Orgill Inc., a hardware distributor  to some 13,000 independent merchants in more than 50 countries, is on a course to get them all humming with B2B2C ecommerce.

The company’s strategy requires Orgill to centrally manage ecommerce technology integrations and product data on more than 1 million products, while allowing each merchant to customize their storefront to their local customers’ needs.

Grant Morrow, director of ecommerce, Orgill Inc.

“We’ve wanted to pursue this B2B2C initiative for more than a decade, and our ambitions go beyond what a typical [ecommerce technology] provider could support,” says Grant Morrow, Orgill’s director of ecommerce. “Our dealers need flexibility and customization, and we need support, scalability, and the ability to manage all stores within a controlled, centralized environment.”

Orgill is deploying the Elastic Path Composable Commerce platform, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services cloud technology and uses MACH technology architecture to provide more flexibility and speed in adjusting commerce technology to suit changes in market demand. MACH stands for microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native and headless, a technology setup that supports the deployment of modular, best-of-breed software applications than can scale up independently without requiring changes to other parts of an ecommerce software platform.

Orgill, founded in 1847, does more than $4 billion in sales through merchants including retail hardware stores, home improvement centers, professional lumber dealers and farm supply stores through the United States, Canada and more than 50 additional countries.

For some merchants, their first shoppable website

In many cases, the merchants using the Elastic Path Composable Commerce B2B2C platform are launching their first shoppable website.

Orgill says the new platform lets the distributor “centrally manage integrations and product data while enabling distributors to customize their stores … accommodating merchants with different brands, specifications, markets, product assortments, pricing requirements, budget and POS experiences.”

The distributor adds that it is “able to manage all dealer stores within a single environment, ensuring streamlined operations and consistent, accurate, conversion-boosting customer experiences.”

Orgill says the B2B2C platform is already powering “hundreds of catalogs on dealer websites, and many more are in the pipeline for full websites.” Elastic Path notes that new sites can “go live in weeks, and catalogs launch in days or even hours.”

Other features of the ecommerce platform include:

• Preloaded, enriched product data for more than 75,000 Orgill items, plus access to Orgill’s industry PIM (product information management) program for data on 1.3 million products from outside or Orgill.
• Dealers’ ability to add their own products to their online catalog and choose between Orgill-managed pricing or their own customized pricing.
• The option to offer buy-online-pay-in-store as well as digital checkout.
• Multiple program levels, ranging from catalog-only to basic website applications to a “fully POS-integrated ecommerce system.”
• A Marketing Starter Kit to help sellers execute branding and marketing campaigns.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].

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