Family-Owned Industrial Tool Supplies Drives 23% Revenue Surge on BigCommerce

Introduction

Industrial Tool Supplies (ITS) began life in 1979 as a small, 150 square-foot workshop. Today, this family-run business has evolved into one of the UK’s premier hardware suppliers, offering more than 30,000 products online and from four brick-and-mortar branches. While ITS has always prided itself on a customer-first ethos, its legacy .NET platform began to hold the team back. The company set out to find a solution that combined the flexibility of an open-source system with the ease of a SaaS offering—one that would enable ITS to focus on selling, not server maintenance.

Facing the Challenge

By the early 2020s, ITS’s custom .NET site had become overly complex and rigid. The development team was bogged down in server upkeep and patch management instead of building merchandising experiences. Off-the-shelf open-source tools felt too sprawling for ITS’s needs, while pure SaaS platforms lacked the depth required to manage a catalog of over 30,000 SKUs. With technical and non-technical teams both in need of intuitive tools, ITS needed a platform that would allow seamless collaboration and sustained growth.

Solution: BigCommerce and E2X Collaboration

ITS chose BigCommerce’s Open SaaS platform and enlisted E2X, a certified development agency, to handle replatforming and integrations. Together they:

• Built a bespoke storefront aligned with in-branch customer feedback.
• Connected core systems and apps—Shogun Page Builder for flexible page layouts, Doofinder for advanced search, and Dotdigital for automated email campaigns.
• Streamlined merchandising with Space48’s SEO Rich Snippets and Category tools.
• Empowered ITS’s non-technical team to update content, manage promotions, and optimize product listings without developer support.

Results

After launching on BigCommerce in April 2022, ITS shifted its sales staff from order processing to customer service experts. Customers began self-serving through the intuitive site, reserving live interactions for product confirmation and expert advice. Within five months, the company recorded:

• 21% increase in site visits
• 21% increase in orders
• 23% increase in revenue

By focusing on customer experience and leveraging a modular app ecosystem, ITS achieved significant growth without expanding its IT overhead.

Looking Ahead

With a robust, scalable platform now in place, ITS plans to explore virtual demonstrations, deeper social-commerce integrations, and personalized experiences through advanced analytics. The company is confident that BigCommerce will support its next wave of innovation.