AD eCommerce Solutions Helps Fromm Electrical Launch and Grow Their Digital Platform
Company Background
Founded in 1923, Fromm Electric is a long-established, family-owned electrical distributor serving the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Fromm Electric supplies electrical products and services to the industrial, commercial construction, and residential markets. An AD Electrical U.S. division member since 1981, they are a highly engaged Member participating on the ESD US Divisional Board and in AD value-added programs including AD eCommerce Solutions.
The Challenge
In 2018, Fromm’s digital presence didn’t fully support the engagement needed with their customers. The company’s website featured very limited product information and customers could not place orders or complete payments online.
The Fromm leadership team understood the importance of a strong eCommerce offering to compete in the digital space. Fromm gathered feedback from customers and their sales team about the benefits on having categorized, attributed, and normalized product data to drive a better customer experience.
The team, however, had concerns about launching an eCommerce platform on their own. Their top concerns included the cost, return on investment, attributed product data, time needed to launch a platform, and the staffing needed to implement and maintain a site.
The process of managing and updating thousands of SKUs internally, managing and improving keywords, and consistently enhancing the presentation of products proved to be an overwhelming initiative. Fromm would need an entire team to ensure the success of an eCommerce offering for their customers.
The Solution
After conversations with AD’s eCommerce Digital Success Team, Fromm gained a comprehensive view of AD’s supplier relationships, enhanced eContent resources, digital partners, and industry knowledge about the digital needs of independent distributors which made AD an ideal partner for the initiative.
Once participating in the AD eCommerce Solution, the Fromm team gained access to the AD Member Product Information Management (PIM) with over 7 million enhanced SKUs that are normalized, standardized, and categorized based on the member driven AD Data Model. Through AD’s strategic partnerships, Fromm partnered with Unilog for their eCommerce platform. The AD preconfigured exports created value with its seamless process of updating and maintaining their eCommerce catalog on a monthly cadence.
"A small marketing team for an independent distributor is not equipped to handle an eCommerce site of our magnitude. Having AD’s comprehensive solution for Electrical product content was a big game-changer."
Michael Evanko, Vice President of Marketing & Communications, Fromm
The dedicated AD Digital Success Team was vitalin supporting Fromm with their digital strategy.They ensured the accuracy of SKUs, conducted troubleshooting for any complications, and oered best practices regarding user experience, SEO and integrations to improve their eCommerce offering. AD’s education opportunities through webinars and networking also provided valuable knowledge for the Fromm team looking to level up their digital expertise.
Results
Fromm immediately saw business efficiencies with the launch of their eCommerce site in 2018. Inside sales representatives began receiving fewer orders by phone, as those orders transitioned online, allowing the team to be more effcient in pursuing new business leads and growth opportunities with existing customers.
With their eCommerce site of 460,000 enhanced SKUs, Fromm has experienced growth over the years in site traffic, number of registered online customers and online product sales. Two years after the launch of their eCommerce site, they experienced a significant surge of 600% in sales. The impact of COVID-19 in addition to the SEO value they established through their online content contributed significantly to their remarkable sales growth. In the following year, they continued to see growth with an increase of 64% in sales.
With AD, Fromm has seen positive return on investment and quick scalability of their eCommerce oering, thanks to the partnerships, services and expertise available through AD eCommerce Solutions.
"The support from AD’s Digital Success Team, their strategic partnerships and digital platforms have helped accelerate Fromm’s digital transformation."
Michael Evanko, Vice President of Marketing & Communications, Fromm
Fromm is committed to enhancing the online customer experience and is actively exploring innovative approaches to achieve this goal. Fromm plans to implement strategies based on data analytics they collect on the behavior from their customers’ buying journey. They are exploring digital orders for in-store pickup, visibility into product availability at specific branches, and enhanced landing pages with strategic product placements. For their sales team, they are looking to implement automated email workflows and digital engagement scoring through their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to easily identify high quality leads.