Chapter 9 Freund Container: B2B empowerment through RESTful APIs

Why they won

Freund Container was a finalist for the Innovation Awards.

For B2B enablement and empowerment complexity that works seamlessly across customer and employee touchpoints.

Business stats

• Who submitted (and is quoted below): Chris Hiller, General Manager
• Year founded: 1938
• Headquartered: Lisle, Illinois
• Ecommerce vertical: B2B
• Agency used: Americaneagle.com
• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest

Business outcomes of the innovation

• +80 points increase in conversion rate
• 26.5X increase in lead generation

What they do

Freund Container & Supply has been America’s leading supplier of rigid packaging and industrial supplies since 1938. We proudly ship more in-stock containers than any other U.S. company, bar none.

We offer over 10,000 items in stock every day, with no order minimums, and unbeatable customer service.

For all customers we offer a low-price guarantee regardless of quantity: one case, one pallet or one truckload.

Take a closer look and you’ll find that we stock nearly every container type, including vials, bottles, jars, jugs, pails, drums and boxes. And we provide a huge array of industrial supplies for MRO applications.

The challenge behind the innovation

Offering a rich, full-service environment rife with innovative up-the-paradigm solutions was a significant challenge.

We spent a great deal of time researching platforms that would help bring our vision of B2B enablement to life. And, weave in an array of industry exclusive features such as dynamic custom label creation, B2B empowerment, price flexibility tools and more.

How they make it work

BigCommerce’s restful API framework provided us with myriad integration opportunities.

We fully integrated our back office with BigCommerce — everything from the item master file & attributes to pricing, orders and customer records are now completely integrated.

Our 3rd party label manufacturer was able to integrate their tool and order feed through the API as well. We partnered with several of BigCommere’s 3rd party marketplace partners, too.

Lastly, I felt as though there was a great deal of access to BigCommerce’s leadership team. They listened to our feedback regarding our struggles and even gave us a sneak peek at their development roadmap so that we understood how best to deploy our project dollars (customizations now or wait for base development).

Overall, there was a high level of partnership that made our complex B2B implementation work.

Final word

Customers have given our new site rave reviews for the improved user experience.