Project brief

Building a trade portal for a £130m manufacturer

Trade only eCommerce site

Cormar Carpets wanted to create a trade only eCommerce site that allowed all-hours ordering of products, de-risking the daytime-only customer service and sales operation.

Real time stock visibility

Carpet shops around the country needed to see the stock availability of floor coverings whilst in-store with a customer — this was key to the ongoing Cormar brand.

Widening the sales network

As the first manufacturer to move forward with such web development, Cormar Carpets aimed to increase turnover by 30% with the acquisition of 150 new carpet shops nationwide.

Project delivery

Deep planning across ordering, fulfilment and logistics

Trade only eCommerce site

Intense and extensive planning formulated the Cormar Portal for trade clients, with my project team needing to deeply understand the whole ordering and fulfilment logistics sales cycle. The 60-page technical specification alone took months to finalise.

Real time stock visibility

Adopting an Agile project management approach, our team focused on account security, real time API stock updates and forecasting, the order process and real time fulfilment reporting.

Outcomes

Launched to over 3,000 resellers nationwide

The Cormar Carpets Portal was launched to over 3,000 carpet resellers in the UK, many of them needing additional training, support and documentation.

Building for the future

It turned the sales model into a 24-7-365 operation, de-risking office downtime and considerably raising revenues. Cormar Carpets increased turnover from £90m to £130m over the following 4 years, thanks in part to a portal that improved customer ordering and information sharing.