Austin Hardware & Supply

For decades, Austin Hardware has supplied mission-critical components to manufacturers, fleets, and builders across the country. Buyers come to the site to get in, find the right part, and get back to work. The website has to do more than list SKUs. It needs to support company accounts, display accurate contract pricing, and enable fast reorders while giving their team confidence to publish and grow. 

The new build does exactly that. It pairs a modern B2B storefront with operational stability, gives account buyers the tools they expect, and gives Austin’s team reusable components to move faster day to day. 

The Challenge

Frequent-use parts, complex pricing, and a roadmap that needed freedom

Austin Hardware's legacy Magento site and Epicor Commerce Connect setup made everyday changes slow and limited access to modern B2B features. Their leadership wanted tighter Epicor alignment, and to offer a true self-service experience for account buyers, ideally with lower total cost of ownership. An ECC upgrade was looming, with risk and expense, and there was concern about being locked into a path that constrained the digital roadmap.   

Improvement Goals:

• Product discovery and reorders for frequently used parts
• Company-level controls and contract pricing without back-and-forth
• Faster publishing for campaigns and landing pages

The Vision

We set out to build a buying experience that matches how Austin’s customers actually work. That starts with speed and clarity. Search and category pages need to surface the right parts without guesswork. Product pages must confirm specs at a glance and make quantity updates painless, so buyers can move on with confidence. 

For account buyers, the site should reflect the relationship. Approved teams sign in, see their price lists, and check out by PO on terms. Shared lists support collaboration, and Quick Order by SKU or CSV turns large reorders into a single, predictable step. All of this has to connect cleanly to Epicor, so pricing and customer data remain the single source of truth.   

Internally, marketing needs structure without friction. Reusable components should make it easy to launch new landing pages, highlight industries or brands, and run promotions without waiting on development. The end result is a storefront that is faster to use for customers and easier to run for the team.  

The SwiftOtter Approach

A focused plan to protects what exists, elevate B2B UX, and unlock faster publishing

• Migration with Preservation
  Product data, attributes, pricing, and brand designations were imported with category structure intact. Customer profiles, company flags, groups, addresses, and full order history were migrated and mapped correctly, and redirects preserved search paths. 
  
• Design System
  Custom UX design for home, category landing, product listing, and product detail, with mobile prototypes to ensure a field-friendly experience for teams on the go. 
  
• Component Library
  Reusable Page Builder components for hero banners, value props, featured categories, industries, brands, products, video, blog, resources, FAQs, and flexible two-column content. The team can launch pages in minutes. 
  
• B2B Edition Features
  Company Accounts, customer-specific Price Lists, Shared Shopping Lists, PO payments on terms, and Quick Order by SKU or CSV match how bulk buyers purchase on repeat. 
  
• Epicor Alignment
  Consultation on the Epicor integration via Jitterbit to support pricing and account data, while avoiding monolithic lock-in.  

The Results

Buyers can now locate parts faster, confirm contract pricing, and reorder in fewer steps. Company teams can easily share shopping lists, submit POs on terms, and upload SKUs by CSV when volume is high. Internally, marketing ships pages quickly with reusable components, and Epicor alignment reduces manual work. Findability is protected through a structured migration and clean information architecture.   

• Faster discovery with tuned search and clear categories
• Reorders in minutes with Shared Lists and Quick Order
• Account-based pricing and PO payments that match how buyers purchase
• Reusable components that speed campaigns and reduce dev requests 

Together these changes make buying straightforward for customers and make publishing routine for the team, so the storefront can keep pace with the business.