How Toolsaver Streamlines Warehouse and Omnichannel Management with BigCommerce

Toolstop has come a long way since its humble beginnings in Scotland. With roots back to 1965, Toolstop began as a hardware store on a small main street, where Noel Kegg and his son ran the business together. 

Since then, the hardware brand has gone from strength to strength, launching its first online store in 2007 and expanding from the B2C market into B2B with the launch of its wholesale brand, Toolsaver. 

Moving from Magento to BigCommerce, the company has found the ease of use and B2B functionality it needs to accelerate the B2B side of its business.

But by far one of the greatest benefits has been the openness and connectivity of the BigCommerce platform, allowing Toolsaver to implement its new warehouse management system and round out its omnichannel strategy.

“One of the big factors was that BigCommerce had such an open API architecture. It allowed us to bring people in-house that would be able to develop systems that would integrate seamlessly with the BigCommerce platform,” said Neil Bruce, Toolsaver’s ecommerce manager.

Creating a Seamless Order Life Cycle

After launching both Toolstop and Toolsaver on the BigCommerce platform, the hardware business brought in its own software developers to help build out its B2C and B2B websites. 

On top of building an in-house PIM solution, SKUPAL, Toolsaver also launched its own warehouse management system, which integrates directly with BigCommerce and Toolsaver’s ERP system, Sage 200.

“The system allows us to take orders through both websites, and those orders feed right into our ERP system, which is Sage 200,” said Bruce. “And then on the warehouse floor, all of our warehouse personnel have an Android device with a barcode scanner, which integrates with Sage.”

Thus, when customers place orders through either the Toolstop or Toolsaver website, those orders feed into the ERP and are sent to handheld scanners on the warehouse floor. This way, warehouse employees can ensure that every order is picked and scanned accurately, helping to eliminate mispicks and returns. 

“This is quite important when it comes to power tools,” Bruce explained. “Because power tools can have different voltages depending on what electricity system that you might be plugging it into. But these power tools look exactly the same, and they’re boxed in the same way, so you could quite easily go and pick the wrong voltage off of the shelf.”

After warehouse personnel scan and pack the order, they can enter the weight of the package into their handheld device and send the package off to the courier. The courier then produces a consignment label and attaches to the parcel, which is delivered the following day. 

When the handheld device dispatches the order, an update is sent to the Toolsaver BigCommerce site, informing the customer that their order has been shipped. 

Although a seemingly simple process, Toolsaver’s warehouse management system has tremendously improved the automation of the business’s back office operations, allowing for a faster, more streamlined ordering process. 

Reaching More Customers with Feedonomics and Codisto

Along with automating its warehouse operations, Toolsaver also strengthened its omnichannel strategy by integrating with search, social and marketplace channels. Turning to BigCommerce’s app marketplace, Toolsaver found just the right tools to power its omnichannel capabilities.

Feedonomics, in particular, was key to listing and selling products across advertising and marketplace channels. As a full-service data feed management platform, Feedonomics allows Toolsaver to ensure accurate and consistent product, inventory, order and fulfillment data across all sales channels.

“Feedonomics has been a great tool for us in terms of feeding out product information to the likes of Google Shopping and Facebook,” explained Bruce. “It’s far more joined up and connected, so it’s a lot easier to pull the data out of your commerce site and then transform that data for whatever needs you have.” 

In addition to Feedonomics, Toolsaver also utilizes Codisto for omnichannel management. With roughly a third of Toolsaver’s orders coming through marketplaces, Codisto makes it quick and easy for the business to feed products onto channels such as Amazon and eBay. 

“We just go into Codisto and specify what products we want to ship up to those channels,” explained Bruce. “We set certain rules which say we only want to put these products on these channels if we have a certain amount of stock, because we don’t want to oversell.”

On top of that, Codisto enables Toolsaver to set different prices than those on its own site and, most importantly, handle every order the same — no matter where it comes from.

“Once an order is placed on a marketplace, that order comes directly back into the BigCommerce admin. And, as I mentioned earlier, anything that comes into the BigCommerce admin automatically feeds into Sage 200 and the warehouse management system,” said Bruce. “So it means that every order is managed and handled in exactly the same fashion.”

The Final Word

Read more of the Toolsaver case study to learn how BigCommerce can power your online business.