Electrical and lighting distribution has a quirk that quietly wrecks ecommerce projects: the unit of measure. The same wire sells by the foot, the box, or the reel. The same lamp sells by each or by the case. Price follows UOM. Contractors buy against jobs, search by specification, and expect their contract pricing at the counter and online alike. Get the UOM logic slightly wrong and you ship wrong quantities on day one.
We build for electrical, lighting, and datacom distributors on Shopware and Adobe Commerce. These builds are B2B portals and storefronts for the B2B commerce sector. This page is about the mechanics specific to this trade – UOM, project buying, spec-driven catalogs – that a general ecommerce build will miss.
Unit of measure: the defining challenge
In electrical distribution, UOM is not a detail – it is central to pricing and fulfillment. A single SKU may be purchased in one unit and sold in several, each with its own price and break structure. Online, that means:
- UOM defined in the ERP and carried through the storefront, cart, and order without translation errors.
- Price resolved per UOM – the each price, the box price, the reel price – with quantity breaks that respect the unit.
- Clear UOM selection at the product and quick-order level, so a buyer orders a reel when they mean a reel, not 5,000 feet.
This is where careless integrations produce wrong-quantity orders in week one. The UOM conversion logic has to be exact, and it is a big part of why electrical ecommerce is an integration problem before it is a design one – see our ERP integration guide.
Project and job-based buying
Contractors do not buy for stock; they buy for jobs. An electrical distributor’s portal should reflect that:
- Job accounts and project organization – purchases grouped by project, not just by company.
- Project-based requisition lists – a bill of materials for a job the contractor reorders against as work proceeds.
- Project or bid pricing – pricing tied to a quoted job, resolved for that project’s line items.
Organizing the experience around jobs, not carts, is what makes a contractor’s online purchasing actually match how they work.
Spec-driven catalogs and search
Electrical and lighting catalogs are enormous and technical. Buyers find products by specification and by their own part numbers, not by browsing. That requires attribute- and spec-driven search, the customer-part-number cross-reference surfaced in search and quick order, and accurate technical data and spec sheets on every product – sourced from a PIM or the ERP so they stay current. Retrieval, not merchandising, is the job of search here.
Pricing, counter, and will-call
Like all distribution, electrical pricing is contract-and-multiplier by account, resolved by precedence and matched to the counter to the penny. And fulfillment is local: contractors pull from the nearest branch, so availability is branch-aware and checkout handles will-call and delivery. The counter, the outside rep, and the website all have to quote the same price for the same customer – which is why order-on-behalf-of and one shared pricing engine matter as much here as anywhere.
Who we are
Web Solutions NYC builds B2B commerce for electrical, lighting, and datacom distributors – anonymized examples include a large-catalog lighting distributor running a bidirectional integration between a modern storefront and a legacy ERP. We are a Shopware Platinum Partner and official Adobe Commerce partner, integrating with the distribution ERPs this trade runs: Epicor P21, NetSuite, Dynamics, Acumatica, and Sage.
Frequently asked questions
Unit-of-measure complexity, project-based buying, and huge attribute-driven catalogs. The same item sells by each, box, carton, or reel, and is priced accordingly; contractors buy against projects and job accounts, not one-off carts; and products are found by technical spec. Layer contract pricing and counter/will-call fulfillment on top and it is distinctly harder than retail lighting ecommerce.
With UOM defined in the ERP and enforced end to end: the product shows the sellable units, the price resolves per UOM, quantity and break logic respect it, and the order carries the right UOM into the ERP. UOM errors – selling each when the item is priced per hundred, or per box when the customer wants a reel – are the most common source of wrong-quantity orders in electrical ecommerce, so the conversion logic has to be exact.
Yes. Contractors buy against jobs, so the portal should support job accounts, project-based requisition lists, and pricing tied to a project or bid. Order history and reordering organized by project, not just by account, matches how contractors actually work and keeps their purchasing straight.
Through attribute- and spec-driven search plus the customer’s own part numbers, with spec sheets and technical data attached to each product from a PIM or the ERP. Electrical buyers search by specification and by their numbers, not by browsing categories, so retrieval-focused search and accurate technical data matter more than merchandising.
UOM, job pricing, and a huge catalog to put online? Bring us your UOM structure and pricing model and we will map it correctly. Let’s talk.