A bolt ought to be an uncomplicated purchase. Specify the size, find the stock, pay the bill. Yet the buying process described by Bay Supply involved searching several websites, sending inquiries, exchanging emails, and making phone calls. The product could fit in your palm. The transaction had acquired a small bureaucracy.
- McFadyen Digital builds and connects complex commerce systems.
- Its specialty is the machinery of B2B buying: catalogs, quotes, sellers, and orders.
- Its AI work starts with product information that machines can actually use.
Bay Supply’s answer was a marketplace for the fastening industry. Its January 2022 launch announcement described quote requests that automatically filled in part specifications and reached relevant suppliers. McFadyen Digital handled development. Here was a useful definition of digital transformation: fewer people asking the same question in different inboxes.
01 / The sale behind the screen
McFadyen is a consultancy and systems integrator. A manufacturer or distributor hires it to design a commerce strategy, implement platforms, and connect the tools already running the business. Those include enterprise resource planning, product information management, and order management systems. The customer sees a storefront; the implementation team has to make prices, stock, accounts, and fulfillment agree.
The distinction matters in B2B. A buyer may need a negotiated price, an approval chain, a quantity discount, or several suppliers on one order. McFadyen’s marketplace practice covers seller onboarding, catalog ingestion, commissions, order routing, and reconciliation. Its stated starting point is the business model, before technology selection. That is a sensible order for decisions that will outlive the first website design.
- 01Find the right partStructured catalog
- 02Get a usable quotePrice + availability
- 03Route and reconcileSellers + systems
The buyers of that expertise include manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and marketplace operators. Public examples range from Zebra Technologies and TriMark to Teleflora. The company reports more than 300 clients served. That breadth gives its specialization an interesting shape: the products vary widely, while the problems of connecting commerce to operations keep recurring.
02 / The spreadsheet catches up
Building a marketplace creates another problem: understanding what it is doing. In McFadyen’s Bay Supply case study, information was scattered across internal systems, Google Analytics, Amazon Business, and eBay. Reports depended on spreadsheets. Only a third of sales were online, and management lacked a convenient way to examine the whole business.
McFadyen used Microsoft Power BI to build a Marketplace Performance Management dashboard. A working prototype took six weeks and used data Bay Supply already had. It brought together measures including sales, profit, abandoned carts, and returns, with filters for sellers, categories, and time periods.
From existing Bay Supply data to a working marketplace dashboard prototype.A specific project milestone, reported by McFadyen.
That is a particularly copyable move. Start with a question that someone must answer every week. Bring the relevant information together. Test whether the result changes a decision. A six-week prototype offers a bounded way to learn before expanding the assignment.
03 / The price of building everything
There is a revealing passage in the announcement of McFadyen’s Mirakl partnership in June 2017. Tom McFadyen described earlier custom marketplaces built on enterprise commerce platforms as projects involving “a 7-figure dollar investment” and a year or more of development. Mirakl, he argued, could provide more functionality at a fraction of that cost and in half the time.
Those were historical comparisons and a partner’s commercial claims. They still explain a strategic direction: use established marketplace software for repeatable functions, then spend implementation effort on the connections and business requirements that vary. The partnership also proposed a marketplace Center of Excellence within McFadyen.
“a 7-figure dollar investment”Tom McFadyen, describing earlier custom marketplace builds, 2017
Today, its SmartLaunch accelerators package reusable work for Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce B2B Edition, and commercetools. Revenue comes from professional services, including strategy, implementation, integration, and continued support. The appeal against a generalist agency or an internal build is accumulated experience with these particular commerce problems. Platform choice remains only part of the purchasing decision.
04 / An electrical shop, multiplied
ABB eMart makes that argument tangible. McFadyen’s account describes an Indian electrification marketplace built with Magento Commerce and Mirakl, launching with more than 6,000 ABB products. The architecture accommodated business and retail customers, vendor-managed pricing, and a path toward additional sellers and categories.
Consider the allocation of work. Commerce software supplies essential capabilities. Marketplace software handles another layer. The integrator makes the combination fit the operator. A project like this calls for expertise in product data, seller relationships, and transaction flow. A business with a small catalog and few system connections may have a much lighter implementation brief.
Delivery is also a coordination exercise. McFadyen’s careers material describes teams and gatherings across the United States, Brazil, and India. A Great Place To Work profile updated in February 2025 reported that 89% of surveyed employees considered it a great workplace. For a services business, the ability to keep people working together is part of what customers buy.
05 / The next buyer may be software
McFadyen’s current pitch adds AI-driven buying to that integration brief. Its work includes catalog enrichment, discoverability, and preparing commerce interfaces for AI tools. In a sponsored May 2026 MDM podcast, the founder discussed answer engine optimization, generative engine optimization, and agents that transact for buyers. The vocabulary has expanded. Product information remains central.
The practical implication is straightforward: an assistant needs reliable specifications, pricing, and availability to help someone purchase. Poor inputs create trouble even when the interface becomes conversational. McFadyen is positioning its existing commerce experience around that requirement, with audits and implementation services alongside its platform work.
For a prospective customer, the useful first step is to identify the expensive friction: quote turnaround, seller onboarding, fragmented reporting, or a catalog nobody can search properly. Then give that problem an owner and a measurable target. The humble bolt offers a good test. Can the buyer find it, get the right terms, and place the order without starting another email chain?