A plumbing distributor starts at ‘ground zero’

By On Aug 23, 2021

With a growing consumer and corporate customer base, Plumbing Distributors Inc. is preparing to go more digital to better serve customers. It launches its first e-commerce technology to attract shoppers through its website and showrooms.

Our ultimate goal is to bring PDI services into a digital shop window.

William Webster, Manager, Ecommerce Sales

Installation distributor Inc.

William Webster, Manager, Ecommerce Sales, Plumbing Distributors Inc.

Based in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Plumbing Distributors has seven showrooms and nine other locations in Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. About 75% of the company’s revenue comes from the commercial side – some 4,000 plumbers, construction companies, and other craft businesses – and 25% from the consumer side.

For years, PDI has got by with a simple website that doesn’t make buying easier. But the company is in expansion mode after recently purchasing a plumbing supplier in Columbus, Georgia and opening a new facility in the White House, Tennessee. E-commerce could help PDI get a higher return on its expansion investments, but the need for a fully functional online presence to maintain sales became even more apparent when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year.

“Like many companies, COVID has really put the needs and expectations of our customers first, whether they are retail or commercial customers,” said William Webster, PDI’s first e-commerce sales director. Meredith Fingarson, Marketing Director at PDI, adds: “We start with e-commerce from scratch.”

PDI considered e-commerce technologies and services earlier this year, at the time Unilog Content Solutions, a provider of e-commerce technology to medium-sized wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers, acquired Bravo Business Media, an E -Commerce provider to contractors and manufacturers, announced 600 decorative showrooms for plumbing, electrical and other businesses. Webster says PDI liked the way Unilog’s e-commerce technology integrated with back-end business operations software and that Bravo provided useful technology and expertise for digital showrooms.

“During that process was the acquisition that suited us very well,” says Webster. “That was the attraction … that made it an all-in-one solution.” He adds: “Our ultimate goal is to bring PDI services into a digital shop window.”

After examining a dozen or more e-commerce options, according to Webster, PDI selected Unilog and is now building PDI’s e-commerce system.

Scott Frymire, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Unilog

Unilog executives say their interest in acquiring Bravo is largely due to Bravo’s e-commerce expertise. “Bravo served the needs of the retail and B2C business better,” said Scott Frymire, senior vice president of marketing at Unilog. “It was attractive to us that Bravo had an e-commerce solution.”

This solution includes SPEX Builder, an add-on to Bravo’s online showroom platform that enables sales reps to build lists of the items and features customers want in their projects. SPEX Builder also supports the rapid development of a PDF brochure to display such details as well as pricing and contact information.

Ace Rosenstein, President, Bravo Business Media

SPEX Builder will be integrated into Unilog, whose B2B platform is called CIMM2 and includes applications for product information management and content management technology. Bravo manages 8 million SKUs for 1,300 manufacturers, said Ace Rosenstein, president of Bravo, who is now also executive vice president at Unilog. “Some of our insider tips: We have established direct relationships with the manufacturers,” says Rosenstein.

These relationships could help Unilog seek growth on the B2B side and pursue new opportunities in B2C e-commerce, and help more companies like PDI that are seeing growth in sales to both consumers and business customers.

Unilog’s cashless acquisition of Bravo, the terms of which were not disclosed, followed an announcement in January that Investcorp, an international private equity and institutional financial services firm headquartered in New York, had acquired a majority stake in Unilog. Financial details were not disclosed. Unilog will use the financing for product expansion and possible further acquisitions.

In fact, Unilog is building a new platform called CX1, which Frymire says will enable customers without deep technical experience to develop new digital applications for their specific needs. “It’s designed to be a true no-code, low-code development platform,” he says.

Unilog was founded in India in 1998 as a catalog service company. The company later moved into software development and opened its US operations in 2011. It had 50 US employees before acquiring Bravo, based in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, with 32 employees all joining Unilog. The Bravo brand will remain for the time being, but will eventually be consolidated with Unilog, says Rosenstein.

Jim Daly is a Mount Prospect, Illinois-based freelance business and technology journalist.

Sign up for a free subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4 times a week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. Contact the editor Paul Demery at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @pdemery.

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