With greater than a decade in enterprise, BB Wheels is a small, family-owned enterprise situated in Albany, Minnesota. With a mission “to grow to be your most well-liked on-line buying vacation spot for wheels, tires, and car equipment,” BB Wheels takes satisfaction in providing customized service with high-quality merchandise at unbeatable costs.
However other than promoting direct-to-consumer (DTC), BB Wheels has additionally discovered a foothold within the B2B area.
To study extra about their B2B success, we sat down with Dean Goebel, President of BB Wheels, and Chelsey Eggert, Director of Operations, to search out out what BigCommerce options their enterprise is leveraging, how they work with B2B prospects and extra.
Choosing the Proper Instrument for the Job
Shelley Kilpatrick: You’ve been on BigCommerce some time, however again while you had been evaluating platforms, what had been a number of the deciding elements for selecting BigCommerce?
Dean Goebel: “With the complexity of how we constructed our merchandise and the sheer measurement of our catalog, BigCommerce was the best choice. There have been different platforms which will have labored, however they had been very custom-made, costly and would have required individuals with a reasonably large technological ability set.
“We prefer to hit the ‘straightforward button’ wherever we are able to, and BigCommerce gave us what we would have liked, on the proper worth level and allowed us to launch and transfer shortly.”
SK: Talking of shifting shortly, how has BigCommerce enabled you to develop your small business?
DG: “The massive advantages of BigCommerce have been that you simply’re all the time iterating on the backend; the infrastructure is all the time being improved and maintained. The second is your app universe. Having the ability to plug high-quality add-ons into our web site, shortly and effectively is an enormous deal.”
Chelsey Eggert: “The truth that BigCommerce makes certain that every part’s safe and we don’t have to fret about upkeep, makes it in order that we are able to handle merchandise that we wish to push out and our prospects — that basically helps.”
Shifting Gears to Promoting B2B On-line
SK: Switching gears to speak about B2B, how does BigCommerce make it easier to promote to those consumers?
CE: “We now have a good variety of sellers who buy from us and resell the merchandise. They’re on a wholesale account with us. Moreover, typically retailers have their prospects purchase via us, after which they set up the merchandise.”
“Wholesale prospects can purchase via our common web site, however we additionally supply completely different reductions, relying on quantity and what they’re doing, than what’s supplied to the common purchaser. A number of the BigCommerce options we use to set this up on the back-end embody buyer teams and tariffs.”
SK: Do you do something particular to market to B2B prospects?
CE: “I don’t assume we’ve ever particularly tried to market to B2B consumers. Typically, it finally ends up being a neighborhood auto store that calls us — they’re doing a customized construct for a buyer who desires a selected set of wheels — they’ll speak with certainly one of our fitment specialists and that’s how the connection begins.
“Then, both they may come to us and say, ‘Hey, do you guys have a seller account that I can get signed up for?’ or if we see that there’s a pattern that they preserve coming again, we’ll point out it to them. ‘Do you wish to enroll and be a seller?’”
DG: “We’ve all the time had fairly first rate web optimization, however we do spend some huge cash on numerous focused advertising via our buying campaigns. Lots of these consumers are actually the identical, as a result of they’re on the lookout for a wheel, after which they see us exhibiting up in every single place they usually’ll name us, and we set up that relationship.”
Placing Clients within the Driver’s Seat
SK: How do you give B2B prospects the perfect of each worlds — the web expertise and the human contact?
DG: “For those who discover our web site, we actually attempt to make an effort to make the shopping for course of as straightforward as attainable — we attempt to take away as many buy roadblocks understanding that we’re going to have a better incorrect fitment order charge, however that’s the place the human contact is available in. That is a part of our particular secret sauce, the place we make it straightforward to purchase, understanding we could have to work with the shopper submit buy to get the right fitment for his or her particular utility.
“After the order is positioned, we’ve got a fitment knowledgeable on the backend that’s manually reviewing our wheel orders, validating fitment. We then attain out to the shopper and say, ‘Hey, this wheel’s in all probability not going to work in your car. You in all probability want this bolt sample or this offset’ — and other people love that.
“Individuals love the truth that, ‘This web firm known as me to inform me that I ordered unsuitable, they usually’re looking for me to do the proper factor.’ That kind of expertise is what we attempt to do with our sellers as effectively.
“It’s simply loads of frequent sense. Deal with them proper. Give them good pricing and ship issues actually quick. On the finish of the day, it really works out.”
Discover the B2B Ecommerce Answer from BigCommerce
Are you a direct-to-consumer (DTC) enterprise seeking to get into the B2B area? Schedule a demo for BigCommerce B2B Version, and our ecommerce specialists shall be completely satisfied to help you within the transition. And for further insights on all issues B2B, try The State of B2B Ecommerce: 2022 Development Report.
