Scottish e-store promotes the benefits of on-line trading
With expert support from e-commerce specialists Indez, Noel Kegg & Co have transformed their company's fortunes through their on-line business Toolstop.
The company, which previously generated 90 per cent of its business through accounts with companies within a 25-mile radius of its Lanarkshire headquarters, is now supplying customers across the UK and has used its web presence to break into overseas markets. The company's turnover, which last year was a healthy £4 million, is set grow by 80% to £7m in 2009 and staffing has been boosted from 20 to 35 employees.
Highly dependent on the construction industry, they realised they
needed to break away from their traditional business model,
particularly when they were hit with a large bad debt."We had been going for nearly 45 years and were quite a traditional company," explains MD Callum Kegg. Working closely with Indez they have developed their online business dramatically over the last two years. The Indez team of web designers have worked hard to build an extremely effective on-line store, and to get Toolstop ranked highly in search engines and also on price comparison websites.
"The Toolstop website is benefiting from a massive programme of research and development that has helped INDEZ develop some unique software tools and systems to help companies trade online and to grow well ahead of other online traders" said Pete Mowforth of INDEZ. "Ecommerce is now starting to get the attention of Government and case studies such as Toolstop provide ammunition to those who want to see businesses grow rapidly and export into foreign markets. From the Scottish perspective our usual geographic handicap of selling into Europe is removed - with a few hundred more companies growing at this rate there's no reason why we cannot become the Ecommerce tiger of Europe".
Read the full story at The Scotsman