Construction safety supplier PowerPak needed a new platform. Atwix rebuilt it from the ground up.

Atwix delivered a new store in three months, and 230% growth.

Safety comes first on construction sites in New York, and when workers run out of safety vests or lifting slings, multi-million dollar construction projects can grind to a halt. Enter PowerPak, who have become the building industry’s go-to source for safety supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE). For nearly three decades, PowerPak has served New York’s Tri-State area, building a reputation as the place to go for safety equipment in a hurry. “When a construction worker needs a product, it’s likely because their job site is going to be shut down, and they’re going to incur some serious cost,” explains Dexter Fawkes, Marketing Team Leader at PowerPak. To respond to ‘same day’ orders, PowerPak requires a robust eCommerce system. 

As soon as an online order spools out of the warehouse printer, it starts “an immediate race against the clock,” says Fawkes. “The order is picked in minutes and within an hour it’s loaded on a van and shipped out the same day, for same day delivery.” That’s no small order, because the Tri-State area is the world’s largest metropolitan region, and New York is one of its most populous cities. 

Soon PowerPak’s online store was struggling to keep up. In the Fall of 2022, PowerPak.net was running on an outdated version of Magento Commerce, and Fawkes realized they needed to take their platform to a new level. Fawkes, who reports directly to the CEO, knew he had to find a new solution partner, or risk losing business. “I was the only one involved in the project from my company,” he admits. The pressure was on.

Fawkes reached out to Adobe, which acquired Magento Commerce in 2018. They gave him a list of recommended solution partners. After Googling several names, Fawkes found one company that was not only a highly-certified, Adobe Gold Solution Partner, but also boasted an impressive portfolio on Behance. “Atwix stuck out to me,” he recalls. 

Building a future for PowerPak

Fawkes arranged a meeting with Ben Rudnick, Vice President of Digital Transformation at Atwix. “He explained the history of Atwix and how they work with Magento,” he recalls. “That was a big seller for me. The fact that Magento itself—the store we’re working on—includes hundreds of Atwix code contributions into the core functionality, makes it clear that Atwix developers are second to none.” In fact, Atwix engineers have delivered more improvements and bug fixes to the Magento platform than any other agency in the world, and are known as “the Magento Masters.” That knowledge gave Fawkes the confidence to pitch Atwix to the CEO. He explained that it was cost effective to pay the right team to do the job right—the first time. His CEO agreed.

The project started in October of 2022. After a full website audit, Atwix developers started work on the migration. They fixed the PowerPak storefront, catalog, and product pages, and upgraded the website menu and top navigation, making sure it was easy for customers to find the right product, fast.

Atwix built quick order functionality for B2B users, and performed a slew of under-the-hood code adjustments that improved the site’s speed and performance. They optimized oversized images; tweaked some SEO settings; and installed security patches—because as PowerPak knows, safety comes first.

“It blows my mind how much Atwix developers understand about Magento,” Fawkes says. “Tasks just get done ridiculously fast. If there’s an issue with checkout or something, I can send a message on a Slack channel and then I know a developer is on it in five minutes. And I have confidence it’s going to be fixed as fast as humanly possible.” Fawkes was impressed with the Atwix developers’ success rates at squashing bugs and implementing new features. “This makes it easier. When a project is done, the project is done,” he says. “Once it goes into QA, you know that 98% of the time it’s going to be launched into production with very little edits.” 

Incredible results

The migration was finished on January 6, 2023, after just three months. But the project was far from over. Atwix continued to work with PowerPak day-to-day to find new ways to increase eCommerce adoption with their client base. Atwix Founder and CEO Slava Kravchuk says: “After we launched an improved version of the website, we added more functionality, set up integrations, and constantly worked on improving the UX.” The results were spectacular, Fawkes agrees. “Over 12 months now we’ve done several customer releases, and we’ve seen our eCommerce grow 230% in the last year,” he says. “The growth is increasing every month as we proceed to work [on the site]. So it’s very encouraging.”

Now it’s even easier for PowerPak customers to order jobsite lighting, wheelbarrows, and hard hats online. And there’s no need to shut down a construction site when PowerPak can deliver urgent safety equipment within hours. Fawkes says that since the relaunch, the company’s average cost-per-order decreased by 6% and eCommerce retention soared to 89%. 

Fawkes says that superior knowledge and communication skills made Atwix the perfect partner for the project. “Even the project manager, who, in one sense, doesn’t have to be that technical, understands the core Magento functionality,” he says. “And communicating with Atwix is easy. It’s a game changer being able to talk to someone who knows what they’re doing.” 

You can’t put a price on experience, Fawkes says, adding that he learned a valuable lesson during this migration. “Cost isn’t everything,” he says. “In fact, return on investment is everything—as with a lot of business decisions.” He still lives and breathes business strategy, and says that the new platform has given him time back to devote to actual marketing, and things he’s passionate about. “Now I don’t have to spend half my day working on the website,” he says. “It’s all managed by Atwix…it looks great and it works great. I enjoy working with everyone there.”