Every fastener distributor that wants online ordering has the same three choices. Here is what each one actually costs, how long it takes, and how soon you are taking orders.
| Option 1 — Build it yourself with AI | Option 2 — Enterprise e-commerce vendor | Option 3 — FastenerApp | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proven in production | Unproven on day one | Proven, but not in fasteners | $100M+ transacted, 10 years live |
| Money up front | Your time, or a developer’s, open-ended | ~$40,000 implementation | Starting at $1,000 |
| Ongoing | Whoever you hired, forever | Monthly + quarterly platform fees | $500–$1,000 / month* |
| Time to live | We spent 14 months training AI on fastener data alone | Months | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Built for fastener data | You design it from scratch | General B2B; you configure it | Built exclusively for fastener companies |
| 50,000–100,000 SKUs | Your problem to solve | Usually priced per SKU tier | Included |
| Barcode ordering | Build it | Add-on module | Scan in the app, or upload a handheld scanner file on the website |
| Orders into your ERP | Build and maintain the integration | Scoped separately, billed separately | API import available |
| Who maintains it | You | Vendor, on their release schedule | We do |
Option 2 pricing reflects what distributors report being quoted by general B2B e-commerce platforms. Ask us and we will tell you honestly when Option 2 is the better fit — there are cases where it is.
One time, for most customers. Covers catalog upload, branding, store and app configuration, and launch.
$500/mo — your branded ordering app, with barcode scanning.
$500/mo — your own website with online ordering and barcode upload — customers scan with a handheld and upload the file straight into a cart.
$1,000/mo — both together. No per-order fees, no percentage of sales.
For comparison: $500 a month plus the $1,000 setup is about $7,000 in your first year, all in. Option 2 starts around $40,000 before the first monthly invoice arrives.
*Implementation is staged by company revenue: under $5M — $1,000; $5M–$15M — $2,500; $15M–$25M — $5,000; over $25M — custom quote. Monthly pricing shown is for distributors under $5M in revenue; larger distributors are quoted on a higher monthly tier. Barcode scanning is included with a monthly scan allowance; unusually high volume is quoted separately. ERP order import, product photography, label printing, vending and VMI workflows are each scoped and quoted separately from implementation.
Your product catalog, uploaded and searchable.
Online ordering from any phone, tablet, or desktop.
Your branded app, your own ordering website, or both — whichever you take.
Barcode scanning built into the app — scan to reorder.
Barcode upload on the website — customers scan a shelf with a handheld and drop the file straight into a cart.
Customer logins with your pricing.
Product photography — the catalog goes live without pictures, and you can upload your own from day one. We are building a fastener photo library and it will be priced separately.
ERP order import by API — available, scoped and quoted separately.
Order reporting and analytics.
Invoice history and statements.
Proof of delivery.
Deeper two-way ERP write-back.
More than one hundred million dollars in fastener orders has gone through this platform. It is not a demo.
Millions of lines of code, running live in a real fastener distributorship for a decade. The bugs were found years ago.
The $700M company that acquired our distributorship still uses this code to upload barcode orders into their system.
You can, and you should hear this from us plainly: we build with AI too. We have been at it for the last 14 months, training it specifically on fastener data, on top of a codebase that has been running in a real distributorship for a decade. AI compresses the front-end work — you could stand up a storefront in a month. The storefront was never the hard part. The hard part is fastener data: units of measure, pack quantity versus each, box breaks, customer-specific price files, part cross-references, and a hundred thousand SKUs that have to stay accurate every night. That is the part that took us years, and it is the part AI does not hand you. If you want to do it yourself, you are welcome to — we will even tell you where the traps are.
Shopify and its competitors are built for a few thousand consumer SKUs sold at one price to everybody. A fastener distributor runs 50,000 to 100,000 SKUs with contract pricing that differs by customer, UOM conversions, and packaging rules a consumer cart was never built for. Different problem entirely.
Order import by API is available, but it is a separate scope and separately quoted — it is not part of the launch package. We ran The Business Edge inside our own fastener company and have been doing API integrations with it for about twenty years. Tell us which system you are on and we will tell you straight whether it connects cleanly and what it would take.
Not included on day one, and that is deliberate — waiting on photography is what keeps these projects from ever launching. Your catalog goes live without pictures, you can upload your own whenever you want, and we are building a fastener photo library that will be priced separately.
Two to four weeks, depending on how clean your item file is and what else is in the queue. Send us your inventory file and that is most of your work done.
Export your item file. We handle the upload, the configuration, the branding, and the ERP connection. Your people keep selling while we build it.
Your catalog, your customers, and your order data belong to you. There is no long-term lock-in, and we will hand your data back in a usable format.
Rob Carryl. Forty years in B2B distribution, built and sold a fastener distributorship, and wrote the requirements for this platform because he needed it himself.