Identical products.
A Milwaukee drill is the same drill everywhere. There is no product differentiation to lean on.
CASE STUDY · SPECIALTY RETAIL · TOOLS
From zero online sales to more than half of total revenue
More than eleven years of partnership with Federated Tool, London, Ontario. The right platform from day one, and still the right one today. A client who trusted the process.
Where it started
In 2015, an employee at Federated Tool reached out. The store had been a fixture in London, Ontario for decades. A second-generation business with more than 60 years of tool expertise and a loyal base of tradespeople and shops.
Their ask was simple: they wanted a new website. The static site had run its course.
We proposed something else. Not a new website, but an online store. Then we told them the part nobody wants to hear: having a site means nothing if no one is marketing the products on it.
They were starting from nothing. No online sales. No ecommerce infrastructure. No experience with the channel, and nobody in-house to build it.
We taught them nearly all of it. The vocabulary, the mechanics, the trade-offs, how to read the numbers. They could have said no. Instead they decided to learn alongside us.
The market they were entering
The difficulty of this category is worth stating plainly, because it is what makes the result meaningful.
Federated Tool sells premium tools: DEWALT, Makita, Milwaukee, Bosch, Festool, Fein, Knipex, Bessey, Jet, King Canada, and more than 70 manufacturers in total. Power and cordless tools, air tools, metalworking machinery, abrasives, PPE, measuring instruments.
Competitors with unlimited budgets.
Amazon, Home Depot, Lowe’s, the large industrial distributors, and increasingly the manufacturers themselves selling direct.
Prices governed by the brands.
Minimum advertised price policies remove price as a lever.
Thin margins.
No room for error on cost of acquisition.
In that environment, the only defensible position is catalogue depth, genuine expertise, and precise execution on high-intent channels.
What we did
01
2015-2016: launch.
First online store, built on BigCommerce. We recommended the platform that was right at the time, and it is still the right one today. Eleven years on, no platform change has ever been necessary.
02
The early years: learning to walk.
We started carefully, with text ads. Sales grew from the outset, and they have never stopped growing since. In parallel, we built the catalogue deep. Thousands of SKUs, structured to be found.
03
2018: the turning point.
The growth was already there, but 2018 is when the slope of the curve genuinely changed. Google Shopping. In a category where buyers search for a specific model number, Shopping puts the right product in front of the right intent at the right moment.
But Shopping only works when the data feed is clean. We have cleaned and restructured that feed repeatedly over the years. It is continuous, invisible work, and precisely where most merchants quietly lose their return.
04
SEO and the long-tail catalogue.
Catalogue depth became a search asset. Thousands of product pages answering precise queries, each one a buyer who knows exactly what they want.
05
Eleven years of continuous evolution.
Only two redesigns since launch. The original design was contemporary and aged well; the second was two years ago. In between, we evolved the site alongside every platform change. Substantial work, never spectacular, that protected the asset instead of discarding it.
What actually made the difference
Google Shopping was the lever. But it is not what explains the result. The explanation is that Federated Tool never told us what to do.
They hired us as specialists and treated us as such. They handed ecommerce strategy to our team and focused on what they do better than anyone: buying the right merchandise, managing inventory, shipping, and standing behind the sale.
That division of labour is the reason for the result. Every decision could be made on data rather than preference. Every test could run to completion. No energy was spent defending recommendations. They trusted the process, and eleven years later they still do.
The results
Online has gone from zero to a six-figure monthly volume.
Since 2024, the online channel accounts for more than half of total company revenue. It has surpassed the physical store that has been operating for over sixty years.
Federated Tool is now a leading Canadian ecommerce destination for premium tools.
IN THEIR WORDS
“We’re tool people, not marketing people. When we started with Christian’s team we knew nothing about selling online. We just knew we couldn’t afford to ignore it. They taught us all of it. The best decision we made was letting them do their job. They handle the online side, we handle the products and the customers. Eleven years later, we sell more online than we do in the store.”
What this account proves
Duration is the proof.
Eleven unbroken years with a client who measures return. No vendor lasts eleven years with a retailer who tracks their numbers.
Our clients grow with us.
Our agency is built on long-term relationships, not one-off engagements. That is what makes us profitable and durable, and it is what lets us invest in our clients’ growth over timelines nobody else funds.
We don’t sell rebuilds.
Zero replatforming. Two redesigns in eleven years. We grew an asset rather than replacing it.
A full team, on subscription.
In a typical month this account draws on strategic direction, account management, design, and Google Shopping feed management. The client has never had to hire an ecommerce team, or manage one.