Heat Transfer Warehouse Designs Their Ideal Site with BigCommerce

SOLUTION

Unlimited freedom through a user-friendly interface.

Throughout the migration from the open-source platform, Heat Transfer Warehouse relied on the support of the BigCommerce team. With their help, Heat Transfer Warehouse seamlessly transitioned their site due to the platform’s adaptability and user-friendly interface. 

“The ability to have a lot of things under our control was huge for us,” said Anton. “BigCommerce offers adaptability as far as we're able to add partner affiliate linking, apps, and other features. The old system would take months to update, whereas with BigCommerce, some of the updates only take an hour.”

BigCommerce’s ease of use and flexibility empowered the Heat Transfer Warehouse team to design their site the way they always wanted. This includes redesigning how they merchandise products and creating kitting and bundling options for their different types of customers. Having this freedom and ability has helped increase their overall conversions and online sales.

Flexibility through segmentation.

One of Heat Transfer Warehouse’s primary reasons for choosing BigCommerce was the customer group feature. “We liked BigCommerce because we had enough business customers that we could set up pricing structures, pricing guidelines, and base it on certain products,” said Anton.

Before moving to BigCommerce, Anton and his team had to personally give B2B customers special discount codes that they could apply at checkout. Communicating with each business and ensuring their discount was successfully applied took a great deal of time away from the team.

Through the customer group feature, Anton and his team have been able to grade B2B customers as silver, gold, or platinum. As they log in, all discounts are automatically applied across the site based on their grade level, while customers on the B2C side only see the regular prices without special discounts applied.

This seamless experience not only helps B2B customers become loyal to the Heat Transfer Warehouse brand but also saves the team a significant amount of time.

“It really helped us pick up that side of the customers that were moving volume and needed special prices. We couldn't do that with the other site,” explained Anton.

All-in-one back-end management.

To tap into the DTC side of the industry, Heat Transfer Warehouse acquired Shirts From Fargo a year and a half ago. Prior to merging, Shirts From Fargo found itself in a similar situation to Heat Transfer Warehouse when it came to the level of satisfaction they had with their ecommerce platform.

“When Shirts From Fargo originally launched, they were on Shopify and then before they merged with us, they migrated to BigCommerce because they didn't like Shopify at all,” explained Anton.

Shirts From Fargo and Heat Transfer Warehouse are now on the same BigCommerce Enterprise plan, allowing Anton and the team to easily manage both sites through the same back-end.

Saving time and increasing sales through apps and integrations.

Since moving to BigCommerce, Heat Transfer Warehouse has incorporated a number of apps and integrations that simplify back-office tasks and increase online sales.

With half of the Heat Transfer Warehouse business coming from B2B transactions, the team decided to implement B2B Ninja to assist with customer quoting.

The company also implements the app Bolt, which detects and prevents fraud. Prior to incorporating the app, Anton and his team would spend hours each day checking for fraudulent orders. Even with these frequent checks, they typically lost thousands of dollars annually due to fraudulent transactions. 

Since implementing Bolt, a significant amount of money and time have been saved. “I think Bolt is one of the best — hands down. But also, Bolt reminds me of BigCommerce,” explained Anton. “There's actually people to talk to if you have problems or questions.”

The team also uses apps to increase their visibility and create brand recognition. Currently, they use Affiliatly, which has allowed them to create an affiliate program that consists of over 100 partners. 

“We wanted an affiliate program, but we weren't actually able to implement it until we got on BigCommerce because nothing would integrate with the open-source platform,” said Anton. Two months after launching on BigCommerce, Heat Transfer Warehouse created their affiliate program. “It was so easy and I think that was the best thing about it. We were able to launch that program and we've gone crazy with it in the last two years.”

In addition to Affiliatly, the company has seen an increase in revenue since incorporating Klaviyo. Klaviyo allows them to automatically trigger email flows, recommending products to past customers that would go well with items they’ve previously purchased. This creates more repeat customers and generates additional sales.