Equipment Distributor Enables B2B & B2C Commerce with Magento 2
Hanes Supply, Inc. (HSI) has been an innovator in the rigging and heavy lifting industry since its founding in 1930. Based in Buffalo, New York for over 90 years, their ingrained blue-collar work ethic and focus on the customer led them to explore opportunities to modernize their buying experience. They engaged Alpine to assist in implementing their eCommerce function in 2017.
HSI identified three main objectives for eCommerce:
- Tight integration with their ERP system (Infor Distribution SX.e)
- A streamlined B2C/B2B buying experience
- A user-friendly back end that would allow business users to manage content
Alpine recommended the Magento 2 Commerce on-prem platform due to its extensibility, native B2B functionality, and intuitive content and merchandising features for administrators.

Magento Commerce and Alpine Consulting vastly improved SEO and site search functionality metrics achieved by the previous ASP.NET platform
The Solution
The biggest challenge facing HSI in this project was a real-time integration between Magento and Infor SX.e for inventory and pricing. This was HSI's first experience launching an eCommerce website, and they benefited from Alpine's experience preparing data for cross-system communication.
Beyond the ERP integration, Alpine assisted with implementing the following value-added components:
- SLI advanced site search to control result rankings
- Cenpos for credit card processing
- Signifyd's order fraud protection extension
The work culminated in an initial launch of the B2C website which led to HSI's first online orders in the company's history. In Phase II, Alpine implemented the B2B portal that included features such as customer-specific pricing, punchout catalog integration, and online invoice management.
A driver for post-launch success can also be credited to major SEO improvements baked into Magento's platform-driven best practices.
Core Functionality
- Real-time integrations with Infor SX.e ERP
- Magento 2 Commerce B2B Module
- Punchout capabilities for B2B customers
- Ability to load/update thousands of products via import files
- Buy online / pickup in store (BOPIS)
- Content management without IT support