How Weyco and Syndic8 built a better B2B buying experience across five brands with S8 Commerce

Weyco Group manages five footwear brands, each with its own identity and customer experience. The company serves more than 2,000 independent retail locations, which Weyco defines as owner-operated stores. There’s overlap across its brands, but each one targets a different customer and retailer mix.

Weyco had already worked with Syndic8 on product syndication for years. Syndic8 understood the footwear industry, including details like how sizes and widths should be presented and how buyers search and filter products. Syndic8 already had Weyco’s product information in its platform, which would become important when the company started looking for a better way to handle wholesale ordering.

A wholesale ordering system that had run its course

Weyco had been using a homegrown system to manage wholesale orders. Jeff Douglass, VP of Marketing at Weyco, described it as an order-entry system that had become “incredibly archaic.”

Many customers didn’t want to use it because it was difficult to navigate and check out. The system had been designed more like a CRM than an ecommerce site. Buyers needed more product information, multiple views of product photos, and an easier way to move back and forth between products.

Checking inventory could also involve trial and error, especially across the many sizes common in footwear.

Weyco went through an RFP process and got close to choosing a vendor, but pricing and timing kept the company searching. Cost mattered because many orders through the independent channel are relatively low volume. Weyco wanted to offer a full-service experience while keeping the cost of the system in line with the volume of the channel. Rising costs and inflation added to the need to run the process efficiently.

“Pricing was critical. We needed flexibility and scalability, but also a price point that made sense for us to move forward.”

Jeff Douglass, VP Marketing, Weyco

Why Weyco chose Syndic8

As Jeff talked with the team about Weyco’s search for a commerce platform, Syndic8 raised a possibility: it could build those capabilities into its own platform. Jeff saw the fit quickly.

“Syndic8 understood us, and they understood the space we operate in.”

Jeff Douglass

The existing syndication relationship gave the project a useful head start. Weyco’s product information was already in Syndic8, so the team could get products into the commerce system quickly without loading everything from scratch.

Jeff could select products into a catalog, merchandise them for a storefront, and publish them. He also pointed to the ease of making merchandising changes, including simple drag-and-drop category updates.

“Everything is times five whenever we’re talking about systems and setups,” Jeff said, referring to the five brands they manage. That made it especially valuable to have one product foundation supporting the different Weyco brands.

Building with Weyco

People from customer service, IT, sales, and marketing joined the project, explaining how Weyco worked and what each group needed. Jeff described a collaborative process where Syndic8 would suggest approaches and the teams would shape the product together, eventually resulting in the creation of S8 Commerce.

The work covered details as specific as merchandising products, checking inventory, creating orders across multiple stores, and helping retailers reorder faster.

Weyco also brought its knowledge of footwear buying into the build. The teams worked through industry-specific details such as how sizes and widths should appear and how buyers expect to search and filter.

Jeff said the finished product covered the feature list Weyco had developed during its search.

“We had a clear list of the features we needed, and Syndic8 delivered exactly what we were looking for.”

Jeff Douglass

One system supporting five different brands

Weyco markets its five brands separately, each one needing its own look and customer experience. S8 Commerce lets the company create different storefronts for each brand while using the same platform underneath.

Weyco’s marketing teams can manage the storefronts themselves, choosing the products, artwork, and catalogs they want to feature.

Jeff said getting a product from its source data to a live storefront can take only a handful of minutes. Storefront and merchandising changes can happen just as quickly.

“The ease of getting a product from nothing to live is incredibly efficient and simple.”

Jeff Douglass

For Weyco, the shared product foundation also connects two parts of the business that were already closely related. The same product information Syndic8 uses for syndication can now support the company’s wholesale storefronts.

Designing around how retailers buy

The Weyco team spent a lot of time thinking about what slows a buyer down.

Inventory visibility was one example. Footwear retailers often need to buy a style across a wide range of sizes. The new platform shows availability using a simple red, yellow, and green system, giving the buyer an immediate view of which sizes are available.

Another feature lets retailers save a common size distribution and apply it to other products. Jeff explained that buyers often follow similar size patterns when trying a new style, so saving that pattern can remove repeated work from the process.

“The whole point of this was to make it easy for the customer.”

Jeff Douglass

Retailers managing several locations can also copy an order, adjust it for another store, and check out without rebuilding it from scratch.

Jeff sees these features as part of the same goal: helping customers find what they need and place an order without spending their afternoon working through the software.

Early feedback from retailers

The company has already started hearing a clear response from customers.

Weyco piloted S8 Commerce with retailers who had experience using other ordering tools. Jeff said every one of them commented on how easy the new platform was to use.

“Every single one of them came back and said, ‘Wow, this is so simple.’”

Jeff Douglass

He has also seen some customers start ordering more often through the platform. Retailers who once preferred to call someone for an order are becoming more comfortable logging in, finding what they need, and checking out themselves.

Giving more customers access to S8 Commerce

Weyco’s next priority is getting more retailers onto S8 Commerce. Jeff sees that as a way to make ordering easier for more customers and give them another option for working with Weyco on their own schedule.

As adoption grows, Jeff also sees opportunities to use S8 Commerce beyond the independent retail channel. Weyco has international growth opportunities, and the company is interested in using the platform to support marketplaces such as Meta, TikTok, Walmart, Target, and eBay, where integrations have historically taken a lot of time and technical work.

With more retailers and more channels using S8 Commerce, analytics and automation could become even more useful. Jeff sees opportunities to help customers find products faster, surface alternatives when something isn’t available, and make it easier for buyers to get what they need.

For Weyco, the goal is to keep making the buying process easier as the platform reaches more customers and more parts of the business.

“We want to meet the customer where they are. If the only time you can get to ordering is at ten o’clock at night, we want to give you the tool to do what you need to do on your time.”

Jeff Douglass