Online Metals: Trailblazing a slick consumer-grade B2B e-commerce and marketplace experience for cut-on-demand metals and plastics
Explore Online Metals’ journey with SAP
When United States–based e-commerce store Online Metals sought to create a consumer-grade buying experience for complex B2B products, it chose the SAP Commerce Cloud solution. It also integrated the SAP Commerce Marketplace Management application by Mirakl and the SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement platform, extending and transforming its online capabilities.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Mill products | Seattle, Washington | >100 employees |
growth in revenue over three years.
increase in profit over three years.
sellers onboarded to its online marketplace in one year.
President, Online Metals
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Mill products | Seattle, Washington | >100 employees |
growth in revenue over three years.
increase in profit over three years.
sellers onboarded to its online marketplace in one year.
President, Online Metals
Better serving customers by transforming B2B commerce
Part of thyssenkrupp Materials NA Inc., Online Metals is the world’s leading e-commerce metal and plastics supplier. The company specializes in raw materials such as alloy steel, brass, copper, nickel, titanium, and zinc, offering custom cut-to-size and small- to medium-quantity orders, shipped direct to any location.
Founded in a garage in Seattle, Washington, in 1998 and acquired by thyssenkrupp AG in 2007, Online Metals operates seven facilities across the United States and offers 70,000 products. The company serves a wide customer base that ranges from private individuals to multinational corporations and from small schools to massive government agencies, providing materials for projects as diverse as furniture repair and spacecraft construction.
Intent on bolstering its online capabilities and presence, Online Metals wanted to sell customized and manufactured material on demand through a consumer-grade digital experience. But its legacy e-commerce environment lacked the capabilities to handle the demand and frequency of the customizations that its customers required.
Forging innovation in metals and plastics e-commerce
To delight customers with a consumer-grade buying experience for complex B2B purchases, Online Metals invested in the SAP Commerce Cloud solution, transforming the company from a materials retailer to a materials-as-a-service provider. This move allowed the company to offer customers access to material, no matter the quantity or material size, and apply value on top, helping it go further to meet the needs of its customers.
Greg Raece, president at Online Metals, explains how this works: “Our customers can select not just a material but a specific type of material, custom cut to their chosen tolerance. And it’s delivered to them using their preferred freight options. We even offer commercial 30-day payment terms to help businesses finance their purchases. This helps us provide far more value than simply putting the metal in a tube and shipping it out.”
Online Metals chose to expand on the e-commerce foundation by launching its own marketplace. It realized this aim by integrating the SAP Commerce Marketplace Management application by Mirakl, creating a novel metals and plastics catalog marketplace, and onboarding over 50 sellers. The company also adopted the SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement platform to help it deliver personalized, real-time engagements at scale. Using the integrated marketing solution allows the company to better understand its customers and provide marketing messages that resonate with them.
President, Online Metals
Enriching customers’ experience with a data-driven e-commerce ecosystem
Since implementing SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Commerce Marketplace Management by Mirakl, Online Metals has evolved its e-commerce capabilities and is now selling products that were traditionally difficult to order in small quantities.
Raece says that implementing SAP Commerce Cloud has revolutionized the business. “In a typical e-commerce experience, when customers are browsing, our material selector enables them to quickly query our entire product catalog and view the exact material that meets their alloy, shape, and size requirements. That is revolutionary in our industry.”
And thanks to the flexibility offered by SAP Commerce Cloud, Online Metals has also been able to expand into new product categories, such as rubber sheeting and neoprene.
Also supporting the consumer-grade B2B experience, combining SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement allows Online Metals to display meaningful recommendations and information to customers when it’s most relevant to them. Raece adds, “Capturing browsing and ordering behavior and other information from customers that they have chosen to share allows us to better connect with them. We can create targeted marketing campaigns around geographic location, industry segment, and products they have purchased or are interested in, to better meet their needs and support sales conversions.”
With the solutions, the company’s frontline employees can also assist customers at the shopping cart level by answering their questions and generating quotes. These quotes can then be used by the customer to finalize their purchase on the e-commerce website.
Online Metals has also helped some of its sellers create digital catalogs so that they can sell direct to the consumer. As Online Metals works with many sellers that are family-owned businesses, this move means customers are now gaining access to products that were previously inaccessible to them.
Raece says that the launch of its e-commerce website and marketplace offerings represents a significant evolution milestone for the business, with its revenue doubling and its profits tripling during this time.
President, Online Metals