AS Colour Gets Outfitted for International Growth on BigCommerce

SOLUTION

DTC and B2B on one platform.

AS Colour needed an ecommerce experience that could serve both wholesale and direct-to-consumer (DTC) customers without compromising either audience. The challenge was delivering the polished look and feel of a retail site while providing the functionality wholesale buyers expect.

"When you look at many apparel companies in the wholesale space, the websites are very much built for wholesale, and they look like it, too," shared Sharplin. "But because we have the DTC and B2B sides of the business, we really needed a website that had the look and feel of a retail site, while also providing that B2B functionality. BigCommerce is perfect in that aspect, because we can create a beautiful website, but also create customer groups, price tiers, and custom logins for business partners."

Using BigCommerce's native B2B capabilities, AS Colour created two distinct buying experiences within a single storefront. Behind a secure login, wholesale customers receive personalized pricing and account access through customer groups and price tiers, making it easier for AS Colour to manage customer relationships without the overhead of maintaining individual accounts.

"We've kind of perfected our B2B experience in the U.S. and are looking to expand some of those optimizations into our other global markets," Sharplin explained. "It's a great example of how we can customize the different experiences based on locales, but still maintain the same overall narrative, look, and feel of the brand."

That tailored experience continues through checkout.

"We've made it where B2B customers get an almost completely different buying experience than DTC customers. Because, generally speaking, B2B customers buy more products than their DTC counterparts," said Hou. "The cart layout is different, the product presentation is different, and then of course, the checkout experience is tailored to their needs, too."

BigCommerce makes global growth a breeze.

AS Colour uses BigCommerce to localize the customer experience across every region it serves while maintaining a consistent brand experience worldwide.

"While the overall look and feel of each site is the same, there are very specific back-end tweaks that we make to suit each region," Sharplin said. "It's really important to us that we can easily make changes to local pricing and currencies."

"We also love the ability to move quickly between our four stores," he continued. "Me, our ecommerce manager, and our development agency, Moustache Republic, are doing everything across our New Zealand, US, Australia, and UK sites. Whether we're updating a product description or creating a whole new product page, the ability to switch between the four sites is really seamless. We love it."

That flexible global foundation continues to support AS Colour as it expands its ecommerce operations. Most recently, the company partnered with Adyen to consolidate multiple legacy payment providers onto a single global platform, creating a more unified payment experience while giving the team a clear, unified view of transactions across its international markets.

Streamlining wholesale operations through an open ecosystem.

After building a strong foundation for its global B2B business on BigCommerce, AS Colour continued looking for opportunities to improve the wholesale customer experience. One area stood out: simplifying tax exemption management for U.S. wholesale customers.

Working with BigCommerce agency partner Cadent Commerce and technology partner Avalara, AS Colour developed a custom integration that streamlined a previously manual process while extending tax-exempt status across BigCommerce's multi-user business accounts. The solution enables wholesale customers to:

• Upload and manage tax exemption certificates online

• Maintain tax-exempt status across multiple users within the same business account

• Complete onboarding faster with less manual intervention

"The support from BigCommerce and the agency was great, and the whole thing was pretty smooth," remarked Sharplin.

The new workflow gives wholesale customers greater control over their accounts while reducing administrative work for AS Colour's finance team, making it easier to onboard new customers as the business continues to grow.