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Case study

Think Timber

Think Timber supplies staircase components to the trade from its base in Staffordshire. Its customers range from volume manufacturers to small joinery firms, and they do not all buy the same way.

The Think Timber home page, headed Thinking differently, on a laptop on a round oak plinth with a timber staircase behind

About Think Timber

Think Timber sells to businesses rather than the public, and that shapes what its website has to do. A trade customer is not browsing. They know what they need, they buy it regularly, and they expect the site to know who they are.

Think Timber’s home page introducing the business as specialist suppliers of timber and staircase components, beside a photo of a forklift moving stock in the yard

The challenge

Think Timber needed a website that worked the way the business does. Trade customers buy on account rather than off a shelf, and a standard online shop has no concept of that. Every order that could not be placed properly online became a phone call instead, which was slower for the customer and more work for the team.

The team also needed somewhere of their own to work, separate from the public site.

And in a market that moves with timber prices, currency and housebuilding, keeping on top of what was changing was a job nobody had time for. The information is public, but it is scattered across sources and none of it is written for a timber business.

What we built

A trade store. Customers log in to an account that reflects how they buy, and Think Timber manage the account types themselves as the business changes. An order now arrives complete, from a customer the site already recognises, rather than starting as a phone call and being written up afterwards.

A private staff area. A place for the team to work, with access that matches the job. The people who need to get something done can, and the people who only need to look are not handed the ability to change things.

A daily industry brief. An AI tool that reads the market every morning and tells Think Timber what has moved and what it means for them. A generic market summary would not have been worth reading. This one is built around what actually moves a timber business, and it has been improved continuously since launch rather than shipped once and left.

Think Timber’s Industry Insights page, with live figures for materials, logistics, currency, the UK market and building data above an AI-generated Timber Rundown of what has moved

The results

Trade customers order online instead of by phone, on a site that treats them as the account they are rather than as a first-time visitor.

Think Timber’s product range, with a SKU search and filters by category and material beside a grid of staircase components such as treads, balusters and newel caps

The team has one place to work from, and access no longer has to be all or nothing.

And the business starts each day already briefed on its own market, rather than finding out later what had moved.

After launch

Think Timber’s site is hosted, secured, updated and backed up by Wrev, with development included in their subscription. The trade store came first, the staff area after it, and the daily brief after that.

That is how it tends to go. The site is looked after every day, and when the business is ready for the next piece, it gets built on a site that is already in good hands.

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