Navigable online catalog for Sangalo Fijaciones: from price list to 16 families

Sangalo Fijaciones is a fastener and fixing hardware distributor selling to hardware stores and companies through a sales rep network. By late 2018 it still ran a static 2011 site that did not show its products.

In this trade customers search by exact size, so a catalog you cannot browse by family, size, thread and finish does not save anyone a call: it generates one.

And the real catalog existed, just in a format nobody outside the company can read.

• A price list, not a catalog: thousands of items exported from the management system, with internal codes.
• No photos or listings: nothing to visually tell one item from a similar one.
• Load on the sales team: every size question ended in a call, and every mix up in an order error.

For a distributor with thousands of similar items, that is not an annoyance: it is the cost of operating.

We turned the technical price list into a catalog navigable by family and product, with photos and a manageable store.

The work started from the real catalog exported from the management system, not from a selection.

The catalog, reorganized for searching

• Around 16 families: bolts, nuts, lag screws, washers, iron screws, needle point, drill point, Parker, Allen, threaded rods, bronze, PY fixings, studs and rivets.
• Around 52 illustrated product listings, with retouched images.
• Around 200 store listings with size variants, imported from a catalog of some 2,800 items.

The cross reference with the management system

• Import cross referencing the price list and internal system codes, so the published catalog is the real one.
• Manageable store, so maintenance does not depend on the vendor.

The institutional side, and what came after

• Four sections: Home, About Us, Products and Contact, with the logo redrawn in horizontal and vertical versions.
• In 2020 an institutional redesign proposal with home, family, specific family and product templates.
• Catalog loading sheet built with the client, so expansion belongs to the business.

Architecture and technology

• Site and store on the platform chosen by the client, with an ecommerce plan.
• Catalog imported from the management system export, with size variants.

Learn more about ecommerce development and software development.

The catalog stopped being an internal spreadsheet and became something a hardware store owner can browse alone.

Starting point

• Static 2011 site with no products published.
• Catalog available only as a price list exported from the management system.
• Size questions answered by the sales team, one at a time.

Results

• Catalog of some 2,800 items reorganized into around 16 navigable families.
• Around 200 store listings with size variants and around 52 illustrated listings.
• Store live since November 2018, with four institutional sections and a redrawn logo.
• Redesign proposal with four page templates, in 2020.

Strategic impact

• A catalog ordered by size saves the sales team calls and the order errors.
• The loading sheet built with the client leaves catalog expansion in their hands.