Over the last two years, the building sector has seen an explosive growth in online sales. Initially driven by the pandemic and product shortages, a new customer behaviour is now here to stay and the market must adapt.
Huge opportunities are available for traditional building merchants who embrace e-Commerce and meet the new expectations of their customers. The need to develop a more substantial online offering requires more than just a website. The logistical and operational considerations are different and need to be robust and scalable.
Virtualstock works with builders merchants, nationals and DIY retailers delivering solutions to the challenges when transitioning online.
Dropship offers the best option to increase sales profitability with minimal risk - while maintaining control over your brand.
You can use the Virtualstock platform as a digital supply chain toolkit to help you fix your current operations, to grow sales from an extended range, and to reduce costs from better integration with your supply chain.
With one connection, the Virtualstock platform sits between you and your suppliers, giving you all the benefits of dropship on a feature-rich platform at a highly competitive price.
The Virtualstock platform gives you realtime access to the visibility of stock availability and order status, tracking of delivery status, supplier communications and compliance reporting.
Offer more product choice across more product categories. We offer alternative products when core lines go out of stock, whilst improving customer satisfaction with better customer experience – improve NPS 1 and CLTV 2, reduce CAC 3.
Reduce WISMO 4 calls to Customer Service. Reduce cancellations due to overselling & poor customer experience 5. Improve visibility of returns process and thereby improve Return Recovery Rate 6. Scale without increasing headcount (manage more suppliers, more products & more orders with less resource)
Without disruption to legacy systems (your stocked-in Webstore orders operate as normal). The Virtualstock platform is simply added to your e-commerce operations - to manage extended range orders. Using documented APIs your ERP systems pass extended range orders to the Virtualstock platform. The Virtualstock platform passes the order to the supplier to fulfil. Supplier either manages the order manually through the Virtualstock platform user interface, or automatically through our Supplier API. Stock updates are also passed from the Virtualstock platform. The Virtualstock platform requires minimal capital outlay.
Suppliers can connect manually through the portal or by building against our Supplier APIs. We have a comprehensive list of integration and training collateral. As part of onboarding a new merchant we agree on the supplier onboarding process. The Virtualstock team can “train the trainer”, or provide a fully “white glove” supplier onboarding service. We will get your suppliers up to speed and effective quickly & efficiently.
1 Net Promoter Score (NPS)
2 Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
3 Cost of (customer) Acquisition (CAC)
4 Where Is My Order (WISMO) calls on average cost the merchant £3.50 (each)
5 Each cancellation is not just a lost order but often a lost customer
6 Where a return refunded by the merchant to the customer is also fully credited by the supplier to the merchant
We are proud to support some of the biggest names in the Building Supplies sector, as well as Consumer Retail and Healthcare:
Virtualstock is a leading UK SAAS technology company. Since 2013 we have been providing businesses with supply chain solutions around Dropship, Marketplace and Click & Collect.
OUR MISSION IS TO:
Please contact the Sales Team at Virtualstock for a demo, for pricing, or for steps to get integrated.
Virtualstock Ltd.
Work.Life
The White Building
33 Kings Road
Reading
RG1 3AR
United Kingdom.
+44 (0)118 315 0950
