Flowstar recognised a shift in customer expectations, particularly among a younger generation that preferred minimal human interaction and online convenience. While the business had a couple of Shopify sites for certain products, these weren’t integrated with stock systems and caused issues for customers when items were out of stock, as they were’n’t showing stock numbers in real time. Most orders still came through via phone or emailed quotes, and the team was handling up to 100 written quotes per day, creating a strain on sales resources.

Additionally, while Managing Director Chris had a background in IT, there were concerns about internal buy-in from the sales team, the complexity of their product catalogue, and the amount of work required to migrate data.

Flowstar partnered with GOb2b to implement a fully integrated B2B eCommerce platform. The system connects directly to Sage 50, allowing real-time stock levels and pricing to be visible to customers without manual intervention.

Chris and the team appreciated that GOb2b’s pricing sat in a “happy middle”—more affordable than high-end enterprise platforms like Shopify, while offering much deeper B2B functionality out-of-the-box.

The developer-friendly backend (featuring tools like Bootstrap and JavaScript injection) made it easy for Flowstar’s internal team to create custom modifications without needing external help.

With guidance from GOb2b’s onboarding team, Flowstar opted to manually add products to ensure full control over complex product configurations. This process, while intensive, was ultimately manageable and rewarding.

Although only recently launched, Flowstar has already begun seeing benefits:

• Reduced admin time: Customers can now check stock and pricing themselves—cutting out time-consuming phone calls and email chains.

• Improved sales efficiency: Sales staff can now focus on complex enquiries rather than simple reorders.

• Data integrity: Integration with Sage ensures product and pricing data is always up to date.

• Customer satisfaction: Early adopters have praised the platform’s ease of use and responsiveness.

Flowstar has plans to expand usage gradually, bringing more customers onto the platform and exploring features like agent override to adopt even smoother sales processes internally.

Flowstar like the fact that when they update the price in Sage 50 they don’t have to spend lots of time doing admin and updating different websites manually, then sending customers new price lists – they’ve certainly seen the benefit of this as it’s reduced their overall admin time. They have also set up a tool checks uptime, and we’re pleased to say that they can actually see that their GOb2b site is performing equally as well as competitors like Shopify.

What advice would you give to someone considering setting up an eCommerce website?

Thank you to Chris and the team for taking the time to share your feedback on the GOb2b onboarding experience. We wish you every success with your new eCommerce website and business overall!