Case Study - Yardstore

Case Study: Yardstore

Yardstore is a family-run business turned global aircraft supply empire. The company has been operating out of Wichita, Kansas, since 1946 and has grown into one of the premier providers of aircraft sheet metal tools and aircraft pneumatic tool repair in the world.

Yardstore has the biggest in-stock inventory of new and surplus tools specific to aircraft sheet metal work, such as threaded drill bits, right angle drills, countersinks, sealant guns, and Dotco-style tools. And they sell these tools at discount prices. But Yardstore’s mission extends beyond selling excellent products — the company prides itself on top-notch customer service and employee satisfaction.

eCommerce makes up about 40% of the company's revenue.

The Challenge

As the top supplier of aircraft sheet metal tools and equipment, Yardstore needed a reflect its inventory quality with a beautiful, easy-to-navigate site. Yardstore.com gets roughly 70 online daily orders, and 6% of those orders are managed by the customer emailing their shopping cart.

The company wanted to improve its UX and UI, implement elastic search, and be able to manage payment rules for various B2B buyer personas. But their team was limited in what they could do with their Magento 1 instance and needed help upgrading to 2.4.4.

As part of that upgrade, the company also wanted to protect its integrations with Counterpoint (its ERP) and Avatax (for domestic tax calculations). Yardstore also needed a new way to automatically calculate duties, taxes, and other fees and avoid any customs surprises for their customers. While the Yardstore team had been using i-parcel to handle international shipments, the tool was no longer making Magento-related updates and wouldn’t be compatible with Magento 2.4.4.

THE CHALLENGE

The Solution

Yardstore entrusted IronPlane for its migration to Magento 2.4.4. As a basis for this upgrade, IronPlane used their custom Alpaca theme, which not only sped up the implementation process but also laid the groundwork for future coding efficiency and stable integrations with Yardstore’s ERP and tax solutions.

In parallel, Yardstore began working with Zonos to manage international duties and customs calculations. IronPlane worked to remove i-parcel and replace it with a Zonos integration.

In addition, IronPlane reworked Yardstore’s navigation system. Whereas most eCommerce sites have a few product categories, Yardstore has several hundred. IronPlane used visual levels of navigation as well as Elasticsearch and quick order to help customers easily find and purchase the products they are looking for.

Upgrade to Magento 2.4.4, including the use of IronPlane’s Alpaca theme

Zonos integration with Magento

Counterpoint integration with Magento

Avatax integration with Magento

B2B payment methods

Elasticsearch

Visual navigation

The Results

Enhanced site speed and design with the upgrade to Magento 2.4.4

The burden of duties and taxes are on Yardstore, rather than their customers

Streamlined domestic taxes with Avatax

Seamless integration with their ERP, making product information readily available to the customer and order information readily available to the Yardstore team

Significantly improved UX for viewing over 5,700 SKUs