Project History

Shortly after WebCrane moved the Piccalilly retail website onto the Magento 1 e-commerce framework, we were asked to build a wholesale site running from the same product catalogue. Magento 1, like most e-commerce platforms is primarily built with retail in mind, but there were a number of notable B2B requirements that Magento does not provide out of the box.

WebCrane rebuilt the wholesale customer registration process to allow more customer information to be collected up front and added approval functionality, in order that only pre-approved wholesale customers were allowed to see the product catalogue and pricing. In addition, customer tax rules were created to ensure the correct tax treatment of different customers from around the world.

Unlike retail customers, wholesale customers tend to purchase in bulk and want the ordering process to be quick and seamless. WebCrane built bespoke and unique functionality to allow wholesale order lists to be created directly from the category and search pages, thus enabling rapid order placing.

More recently, the wholesale website has been successfully rebuilt on the Magento 2 platform.