O’Reilly Automotive Inc., a multi-billion-dollar wholesaler and retailer of aftermarket auto parts, garnered 42% of its sales last year from customers in businesses, government agencies and educational institutions.

The company sells online at fco.FirstCallOnline.com and a complementary mobile site to several buying cooperatives for government agencies and schools, in addition to providing special online research and purchasing options on that site for automotive service professionals. O’Reilly also sells to consumers through OReillyAuto.com, a related mobile site, and through more than 4,570 stores across 44 states.

To better manage sales while expanding selection across its B2B and retail e-commerce sites, mobile sites and stores, O’Reilly has agreed to deploy an open-source e-commerce platform built on Java software technology from Broadleaf Commerce. The upgrade will include improved site search and navigation, and more personalized online content, O’Reilly says.

Jeff Lauro, O’Reilly’s senior vice president of information systems, says the Broadleaf platform will also enable the auto parts company to handle a larger number of SKUs and integrate inventory and customer data across its e-commerce and mobile sites and its stores. “Within a few weeks, Broadleaf proved their ability to handle our complex challenges, including the ability to scale to millions of SKUs and handle our store integration requirements,” he says. “With the move to Broadleaf, we will be able to modernize the overall experience for our customers.” O’Reilly doesn’t say how many distinct SKUs it now carries, though it notes that each of its 26 distribution centers carries an average of 146,000 SKUs available for same-day or overnight shipping.

Broadleaf charges from $20,000 to $40,000 to develop a prototype site within four weeks as a proof of concept to show how its technology will run a client’s e-commerce operations. Its fees for deploying a final site depends on the extent of a site’s features and its volumes of traffic and products.

O’Reilly doesn’t break out figures on its B2B e-commerce sales. Its retail e-commerce site is No. 191 in the Internet Retailer Top 500, which ranks merchants on their annual web sales.

First Call Online, in addition to selling to automotive services companies, caters to more than 17,000 customers in government agencies, municipalities, school districts and nonprofit organizations.

Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a twice-weekly newsletter that coverstechnology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web— Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly business magazine Internet Retailer. Follow Paul Demery, editor for B2B e-commerce, on Twitter @pdemery.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new B2BecNews publishes new content.