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2010 // B2B E-COMMERCE

NikaChem Distribution

An industrial chemical distributor moved 1,200 regulated SKUs from fax machines and Excel sheets into a self-service B2B platform — and changed how its dealers ordered forever.

NikaChem Distribution — B2B E-Commerce
Year
2010
Sector
Industrial chemical supply, Russia
Stack
Custom CMS · PHP · MySQL
Status
Decommissioned 2018
// the brief

The brief — NikaChem

NikaChem Distribution supplied solvents, reagents and industrial cleaning chemistry to manufacturers across the Urals. In 2010, every order still arrived by phone or fax, was re-keyed into Excel, and priced manually from printed tier sheets. Sales managers spent most of their day reading the same price lists down the phone, and mistakes in regulated product documentation were becoming a compliance risk.

The brief had three hard requirements. First, a catalogue that could handle wholesale pricing tiers — the same SKU at five different price points depending on dealer status and volume. Second, a managed library of MSDS safety documents, because every regulated product legally requires an up-to-date data sheet, and dealers were constantly requesting them. Third, a dealer locator so end customers could find their nearest stocking partner. All of it in Russian, on 2010-era hosting, fast enough for a factory office on a slow connection.

// what we built

What we built for NikaChem

01

Custom PHP/MySQL catalogue

A 1,200-SKU catalogue built on a hand-written CMS, with tiered wholesale pricing that reveals the correct price only after dealer login. Category logic mirrors how chemical buyers actually search: by application, concentration and packaging format.

02

MSDS document management

A structured safety-data-sheet library with version control and expiry alerts. When a supplier issued a revised sheet, the system flagged every affected product page and notified registered dealers automatically.

03

Dealer account verification

Restricted products require a verified legal entity. We built a moderation workflow where new accounts upload company registration documents and are approved by NikaChem staff before wholesale pricing or restricted SKUs unlock.

04

Dealer locator

A searchable map of 40+ stocking partners across the region, filterable by product category, feeding offline customers into NikaChem's partner network instead of competitors.

// the result

The result

+38%

Average order value within twelve months of launch, driven by volume-tier pricing being visible at the point of order rather than negotiated afterwards.

61%

Share of repeat orders placed online by year two, freeing the sales team from manual order entry for the first time in the company's history.

20 hrs/wk

Estimated sales-administration time saved each week once phone re-keying of orders and MSDS requests moved to self-service.

// results vary by project — ask us how we measured this one

“For the first time our dealers could see their own prices, their own documents, and order at midnight. The site paid for itself before the first winter.”

Commercial Director, NikaChem Distribution · name withheld under NDA — reference call available

// the platform was decommissioned in 2018 when the business pivoted to retail — screenshots preserved as delivered

// next step

Running a B2B operation on phone calls and spreadsheets?

Wholesale portals, dealer logins and integrations with the systems you already run. Tell us what slows your sales team down — we will scope it, price it and ship it.

// next case
STI Group →