Something Different Wholesale Ecommerce Case Study

B2B ecommerce for UK-based wholesale giftware supplier and importer.

Founded in 1999, Something Different Wholesale has grown rapidly over the years and is one of the UK's leading wholesale giftware suppliers and importers, stocking over 3000 products and supplying over 25,000 customers worldwide.

"The tradeit platform contained all the features that we required and would enable us to avoid building many of our desired business-to-business functionalities from scratch. It's an all-encompassing ecommerce platform that will enable us to grow our reach of customers and provide an array of B2B functionality for our existing customers."

IT Manager, Something Different Wholesale

Project Highlights

Multiple payment options
Multiple payment options including Credit/Debit Cards, PayPal, BACS, On Account & Buy Now Pay Later from Hokodo
FBA delivery
Customers who use Amazon Fulfilment can have orders shipped directly to any centre of their choice on checkout
Advanced up-sells
Advanced upsell functionality throughout the site driving up AOV from their existing customer base
Quantity-based pricing
Alternate pricing can be set across different quantity blocks on each individual SKU
B2B ecommerce
Advanced B2B tools such as view/pay invoices onlines, quick order forms, saved baskets, saved quick order forms and more
Rich images
Products brought to life through image zoom, product videos, and 360° image view
Call centre
Built-in call centre allows admin users to setup/view customer accounts and process orders on their behalf as well as aiding customer service to provide support
Advanced search
Advanced on-site search capabilities via Elasticsearch including suggested search terms & categories, content & product search, fuzzy search, boosted & weighted searches and much more
Wishlists
Automated emails and promotions driven by price changes to items within users' wishlists

Project Integrations

Project Overview

With the aim of increasing web sales to over 80% of their revenue, Something Different Wholesale originally approached us a few years ago about re-platforming to tradeit. Unfortunately, at that time, they were required to use a local agency near their offices to build a bespoke solution. Nevertheless we remained on their radar and little more than eighteen months later they returned having realised their bespoke solution fell way short.

Something Different Wholesale ecommerce case study

B2B Ecommerce

Their previous platform was severely lacking in advanced B2B functionality, on-site promotions, and multi-site capabilities when compared to tradeit. It quickly became apparent that they needed to re-platform again in order to be able to scale their online business towards their target, and in their own words they "hoped to provide customers with a platform rather than a website to login and purchase".

It's a very astute observation as there is quite a distinct difference between the two. Many common ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento or BigCommerce, have been built and developed to support retail ecommerce so don't have the feature-set to deliver comprehensive B2B ecommerce sites like tradeit, whose functionality is all native to the platform. B2B ecommerce is very much an afterthought for those platforms, so as a result they deliver a simple order-taking tool rather than a full-scale, automated customer platform, capable of personalising the user's experience and driving up revenue, conversions, and AOV.

Ecommerce Growth

The site features a huge set of tools that has helped them on the way to achieving their target of 80% of revenue coming online. These include a class-leading promotions & personalisation engine, on-page CMS and a vast array of B2B-specific functionality such as the ability to view/pay invoices online, quick orders forms, saved baskets, saved quick order forms, and tradeit's call centre application.

Evolution & Innovation

Since launch, the site continues to grow and evolve with a number of distinct enhancements already applied. These include some innovative work to exploit the information within wishlists and an award-winning project to drive up-sells in various places across the site.

"We often draw from Red's wealth of ecommerce advice in our projects, they provide us with valuable business ideas".

Award Winning

A project recognised across the industry

Resources

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

SOMETHING DIFFERENT WHOLESALE

SOLUTIONS DATASHEET

B2B ECOMMERCE

Learn more about our work for Something Different Wholesale

Something Different Wholesale News

news

Red named as one of the finalists at the Ecommerce Awards 2023

Recognise as delivering excellence in the world of eCommerce, and a champion the most innovative and market leading initiatives and products...

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client news

Red shortlisted for two European Ecommerce awards

We pick up some award nominations for our work with Something Different Wholesale and recognition for our work and growth as an ecommerce agency...

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insights

Three great ways Something Different Wholesale increase AOV and revenue from their existing customer base

We examine some of the additions Something Different Wholesale have made throughout their site to increase AOV and revenue without any additional marketing spend...

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Something Different Wholesale Retail Systems Awards nominations

client news

Red shortlisted for three Retail Systems Awards

We've been nominated in three separate categories at this year's Retail Systems Awards...

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insights

CRO Lab - Automatically drive conversions from wish lists

We examine how using automatically generated emails for price reductions on customer 'favourites' helps to drive conversions without any extra resources...

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