MATERIAL BANK Reimagining the way makers choose materials
- IM Digital x Material Bank Case Study
Material Bank is a Florida-based firm that does one thing better than anybody else: they help design professionals find, choose, and use building materials. It isn’t enough for architects and designers to read about materials or look at pictures; they need to have them in hand. Material Bank gives them a comprehensive overview of materials and gets materials into their hands within hours — and provides a reclamation program so designers can return them for re-use at no additional cost. Building an operation that complex is no easy task; building the website that starts the process is another kind of task entirely. For that, Material Bank turned to IM Digital.
Services
- Commerce Strategy
- Commerce Engineering
Partners
- Adobe Commerce
- HubSpot
- Inriver
Our Approach
When the team at IM Digital looked at the problem, it became clear that Material Bank had unique problems that demanded unique solutions. They needed to provide their customers with fast, efficient tools to search and examine the materials they’d later order. IM Digital set to work on developing custom components for nearly every aspect of a Material Bank customer’s experience: site search, catalog display, and targeted display elements crafted specifically for a narrow, specialized audience of architects and designers. The IM Digital team knew they’d have to do much more than build a slick-looking website to create an experience as sophisticated as its users
The Solutions
The solutions built on some of the tools Material Bank was using and reimagined others from the ground up. Material Bank was already using Magento — so the team built a Rules Engine that dramatically expanded what it could do with customer groups and segments, promotions, and catalog rules. To reduce fraud and abuse without negatively impacting business operations, they built a “Regulator” that integrated with Made4Net to help Material Bank identify which orders require intervention — and which ones don’t. IM Digital built on the power of Springbot rebuilt product selection from the ground up as a truly immersive process, making Material Bank not only a more efficient tool for design professionals but a more effective one. IM Digital’s didn’t just change how customers use the site; they also developed improved integrations and control to improve inventory accuracy and usability at Material Bank’s robotics-driven warehouses.
From our partners
“The growth we are seeing now wouldn’t be possible without a partner like IM Digital”Peter Fain — COO, Material Bank
project summary
The work positively affected Material Bank’s operations at virtually every level: better, more bespoke customer experiences, improved protection against fraud and abuse, and more granular, intuitive ways to control and evaluate order fulfillment. Remerchandising the Material Bank site used to take hours — now, it’s been streamlined and optimized into a matter of clicks. Rather than handing off powerful but burdensome tools, the IM Digital team reduced technical debt across multiple categories, freeing Material Bank staff up to focus on the best drivers that matter most: continuing to provide the very best customer experience their industry has to offer.
