CommerceBolt — a Perigeon company
Talk to an expert

Industry

Industrial & B2B Distribution

Distribution catalogues run to hundreds of thousands of lines, buyers search by part number rather than by name, and price is a function of the account rather than the product. Very little retail thinking survives contact with it.

Industrial supplies on stone plinths: gears, ball bearings, bolts and nuts, brass pipe fittings and a valve, a cordless drill, cable and a hard hat

Diagnosis first

What distribution demands

Four characteristics that make this the furthest commerce category from retail.

  1. The catalogue is enormous

    Hundreds of thousands of lines with technical attributes. Search and faceting are the entire experience; browsing a category tree is not viable at this scale.

  2. Buyers search your competitor's part number

    Or the manufacturer's, or their own internal code. Cross-reference matching is often the difference between a usable site and an ignored one.

  3. Price depends on the account

    Contract rates, volume breaks and negotiated terms held in the ERP. The storefront displays a number it does not own.

    B2B commerce

  4. Orders arrive as spreadsheets

    Procurement works from its own systems. CSV upload and quick order by code are adoption features, not conveniences.

Search before design

On a distribution site, search is not a feature in the header. It is the product. A buyer arrives with a code, a specification, or a part they are trying to replace, and the site either resolves it immediately or loses the order to a phone call.

That means exact-match behaviour, tolerance for how codes are actually typed, cross-references from other manufacturers, and faceting on genuine engineering attributes. All of which depend on the catalogue data being structured — which is why these projects are usually product data work with a storefront attached.

The sales desk is the competitor

Your buyers already have a way to order: they ring someone who knows them. A website only displaces that if it is faster for the routine cases.

So the measure of success is not sessions or even conversion rate. It is whether the volume of routine calls — stock checks, order status, reorders, datasheet requests — has fallen three months after launch. If it has not, the site has not yet done its job regardless of how it looks.

Where this sits

This is B2B commerce at the demanding end, dependent on integration work because the ERP owns price, stock and lead time, and on product data because the catalogue is the asset. A customer portal usually ships alongside it.

Focus areas

Where we focus in distribution

Catalogue-heavy sub-sectors where search, cross-reference and account pricing carry the site.

  1. Industrial supplies and MRO Hundreds of thousands of lines, part-number search and cross-references to competitor and manufacturer codes.
  2. Electrical and electronic components Dense technical attributes, datasheets and compatibility. Faceting on real specifications is the experience.
  3. Building materials and trade Account pricing, branch stock, bulky delivery and buyers who order by phone unless the site is faster.
  4. Automotive and spare parts Fitment data and vehicle-to-part matching. Getting the wrong part is a return and a lost customer.
  5. Packaging and consumables High-frequency reorder, volume breaks and quick order by code. Reordering is the primary journey.
  6. Scientific and lab supply Regulated lines, certificates and documentation attached to products, with account-restricted catalogues.

Platforms

Where we build.

Search is the entire site

Nobody browses a catalogue of two hundred thousand parts. They arrive knowing a code, a specification or a competitor's equivalent, and either find it in seconds or leave and phone your sales desk. On distribution sites we would spend the search budget before the design budget, every time.

Talk through your catalogue

Scope

What a build includes.

  • Search built for part numbers

    Exact-match priority, tolerance for formatting differences, and cross-references from manufacturer and competitor codes to your SKUs.

  • Technical faceting at scale

    Filtering on real engineering attributes — dimensions, tolerances, materials, ratings — which depends entirely on the data being structured.

  • Customer-specific catalogues and pricing

    Contracted lines, restricted products and account rates resolved from the ERP rather than duplicated into the storefront.

  • Quick order and CSV upload

    Bulk entry by code with validation and clear errors, because a procurement team pasting two hundred lines is a normal Tuesday.

  • Datasheets and documentation

    Specifications, certificates and CAD files attached to products and searchable, since documentation is frequently what the buyer came for.

  • Stock, lead time and backorder visibility

    Real availability per line including incoming stock, because industrial buyers plan around dates rather than browsing alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

Can a commerce platform handle a catalogue of this size?

The storefront platform usually can, but search almost always needs a dedicated engine rather than the built-in one. At hundreds of thousands of lines with technical faceting, native platform search becomes the bottleneck well before anything else does.

How do you handle competitor part number cross-references?

As a mapping between external codes and your SKUs, held as product data and indexed for search. It is one of the highest-return features on a distribution site, because a buyer arriving with a competitor code is a buyer actively trying to switch supplier.

Our pricing is entirely contract-based. Does that work online?

Yes, provided the ERP stays the authority and the storefront reads from it. The design questions are whether price is resolved live or cached, what an unauthenticated visitor sees, and how quickly a contract change propagates. Those are decided in the commercial mapping phase.

Will our customers actually use a website?

For reordering, order status, documentation and stock checking, generally yes — those are the calls they would rather not make. Complex or first-time specification often still involves your sales team, and that is the right split. The aim is removing routine contact, not removing relationships.

Which platform suits distribution best?

Adobe Commerce B2B is the natural fit for deep configurability, complex pricing rules and very large catalogues. Shopify Plus has become viable for a good share of distribution and costs considerably less to run. The honest answer depends on your pricing complexity and catalogue depth, which is what an assessment establishes.

Want to talk through Industrial & B2B Distribution for your store?

Tell us where it hurts. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.

Talk to an expert Book 30 minutes