What does your company do and what is the idea behind the business?

Company R&S d.o.o. Sarajevo is one of the leading importers and distributors of: office supplies, promotional items and business gifts, office furniture, computer equipment, protective equipment and medical and cleaning products. Guided by the slogan “Makes work easier”, the concept of offering the market a service of fast, affordable and simple procurement of everything needed in the office has been fully realized. This enables the customer to practically purchase what he needs – everything in one place, and direct his remaining time and energy into activities related to his primary job. The customer can now, for the first time in BiH, come to just one place and equip the business premises with office furniture, IT and other equipment, and find a reliable partner for their regular needs for office and promotional material, business gifts for their partners, protective equipment and medical means, as well as means for cleaning objects.

How and when did you decide to start selling online (over your web shop)?

Our company has had one form of web shop since 2006. We had the first digital marketing activities aimed at promoting the web shop back in 2008.

What were the biggest challenges in realizing the same?

Historically, B2B companies have been slow to adopt eCommerce solutions. We can probably cite the complexity of linking with the ERP solution as a reason for this. It was very challenging to work on integration with ERP, but also to change the habits of customers who are used to ordering via email.

How did you solve/overcome them?

We formed a team of people from the company that works on improving the web shop. Together we eliminated many difficulties, found the right collaborators and better understood our customers.

What are you most proud of?

We already count traffic in the millions and we are extremely proud of that.

Some final message for all those who are thinking about starting an online business.

The right time to introduce or work on improving eCommerce is – yesterday. There are many challenges in the B2B world, but people’s awareness is waking up, old practices are slowly disappearing, we are adapting to global trends. I believe that many companies are confused when it comes to eCommerce, they are not even sure which digital marketing partner to choose, but it’s good to know that they don’t have to answer all the questions themselves. We need to exchange opinions, experiences, and of course, there is also an eCommerce association that can give us guidance and help us make the right choices.