Background
bspoq are an eCommerce and marketing agency supporting the digitalisation of commerce brands across a huge range of sectors. They cover the full spectrum of strategic marketing support, from key messaging and brand awareness to go-to-market gameplans and custom-built software solutions.
Signet are a UK brand committed to providing high-quality industrial tools (like bearings and transmissions) to industry leaders and government bodies as well as running a D2C channel. They’ve been in business since the late 1990s and started the journey to digitalising their B2B operations in 2022.
The challenge
bspoq connected with Signet in the summer of 2022 - at the time, the industrial equipment brand were struggling to combine the D2C and B2B sides of their business. They were relatively early in their wholesale journey so needed a cost-effective solution to their challenges that would support them pre-investment and sustainably as they continue to scale. bspoq reached out to us as a BigCommerce partner that met Signet’s B2B requirements and the rest is history!
When we all first started working together, Signet were using a legacy eCommerce website that was no longer fit to serve their growing hybrid customer base. Their customers include large PLCs and factories as well as government bodies, so they needed a platform that could cater to large order volumes - quickly. They were also using the same platform to sell D2C, so they wanted the option to separate their sales channels and needed the functionality to fuel their B2B sales.
Due to their growing wholesale business, Signet needed B2B price lists that covered around 150,000 SKUs and price breaks/ discounts based on spend. They wanted to be able to manage their pricing themselves rather than going through a third party every time they added a new product or made a price change. Retaining a level of autonomy while collaborating with an agency was crucial to them, and something that bspoq navigated successfully in this digitalisation project.
Signet’s large product inventory also necessitated the ability to build collections on their wholesale website - customers didn’t want to scroll through a huge product catalogue. Signet wanted to enable quick ordering via CSV upload/ shopping lists to make it easier for their B2B customer to bulk-buy items.
The solution
bspoq managed the digitalisation process alongside our team, creating internal onboarding and training programmes for Signet’s staff. This included change management, with a large focus on updating manual processes with SparkLayer’s wholesale automation. bspoq essentially became fractional members of the key change management team within Signet, embedding into their business to lead process updates and product adoption.
Signet use BigCommerce, so they needed a solution that would work intuitively with their software while fully harnessing the power of SparkLayer’s wholesale features. They wanted a separate B2B login so that their D2C customers’ journeys remained unaffected, something we were able to set up quickly.
They also made the most of our quick-buy and collection features, speeding up the B2B customer journey with visible, intuitive website navigation for key products. The ability to upload CSV files for B2B orders also sped things up and helped them handle their large product catalogue.
bspoq supported the build of key middleware that enabled Signet to map their customer account numbers within BigCommerce and SparkLayer’s native features for a cohesive approach. Account numbers now sync with Signet’s ERP before sending quotes, which is a great example of how customers can make the most of SparkLayer’s APIs either alone or via an agency.
The results
One of the key results Signet benefitted from quickly was the ability to win new business they previously couldn’t support. Thanks to SparkLayer’s ability to handle complex price lists and customer groups (as well as build out shopping lists and quick-buy menus), Signet are now able to meet a new level of self-service B2B customers.
The adoption of our platform was highly positive, with a speedy, straightforward transition in terms of training Signet staff on SparkLayer. The team rapidly saw a vast improvement by removing manual processes that had been slowing them down and leaving more room for manual errors.
SparkLayer’s functionality has become an integral part of Signet’s playbook and online setup, and they’re currently scoping out the potential to add our Sales Agent feature and further empower their Sales teams.
“When scoping the initial project requirements, it was clear that we were going to need to find an effective way to easily compliment the D2C storefront with innovative B2B functionality. Our partnership with SparkLayer got off to a fantastic start, the team have been incredibly helpful and supported us where required. Very excited to see the continued success and growth of this deployment and working with SparkLayer as they lead in this evolving space." ~ Matt Sandham, CEO, bspoq
“The most important thing for us was to give our customers and our staff a simple-to-use tool for managing all aspects of the ordering process. We've been delighted to see the results so far and being able to demonstrate the capabilities of our B2B website to key customers and win new business because of it has been brilliant." ~ John Pogmore, Managing Director, Signet
Explore more
To learn more about Signet, their product range, and the story of their brand, visit their website. Discover bspoq, one of our trusted partners for strategic marketing consulting.
To see how SparkLayer works with BigCommerce, you can explore via the links below: