Since its founding in 1976, Busy Bee Tools has evolved from a family-run tool shop to a nationwide Canadian retailer with nine locations, built on a legacy of high-quality tools and exceptional service. As the first Canadian importer of woodworking machinery, the company identified a crucial market gap and filled it through the entrepreneurial vision of an immigrant family business.
For President Hanif Balolia, who started working in the company warehouse at age 10—sweeping floors, picking orders, and learning every aspect of the operation—the journey from floor sweeper to company leader embodies the brand's commitment to understanding their business from the ground up. But as the company scaled over nearly five decades, the seams between its online and in-store systems began to show, creating operational friction that challenged the customer experience that defined its brand.
To solve this, Busy Bee Tools migrated to Shopify, a move that unlocked significant gains in operational efficiency and created a more unified experience for consumers across all touchpoints.
The move from BigCommerce to Shopify empowered Busy Bee Tools to:
- Slash order fulfillment time from 36 hours to as little as 4, powered by a seamless integration with the company's ERP.
- Increase its conversion rate by 20%, a lift driven by faster page load speeds and a more reliable checkout experience.
- Drive a 15% increase in Black Friday Cyber Monday sales, supported by 99.9% platform uptime during their most critical sales period.
Challenge: Bridging the online and offline divide
For years, Busy Bee Tools operated with two disconnected systems: their ERP for in-store operations and BigCommerce for their online channel. This created operational silos and an inconsistent experience for consumers who shopped both online and in their physical stores.
The technical challenges ran deep. Their ERP system, built specifically for in-house operations, contained thousands of custom rules for order fulfillment, distribution, and store operations. Integrating this complex system with BigCommerce created significant data migration challenges and slow push-pull data synchronization that impacted daily operations.
"There was a disconnect between our online and in-store customers," Hanif explains. "It wasn't easy to bring the two shopping experiences together. Additionally, data discrepancies and inventory management issues, combined with not having the right type of technology, sometimes resulted in a poor customer experience."
The company found that its BigCommerce storefront was difficult to innovate on as quickly as the business needed. Beyond the integration challenges, BigCommerce presented persistent technical issues: frequent website downtime despite paying for superior hosting, daily data syncing that took much longer than needed, and clunky inventory management that created staff frustration and extensive manual entry.
Most critically, this technological friction delayed order fulfillment. In a retail landscape where speed is everything, this was a significant roadblock to scaling the business.
When a customer placed an order for in-store pickup, the connection was slow. The speed at which we could get orders to our customers wasn't where it needed to be. And that presented an issue in today's shopping landscape, where speed and customer service are everything.
Solution: A future-proof foundation for unified commerce
Busy Bee Tools needed a platform that could not only solve its immediate challenges but also support its long-term vision for unified commerce. The decision to move to Shopify was informed by Hanif's successful experience running Age Comfort, a 100% e-commerce healthcare business he started in 2009 while working at Busy Bee. That direct-to-consumer experience gave him deep insight into e-commerce operations and fulfillment—insights that proved invaluable for Busy Bee's transformation.
The decision to choose Shopify was driven by confidence in the platform's technological investment, its robust app ecosystem, and its native point-of-sale system, which is a key part of their future roadmap. As Hanif candidly notes, "First and foremost, I'm a shareholder"—a statement that reflects his confidence in Shopify's long-term vision.
Looking at the long-term perspective of commerce, we needed to consolidate our tech stack and find software that would truly allow us to scale. The investment that Shopify puts into technology gave us that confidence.
Working with Shopify Plus Partner, Teifi Digital, Busy Bee Tools undertook a comprehensive seven-month migration. The partnership choice was strategic—Teifi's focus as a Shopify-only agency aligned with Hanif's vision for the platform's future. "We both shared a similar vision for long-term commerce," Hanif explains. "I'm banking a lot on Shopify for the future, and Teifi's Shopify-only approach showed me they were banking on the same thing."
A critical focus was the deep integration between Shopify and their ERP (transitioning to Microsoft Business Central), their central source of truth. This connection was key to unlocking the operational efficiency they needed to serve their consumers better. The team methodically migrated thousands of data points, even weighing every single product to enable more accurate shipping calculations and unlock new cost-saving initiatives through shipping aggregators.
The app ecosystem was a significant advantage. The ability to tap into other businesses that can help serve our customers even better—that was a key factor for us.
Results: A 20% conversion lift and a new standard for speed
The migration to Shopify has yielded significant and immediate results across the business. By creating a more seamless and reliable shopping experience, Busy Bee Tools has seen a 20% increase in its conversion rate and a 30% improvement in page load speed, leading to lower bounce rates.
Most critically, the deep ERP integration has transformed their operational efficiency. Order fulfillment time for in-stock items has been slashed from 24–36 hours to as little as four hours. Buy online, pick up in-store orders are now often ready within two hours—a speed that exceeds many big-box retailers.
We went from a 24 to 36-hour order fulfillment time to, in some cases, just four hours. A customer can place an order at 10 a.m. and have a tracking notification by 2 p.m. That speed is what allows you to scale.
The platform's reliability has been equally impressive. After experiencing frequent downtime with BigCommerce despite paying for superior hosting, Busy Bee Tools has achieved 99.9% uptime with Shopify. "We stopped looking at uptime metrics because it's never been an issue," Hanif notes.
The new Warehouse Management System, operating through both their ERP and Shopify, enables real-time inventory tracking across all nine locations with exceptional accuracy. Consumers can now see live inventory—for example, that 32 clamps are available at a specific store—giving them confidence to visit and purchase.
This new standard of speed and reliability was put to the test during their first peak shopping season on the new platform. The company saw a 15% increase in Black Friday Cyber Monday sales over the previous year, all while enjoying 100% uptime. The cultural impact has been equally significant: "Company culture has vastly improved," Hanif explains. "Our stores love how much faster they can fulfill orders for customers."
Building a future on a truly unified commerce platform
With Shopify as its foundation, Busy Bee Tools is now executing its vision for a truly unified commerce experience. The company has successfully consolidated its tech stack around just two core platforms—Microsoft and Shopify—driving operational efficiency and reducing total cost of ownership.
The next phase of their strategic roadmap is ambitious: expanding product offerings and private label machinery, opening more brick-and-mortar locations, and scaling e-commerce to support in-store growth. They're also expanding into new markets, including the United States, leveraging Shopify's multi-currency and international shipping capabilities.
Central to this vision is the upcoming rollout of Shopify POS to their nine retail locations, which will complete their unified commerce transformation. Beyond point-of-sale, the company is investing heavily in data-driven personalization, leveraging customer segmentation to create more targeted experiences for their diverse customer base of woodworkers, metalworkers, and power tool buyers.
"Data is king," Hanif emphasizes, and the enhanced customer insights from Shopify and Klaviyo are enabling more sophisticated marketing automation and personalized shopping experiences.
For Hanif, this transformation reflects a core business philosophy: "It's not all about revenue. Honestly, it's not. Because if you do things right, you provide a better experience. The revenue will come."
Scaling our e-commerce will support our in-store growth, and Shopify is a big part of that future. Introducing Shopify POS in our stores is what will allow us to create that truly unified customer experience where all of their transactions and dealings with us are in the palm of their hand.
