How Eastern Industrial Supplies supports 400,000+ product SKUs

Eastern Industrial Supplies sees the people behind the companies they serve

Most companies have mission statements and values hanging on their walls or printed in their employee handbook. But few of them infuse their mission and values into every aspect of their business. Eastern Industrial Supplies is one of those rare few.

For nearly 40 years, Eastern Industrial Supplies has been driven by the missions of caring for their employees, serving their customers with respect and integrity and spreading positivity to their community, their country and the world. These missions are engrained in the way Eastern serves their customers throughout the United States.

As a traditional wholesale distributor of industrial pipe, valves, fittings, mechanical supplies, commercial plumbing, and engineered products, Eastern knows that providing customers with the material and services they need contributes to the development of communities locally and abroad. Extensive inventory, knowledgeable associates and the willingness to go the extra mile is what Eastern customers expect, and that’s why they keep coming back.

Eastern’s focus on their people has never changed. But technology and customer expectations have. Customers began looking for easier ways to buy. Competitors built eCommerce programs. Younger generations were entering the workforce. In order to enable customers and employees to be more efficient, streamline processes and grow the business, Eastern ventured into eCommerce. 

Eastern’s eCommerce requirements

Eastern looked for a deeply integrated, B2B solution that met specific requirements including:

• Tight integration with Eastern’s Eclipse ERP
• Intuitive, user friendly platform
• Mobile app
• Complex product management and configuration
• Customer specific catalog and experience
• Multi-site capabilities
• Promotions and merchandising functionality
• Approval workflows, SEO and marketing
• Shipping integration
• Shipping management
• Cloud solution
• PunchOut capabilities
• Request for quote functionality

Eastern’s new world with Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud by Insite

In July 2019, Eastern launched its eCommerce website with Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud. Their solution is focused on providing customer specific pricing, punchout capabilities, stock availability, order management, bar code enabled search, and quick access to enriched product content; all available 24/7 from customers’ desktop or mobile devices.

Eastern was able to easily customize the Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud to accommodate their unique transaction flows and exceed customer expectations. The website makes it easier for both employees and customers to do their jobs.

Eastern employees spend less time taking calls for inventory, invoices, or price quotes and more time on fostering deeper relationships. As Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud frees them from the mundane and repetitive tasks, they are able to leverage their knowledge to solve customer problems and win more business.

Eastern has seen an early increase in site traffic, self-service events and orders placed after initially submitting a request for quote. Just 2 months after go-live, Eastern was seeing more than 9,500 monthly page views, more than 1,200 self-service events and more than 3,000 mobile events.

Eastern continues to enhance and improve the customer experience. No matter what changes, one thing is certain: Eastern will do everything in their power to make sure their customers are always happy.