About us
The counter came first, the shop came after.
Two routes to the same goods, one warehouse behind them.
Trade counter and online shop
Text section
It started in 1974 as a hardware store on Oak Street, with one counter and one rack of screws. We added shipping in 2016, because customers out along the lake shore were already calling to ask whether we could put a parcel in the mail.
What mattered was that it stayed one warehouse. Anything the shop shows as in stock is sitting thirty meters behind the collection desk — the stock figure comes from the same system the colleague at the counter types into. That is why collection works after two hours, and why the "sorry, actually out of stock" phone call is rare here.
There are eighteen of us now: six on the shop floor, five picking, four in the office, two in accounts, one apprentice. The office is deliberately staffed by people who used to stand at the counter. Anyone assembling a site list should have held the products at least once.
What we do not do is race marketplaces on price. We earn our keep by having the goods there when they are needed, and by making sure they suit the job.
The list goes out by email in the evening, and in the morning the crates are on the pallet, labeled by trade. We sort nothing on site any more.
I asked for a helmet and got a question back about what it was for. What I ended up with was not the helmet I meant to order.
One invoice a month with our cost center on it. Sounds like nothing, saves accounts an hour a week.
Come and see us at the counter
Protective equipment ought to be tried on. Sizes and widths are out on the floor, and advice costs nothing.
How Awelior would approach this project
Wetherall Tool & Safety is invented — the way it is built is not. None of this is work delivered for a client. It is the shape we would give such a project — with the same depth, but without a client who would have to answer for it.
Where it starts
Wetherall Tool & Safety has a trade counter, a warehouse and a shipping operation. The customers are mixed: trade businesses ordering on account with a customer number, and walk-ins collecting something in the morning. A pure online shop serves the first and drives away the second — and a brochure site without prices serves nobody.
Decisions
Collection ranks equally with delivery
In-store availability, collection, shipping from our own warehouse — all three sit side by side in the range. For a firm that needs something at eight in the morning, collection matters more than a delivery time.
The basket calculates but does not sell
Changing quantities, running the total, emptying the basket — that genuinely works in this demo, because only then does it become clear whether a product page is usable. It ends explicitly at checkout and says what would happen there instead.
A sober archetype on a dense grid
No design statement, just overview: anyone comparing 40 items needs rows of equal height, visible prices and little color. This is the archetype that would also carry a technology or software business.
Deliberately left outNo account, no payment selection, no stock figure per item. Stock that does not come from the merchandise system is guesswork — and guessed availability is worse in trade supply than none at all.
What is in it
- Pages
- 5
- Content blocks
- 24
- Languages
- 4
Five pages, in all four languages. Navigation, the basket with quantities and total, the expandable questions and the range view all respond. Indicated only: product photography, directions and checkout; products and prices are invented and marked as such in the footer of every page.
How it would go on
Merchandise management
Item master, prices, quantity breaks, customer pricing and stock come from one system and not from the website. Without that link somebody maintains the same data twice.
Checkout and shipping
Payment methods, invoicing for account customers, shipping by weight, dangerous goods on certain items — and returns, which every shop underestimates.
Retail legal texts
Return policy, terms of sale, how prices and totals are shown, unit prices. In a shop these are not an appendix; they are part of the ordering flow.
Something like this for your business?
This demo took a few days. Your real site gets your content, your brand and your inquiry flow.
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