on laptop

Capital Hair & Beauty ecommerce site on iPad

Capital Hair & Beauty ecommerce case study

Capital Hair & Beauty website on mobile phone

A single customer view

Through integration with their Microsoft Dynamics Navision ERP, all customer activity is available online, meaning Capital Hair & Beauty have a single view of all their customers, regardless of which channel they order through. So, even if a customer purchases in one of their stores, those order details are available to view online enabling customers to see their complete order history (what they bought, where they bought it, how much it cost, how they paid) and Capital Hair & Beauty have a joined-up view of their customers. The power of tradeit's promotions engine also means that any in-store offers can easily be duplicated online, so once again customers receive the same experience, regardless of touchpoint.

Payment flexibility

As a supplier to the trade, Capital Hair & Beauty need a platform that has been built natively to support B2B Ecommerce making tradeit an obvious choice with tools like online invoicing and re-ordering standard to the platform. It also supports their numerous different payment methods offering their customers maximum flexibility in accepting credit/debit cards, Paypal, on account, BACS, Klarna, and via finance through Shire Leasing.

Commerce & content

Capital Hair & Beauty offer so much more than just a shopping destination. Whilst that is obviously a key part of their business, they consider providing education equally important. As such their website provides training courses, articles, a magazine and a podcast, all aimed at helping their customers find and use some of their great products.

Click & Collect

Many consumers often associate Click & Collect with retail ecommerce but having 59 cash & carry stores gives Capital Hair & Beauty a strong physical presence and a great opportunity to offer their trade customers the same omni-channel experience they'd receive in a retail environment.

These 59 stores effectively act as individual warehouses spread across the country for the fulfilment of same day Click & Collect orders, meaning customers never have to wait long to get their goods, and will potentially add to their order on collection.