Tropicana Wholesale Ecommerce Case Study

Class-leading B2B ecommerce for the UK's Leading Sports Nutrition Distributor.

Founded in 1980, Tropicana Wholesale is the UK's leading sports supplement distributor, supplying thousands of gyms, websites, personal trainers, and sports supplements shops throughout Europe. With over 2000 sports nutrition products in stock, they are the authorised distributor of over 100 well known brands such as CNP, Grenade, High5, Optimum Nutrition, PhD Nutrition, USN and many more.

"Red offer a lot of what we needed as standard and added in some new features without overcomplicating the site from the customer point of view. They have great experience of building B2B sites and we're extremely happy with the new website."

CEO, Tropicana Wholesale

Project Highlights

Price list manager
Sophisticated price list manager calculates customer and product discounts from main pricelist meaning only two price lists (£/€) are needed across entire site and customer base
Business to Business
Heavyweight ecommerce functionality from a platform designed from the ground up to service complex B2B requirements
Dropshipping
Automated dropship service for customers through API integration. Product & stock feeds are passed to customers’ websites to populate with orders passed back into Tropicana Wholesale to fulfil
Sophisticated promotions
Automated promotions driven by expiry date and whether products have reached defined sales level within a certain period. Also includes advanced features such as selectable free gifts, cloning offers, alerts when close to qualifying for a discount, and countdown timers on each offer
Spend & save
Spend & save loyalty scheme designed to encourage users to spend x% more than during a previous time period to acquire a reward
Simple re-ordering
Host of quick ordering tools such as saved baskets, saved quick order forms (with optional CSV upload), and back in stock notifications with direct add to basket links
Seamless integrations
Two-way integration with OrderWise ERP system for prices, stock, accounts, invoices/credits/payments, and orders
Call centre
Built-in call centre capabilities including pricing override at the basket, adding/removing promotions, adding free gifts, and much more
Email integration
Integration with Mailchimp ESP for bulk emailing, whilst automated, triggered emails ae sent via tradeit

Project Integrations

Project Overview

Whilst a small portion of their business is through retail channels, they primarily trade B2B and could no longer grow their online business sufficiently using their old Blubolt ecommerce platform. Like most platforms, its B2B ecommerce offering was basically just a tweaked retail site, rather than one built from the ground up to service the unique requirements of B2B ecommerce, so lacked a lot of the functionality they required to stay ahead of their competitors.

Tropicana Wholesale ecommerce site on a laptop

Tropicana Wholesale ecommerce site on a computer

Tropicana Wholesale ecommerce site on a mobile phone

Tropicana Wholesale ecommerce case study

Pricing

For example, their previous site had 13 different pricing levels for different customers all managed within their OrderWise system. Now, the new price list manager within tradeit allows them to have just two pricelists (one in £ and one in €) that are site wide, with discount levels (+/-) which can be applied to both customers, products and brands, meaning that only 2, rather than 13, different pricelists have to be maintained. Customers can also toggle between NET and GROSS pricing.

Ease of Ordering

As most customers order daily and are short of time, a quick and hassle-free experience was paramount. With this in mind, a host of great tools were made available in the users' my account such as saved baskets, saved quick order forms (with optional CSV upload), and back in stock notifications with direct add to basket links. Previously, when customers ordered via telephone it was normally due to bespoke pricing being offered (price drop, free product etc...). Staff would then place these orders online but any price changes had to be applied to their order once it reached OrderWise, and then charged manually, which was far from ideal. Using tradeit's MOTO tools, this issue no longer exists as administrators are able to login as customers and override their pricing directly at the basket as well as adding/removing any offers and free gifts when processing orders on their behalf.

Automating Promotions

Despite selling to the trade, the site is highly promotion-driven, with advanced tools like countdown timers, offer cloning, “almost there” prompts, and multiple free gift options. Whilst, due to the nature of the products that they sell, many of them carry expiry dates so regular stock turnover is crucial . Automated processes now move soon-to-expire products to the clearance section with discounts, shift slow sellers to flash sales, and remove out-of-stock gifts from offers—ensuring smooth stock management and stronger sales.

Short Shelf-life Products

Due to the nature of the products that they sell, many of them carry expiry dates so ensuring a regular turnover of stock is important to make sure they are not left holding huge amounts of out of date products. In order to address this they have created automatic processes, promotions and merchandising in tradeit, such as adding products to the clearance category based on their expiry date with a discount applied, set up products to move to the flash sale category if sales don't meet their specified level for a certain time period, and removing any free gifts from offers when they are not in stock.

Dropshipping

Their API-driven dropshipping service enables customers to seamlessly ship orders directly to their own end users, with Tropicana Wholesale handling fulfilment behind the scenes. By removing the need for stock holding, warehousing, and packing, it allows retailers to expand their product range and scale quickly with minimal upfront investment—while still maintaining full control of the customer relationship. It also helps fuel Tropicana Wholesale’s online growth.

Loyalty

The site now also features a spend & save loyalty scheme which means Tropicana Wholesale can incentivise their customers to spend more over a defined time period (i.e. a month) than previously, in return for a reward. Customers can track their progress, and their target, in their my account as well as seeing any unused rewards.