Discover how Tekton, a family-owned hand tool manufacturer, transitioned from an all-in-one eCommerce platform to a modern MACH®-based composable platform, enhancing employee satisfaction and improving the experience for its B2B and D2C customer base.
The name "Tekton" is derived from ancient Greek, referring to someone especially proficient with their hands. Today, Tekton manufactures hand tools for use in mechanical and industrial applications, primarily catering to highly skilled professional users. The company’s digital evolution has been driven in part by John and Jeff Amash, two brothers who faced the challenge of transforming the family-owned importer and distributor into a modern, digital-first hand tool manufacturer and retailer.
The company was founded in the early 1960s by Attallah Amash, a refugee from the Middle East, who started as a door-to-door salesman with a singular vision for success. After joining their father in the company in the late 2000s, John and Jeff, Tekton’s CEO and CIO, respectively, transitioned the focus from importing to design and engineering, playing a pivotal role in the company's digitization efforts and its ongoing success.
Understanding the customer: From B2B to D2C
As Jeff explains, deciding who its customer was was a critical part of the company’s evolution. In the company’s history as a pure B2B company, customers were typically distributors and retailers. However, that perspective changed when they began working with Amazon at a time when no other major hand tool companies did.
“Reading Amazon reviews set us down a path where we really came to understand the connection to the customer,” Jeff said. “It was the first time that we were seeing exactly what hand tools users were saying about our products as they were using them.” When Tekton realized they no longer had to rely solely on other companies to reach hand tool users, they considered selling directly to the users themselves to gain more of these insights. “It changed our focus. A lot,” Jeff said. “Our primary customer became the hand tool user. We went down this D2C path and became end-user-customer-obsessed.”
This focus on the hand tool user's experience and feedback directly inspired Tekton's decision to digitize its operations and pursue the direct-to-consumer (D2C) model. The company's initial experience with Amazon as a channel provided a taste of this direct connection, motivating it to fully embrace the D2C approach.
The company chose NetSuite SuiteCommerce Advanced to build the back end of its D2C site. “At the time it was really the right choice. [SuiteCommerce] was integrated with the ERP that we use: NetSuite,” Jeff said, “and it served its purpose very well for about three solid years. But as time went on, we noticed limitations in the platform that didn't allow us to do the things that we wanted to do.”
Finding flexibility with commercetools
The driver of all changes at Tekton has always been customer needs. As the company continued to face constraints from its monolithic platform, Jeff began to look at composable commerce solutions founded on MACH architecture.
If we're going to make this switch, it needs to be something that I know we can scale with over the next 10 years, regardless of growth size. I didn't want to find ourselves in three years limited again just as we're trying to expand. Those were some of the key factors I considered. During the sales process, we found commercetools to be the sweet spot. We were impressed not only by the people we worked with, but also by the system's flexibility and performance capabilities. Another significant difference is that with commercetools, unlike many monolithic platforms, we can leverage the most cutting-edge technologies available.
Tekton
“There would be so many times that I would say things like, ‘I wish we could.’ The most obvious example that I used, which was the tipping point for us, was when we wanted to offer Apple Pay on our site. And that doesn't seem like it should be a big lift, yet it was essentially impossible,” he said. The company was also feeling the tension between its customer bases. “What we were trying to do in D2C wasn't compatible with what we were trying to do with B2B,” he said. “But the platform wouldn't allow any differences.”
The small but mighty dev team of five migrated the D2C site from the old platform to commercetools in just five months. Now that they’re on the commercetools platform, Tekton can provide a different front-end experience to its customers, both D2C and B2B. “It's really allowed us to be flexible enough to manage both without having to sacrifice.” Now the D2C experience can inform the B2B customer experience in everything from expanding into mobile to live chat to flexible payment options.
Immediate benefits and resource optimization
One immediate benefit of Tekton’s migration was freeing up resources, especially on the development team, which was engaged in a constant tug-of-war between serving the B2B and D2C sides of the business. Both sites were siloed, and making updates was a zero-sum game. As a smaller company, they suffered from not being able to adapt from one site to the other, getting stuck in a never-ending linear development cycle.
After getting comfortable with the platform and falling in love with its ease-of-use, Tekton’s developers pushed for the B2B experience to be rolled over to commercetools as well, also accomplished in-house in four months. Now, with both sides of its business running on modern technologies, Tekton can deliver superior commerce experiences to all of its customers.
Another win? Leaving behind the limitations that were affecting the customer experience in unpredictable ways. Jeff recalls his pleasure at being able to tell a customer that had churned due to lack of required functionality that his issues had been heard and addressed, thanks to commercetools Platform, turning the one-time ex-customer into a long-term one. “It’s just one anecdote, but those kinds of stories [are] a great measure of success,” he said.
A major boost in employee morale
Our employees are really our biggest assets. And so making them happy with the technology that we use really lifts the whole business. For us, that was something I don't think we fully appreciated until we had seen it actually happen.
Tekton
One of the most unexpected benefits of Tekton’s move to commercetools was just how happy the change made its employees. Because they had chosen a staggered migration approach, some developers were already working on migrating the D2C platform to commercetools while the B2B platform remained on the old system. After focusing on the D2C migration, the developers found commercetools easier to use. As Jeff explained, “Our devs were eager to move the whole team to the modern tech of the new platform.” This enthusiasm to work on the commercetools platform pushed Tekton to migrate the B2B site to commercetools as well.
The resulting shift in employee sentiment underscored a crucial realization for the company.
Talented individuals are drawn to opportunities involving cutting-edge technologies. Offering such a platform as the foundation of our operations became a compelling incentive for attracting the best developers and professionals who thrive in modern frameworks. As a result, we've been able to recruit some of the top talent in the field, individuals who are enthusiastic about working with this platform.
Tekton
Tekton wanted to maintain its lean, in-house development team and be more agile when it came to meeting changing customer buying preferences, so the company started on its composable commerce journey. As a small manufacturer, it had some doubts about the perceived complexity of composable, but after learning more about the technology and allowing its developers to build a POC with the commercetools Free Trial, Tekton has been satisfied that they didn’t refuse the call to make the transition and that its B2B customers now have the options and great customer experiences of a D2C buyer.
Do we not have what it takes to do it? I would say that that was our biggest hesitation [with moving to composable]. We spent a lot of time trying to answer that question and understand it, and I'm glad that we went composable because it turned out really well. And I like to let other companies in our situation know that it isn't something where you have to be a massive company to benefit from using the most modern frameworks, the most modern technologies. Actually, in some ways, the smaller companies could benefit even more because it's something that differentiates you from a lot of companies who are around your size.
Tekton
Reflecting on the company's journey, Jeff highlights how essential it is for any business to stay adaptable and responsive to both customer needs and technological advancements. Tekton’s evolution exemplifies how a family-owned company can honor its heritage while embracing innovation to achieve sustained growth in a fast-evolving digital landscape.
To explore details about Tekton's journey with commercetools, read the Tekton Customer Story.