Building Materials and Hardware Ecommerce Development

Building an online store for a lumber yard, a plumbing, electrical or HVAC distributor, a tool and hardware supplier or a building supply chain, that sells the way the counter does. That means contractor accounts with their own prices and terms, stock by branch with pickup and jobsite delivery, the units the trade buys in, quotes and job accounts, exemption certificates honoured at checkout, and the ERP as the system of record behind all of it. Homeowners can shop the same store at retail prices.

Yes. A contractor signs in and sees the prices their account has in the ERP: customer-specific prices, contract prices, quantity breaks and the branch's list price for everything else. The store reads them from the ERP rather than keeping a copy, so the number online is the number the counter would quote. Terms, credit limits and job accounts come with the price.

Yes. The product page shows what each branch has on the shelf, the customer's home branch first, and what the distribution center can send. Pickup is offered from the branches that have it, and delivery from whichever location the ERP would ship from. Stock is read from the ERP or the warehouse system, so the page is as current as the counter's screen.

Yes. In the cart the customer picks up from a branch, with a ready time, or has the order delivered to a jobsite with a window, a contact on site, a gate code and instructions, because a lot with no street number is normal for this trade. Bulk orders are rated as LTL freight or go on your own trucks, whichever you run, and the order carries the delivery details to dispatch.

The store sells in the unit the trade uses and the warehouse picks in the unit it stocks, and the conversion between them lives on the product rather than in anyone's head. Pipe sold per foot in ten-foot lengths, wire by the reel or the foot, fittings by the each or the box, lumber by the piece or the bundle. Prices follow the unit, and the order reaches the ERP in the unit it expects.

Yes. A contractor builds a material list, from search, from a pasted list of SKUs or from a past job, and asks for a quote. The rep adjusts it in the ERP, the contractor sees the quoted prices online and accepts it as an order, and the whole thing is kept as a reorder list for the next job. Crews can each have their own lists under the same account.

The certificate is held on the customer's account, by state and by what it covers, and checkout honours it, so an exempt contractor is charged no tax on the orders it applies to and tax on the ones it does not. Tax itself is computed by the delivery address through a tax engine, and refunds flow back to it. Our US sales tax integration page covers the engine side in depth.

Yes. We work with the distribution ERPs this trade runs on, such as Epicor Eclipse and Prophet 21, Infor and NetSuite, through their APIs or their import and export files, whichever the system offers. Prices, stock, customers, orders and invoices move between the store and the ERP, and the ERP stays the system of record. The integration list is written in the first step, before anything is built.

Yes. Customers who buy through a procurement system get a punchout catalog: they start in their own system, shop your store at their prices, and the cart returns to their system as a requisition that comes back to you as a purchase order. It is built on the cXML or OCI standard their system speaks.

It depends on the trade side. Magento and Adobe Commerce carry company accounts, contract pricing, quotes and requisition lists natively and connect to distribution ERPs well, which is why most B2B stores of this kind end up there. Shopify Plus fits a lighter B2B with company profiles and price lists. BigCommerce has a B2B edition that suits a mid-sized distributor. We recommend after we have seen your price rules and your ERP, not before.

Yes, for the right operation. Shopify Plus carries company profiles, price lists, net terms and quick order, which covers a single-branch supplier or a lighter trade program well. Stock by branch, deep contract pricing and units of measure take more custom work there than on Magento. For a multi-branch distributor with an ERP full of price rules, Magento is usually the stronger home, and we will say so.

Yes. A homeowner sees retail prices, parcel shipping and card payment; a contractor signs in and sees their account, their prices, pickup and jobsite delivery, and terms. Same catalog, same stock, two experiences, and the ERP behind both.

Yes. The rules are the same across the building trades: account pricing, stock by branch, units of measure, exemption certificates, jobsite delivery and an ERP that already knows the answers. What changes is the catalog, so a plumbing supply store gets its fitting dimensions and connection types, an electrical one its wire gauges and reel lengths, an HVAC one its model compatibility, and a tool store its brands and accessories.

It depends mostly on the ERP and the price rules. A single-branch supplier with clean data can launch in a few months; a multi-branch distributor with contract pricing, quotes, punchout and a distribution ERP to connect takes longer, because the integration and the account experience are most of the work. The plan from the first step gives you the dates for your store.

Individually, once we have seen the catalog, the price rules, the ERP, the platform and the integrations. Account pricing and ERP work vary more than design does, so a number given before that read would be a guess. Send us the basics and you have a scoped plan within two business days.

Yes. We start by reading the store and the ERP integration: how prices and stock arrive, where they drift, how units of measure are modelled, how exemptions are handled and why contractors still phone the branch. Our project rescue service covers the takeover itself, and the trade work follows the same plan as a new build.