With greater than a decade in enterprise, BB Wheels is a small, family-owned enterprise situated in Albany, Minnesota. With a mission “to turn out to be your most popular on-line purchasing vacation spot for wheels, tires, and car equipment,” BB Wheels takes pleasure 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 be taught 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.
Deciding on the Proper Device for the Job
Shelley Kilpatrick: You’ve been on BigCommerce some time, however again whenever you had been evaluating platforms, what had been a few of the deciding components 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 pretty big technological ability set.
“We wish 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 enterprise?
DG: “The massive advantages of BigCommerce have been that you just’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 a giant deal.”
Chelsey Eggert: “The truth that BigCommerce makes positive that every thing’s safe and we don’t have to fret about upkeep, makes it in order that we are able to deal with merchandise that we need 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 assist you to promote to those consumers?
CE: “We’ve got 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 by means of us, after which they set up the merchandise.”
“Wholesale prospects can purchase by means of our common web site, however we additionally provide totally 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 embrace 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. Usually, it finally ends up being a neighborhood auto store that calls us — they’re doing a customized construct for a buyer who needs a particular set of wheels — they’ll speak with one among our fitment specialists and that’s how the connection begins.
“Then, both they’ll come to us and say, ‘Hey, do you guys have a supplier account that I can get signed up for?’ or if we see that there’s a pattern that they hold coming again, we’ll point out it to them. ‘Do you need to join and be a supplier?’”
DG: “We’ve all the time had fairly first rate search engine optimization, however we do spend some huge cash on varied focused advertising and marketing by means of our purchasing campaigns. Numerous these consumers are actually the identical, as a result of they’re searching for a wheel, after which they see us displaying up in every single place they usually’ll name us, and we set up that relationship.”
Placing Prospects within the Driver’s Seat
SK: How do you give B2B prospects one of the best of each worlds — the web expertise and the human contact?
DG: “If you happen to discover our web site, we actually attempt to make an effort to make the shopping for course of as straightforward as potential — we attempt to take away as many buy roadblocks figuring out that we’re going to have a better incorrect fitment order price, 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 publish buy to get the right fitment for his or her particular software.
“After the order is positioned, now we have a fitment skilled 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 folks love that.
“Individuals love the truth that, ‘This web firm referred to as me to inform me that I ordered incorrect, they usually’re looking for me to do the fitting factor.’ That kind of expertise is what we attempt to do with our sellers as nicely.
“It’s simply loads of widespread 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 will likely be pleased to help you within the transition. And for further insights on all issues B2B, try The State of B2B Ecommerce: 2022 Pattern Report.
