Plumbco announce their new e-commerce site, plumbco-online.co.uk

FORTIS members Plumbco are a family run independent plumbing and heating merchant, with over 25 years experience in supplying bathrooms, kitchens and all plumbing and heating goods. They have branches in Wellingborough and Northampton, enabling them to serve the heart of the UK and now, thanks to their new e-commerce site, beyond. 

Both branches offer a dedicated trade counter manned by expert staff, who are able to provide advice and insight on any plumbing and heating problem. 

They pride themselves on their attentive service and customer support, and this was one of the main reasons behind their decision to approach Blue Rock for assistance with a new e-commerce site. 

Brett Thompson, e-Commerce Manager at Plumbco, told us: 

“We know that customers work after 5pm and even though we are closed after that time they need to still be able to find prices and to see if items are in stock. An e-commerce site is so important for this, especially in current times. 

The second reason we had for needing the site is to allow us to trade further afield than Northamptonshire. We were going to open another branch last year, but when COVID struck this was put on the back burner. As a business we knew we still needed to move forward with our business, so we decided that the site was the best thing to progress. After speaking with Blue Rock and looking at all the benefits of a site it was a no brainer that in order to target other customers the best plan was a website, a website not just for trade, but for the general public to use as well.” 

Brett was surprised at how straightforward the whole process was: 

“As a business which is completely new to the world of e-commerce, we were expecting it to be an extremely bumpy ride, but in truth it has been far from it. 

The first stages of planning were great as we were offered templates which would suit our business and the needs of our customers. The Blue Rock team gave us great advice and the template we decided to go for was perfect for what we were after. 

After that was then when the hard work really started, which was to sort out images for each part number. This was a time-consuming process and trying to get the right images to fit was tricky, but with the Blue Rock support we have managed to achieve the right size images for each of the products. 

Steve (Batchelor, Commerce and Product Development Manager at Blue Rock Systems) even went above and beyond and introduced us to an editing platform, and then took time to show us how to edit images to make them look better, which was great as this helped me learn a new skill as well.”

The way Plumbco conduct business has evolved since the introduction of the new site, and they can see their growth potential on the horizon: 

“We are now working hard to make sure that when customers do order late via the website, we can come in first thing, get the order ready so when they turn up its ready and then they can be on their way to the morning job. It ends up saving us and the customer valuable time, which saves money at the end of the day. 

We started this journey as just a local plumbing and heating merchant known locally but we are now using couriers more and are teaming up with local pallet delivery companies to deliver bathrooms around the UK. We know that our end result will be as a local merchant who will be known hopefully nationwide, and we can carry on providing our great customer service, but just through a different channel!”