Knit-rite Goes Live with Five New eCommerce Sites in Record Time

Founded in 1930, Knit-Rite, Inc. is a leading designer, marketer, and manufacturer of innovative textiles that promote mobility, protection, and comfort for medical and consumer markets. The company makes compression socks and hosiery for a wide variety of needs, such as coverings for amputees and seamless products for children experiencing sensory processing differences. Knit-Rite has multiple consumer brands sold under four separate retail brands, along with a robust wholesale business, each of which requires its own ecommerce site.

Due to the planned sunsetting of Magento 1, Knit-Rite needed to migrate its five sites and chose BigCommerce as its new ecommerce platform. The ecommerce team had a few key goals for its new sites. First, the team wanted to complete the migration as quickly as possible. Second, they wanted the ability to update content quickly and easily and without the need for any coding. Finally, Knit-Rite wanted to keep its unique order grid, which lets visitors select products based on multiple attributes — size, compression level, color, and so on — from a single product details page.

OUR SOLUTION

To ensure a seamless experience for Knit-Rite’s customers, Silk leveraged the existing layout designs of the Magento 1 site, customizing the text, images, and colors to match each brand’s identity. The Silk team also successfully recreated the order grid on the BigCommerce platform so that site visitors can order multiple sizes, colors, and compression levels on the same product details page.

The Silk team recommended Knit-Rite use BundleB2B, a SaaS application that provides enterprise level B2B functionality on the BigCommerce platform, such as seamless transactions and self-service capabilities. BundleB2B allows Knit-Rite to set up corporate accounts and associate each visitor to them so that visitors only see their negotiated prices and preferred payment options when they arrive on site. To help busy purchasing agents place their orders quickly, Silk implemented BundleB2B’s Quick Order Pad, which allows users to find Knit-Rite products by name or SKU and add them directly to the cart without having to navigate throughout the site. Users can also place new orders and quickly reorder products based on past purchases.

Silk incorporated an app called Shogun, a page builder app for BigCommerce, that Knit-Rite could use to add and change banners and text easily. The Silk team also helped to create saved elements out of the customized pieces so that they can be reused by Knit-Rite in other pages or when creating a new page. This gives them the ease of drag and drop along with the flexibility to use HTML/CSS if needed.

Finally, Knit-Rite had hired a third-party to integrate its ERP system to the new BigCommerce sites that Silk was building, but shortly before the launch the company realized it didn’t have the resources to complete the migration within Knit-Rite’s timeframe. Rather than delay the launch, the Silk team took over that part of the project and completed the migration in short order.

QUICK TRANSITION NEEDED

Almost immediately after launching the new sites, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Knit-Rite needed to quickly pivot to designing, manufacturing, and marketing masks. Fortunately, updating content on the new sites is now extremely easy, which meant the Knit-Rite team was empowered to upload the new products and supporting images quickly and on their own without additional resources.