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Wheels and Wings Makes BigCommerce Their Technological Epicenter
Discover how customisable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.
213%
increase in revenue from June 2023 to July 2024
56%
increase in revenue projected from July 2024 to June 2025
60K
SKUs
If you can build it, you can find it at Wheels and Wings.
Don McCowan still remembers the first day Wheels and Wings opened its doors. “It was nine o’clock in the morning,” he recalls. “On a Saturday, July 12, 1986.” Since that day, Wheels and Wings has grown from its humble beginnings as a hobby and game shop on a busy street in Toronto, Canada, to serving model builders, miniature enthusiasts, and even the film industry.
“At first, we were just brick and mortar. We sold everything from board games to you name it,” McCowan explained. “But now we have a pretty strict ruleset. It’s got to be plastic. You have to glue it, paint it, and put it together, so we sell models, paints, glues, and everything a person would need to go with it.”
As the business grew and McCowan took over from his mom, they slowly began growing into the digital space. McCowan was a longtime player in the tech industry, so he knew his way around a database. In 2018, WheelsWingsHobbies.com was born. At first, the site only handled a fraction of the store’s overall merchandise. Now, the site sells almost 60,000 items, from kits to paint and everything in between.
CHALLENGE
Creating without compromise.
Although McCowan’s experience in tech afforded him the back-end knowledge to run their system, their customers began encountering problems that proved to be insurmountable.
“I didn’t know the first thing about ecommerce, but I knew I liked the database, so we chose XCart for all the wrong reasons,” he said. “We plateaued right below $200,000, and just couldn’t get over that because customers were having such a hard time with the site.”
Internal teams were facing challenges, too. The Wheels and Wings team was having a difficult time maximising the site’s full potential, and business was suffering because the platform was holding them back.
McCowan and his team began looking for new solutions. He knew that, along with meeting his rigorous technical tests, that their new ecommerce platform should be able to:
Create a unique site that’s easy for customers to navigate
Help facilitate their various SKUs and product categories
Continue to expand the role of ecommerce in the company’s success
“I didn’t know the first thing about ecommerce, but I knew I liked the database, so we chose XCart for all the wrong reasons.”
DON MCCOWAN, OWNER, WHEELS AND WINGS
SOLUTION
Making user experience paramount for success.
The Wheels and Wings team narrowed their platform search down to two contenders: BigCommerce and Shopify.
Shopify was too “pay as you go” for McCowan, and wasn’t able to pass his technical tests. “They basically say to you, ‘Do you want a pen? That’s $25. Do you want some paper to go with it? That’s another $15.’ You’re paying for it piece by piece, and that wasn’t going to help us get to where we need to go,” he explained.
“When people ask why I didn’t go with Shopify, I say ‘I don’t want a Swiss Army Knife that I have to pay to use. I want professionalism,’” remarked McCowan.
BigCommerce, on the other hand, proved to be exactly what he was looking for. “I went through the back and looked at the database, I looked at what was actually going on behind the scenes rather than the flash in the front, and I was really impressed,” he said.
Once McCowan and his team decided on a platform, it was time to begin building their site.
First, they had to decide on a theme. The team searched through our extensive theme library, found one they liked, and never looked back. “In less than five minutes, we had an absolutely beautiful site. Our policy now is ‘no custom code.’ I don’t ever want to have my team or my site shut down for three weeks or three months building something we can get elsewhere,” he explained.
Next, McCowan began migrating over years of data from their old system. With over 60,000 SKUs in their system, McCowan meticulously migrated each and every one, along with the store’s data — dating back to 1986.
“I used to have a lot of hair,” he joked, “but I did it so we could have access to all this and really create the best possible experience for our customers. Now that our manager is comfortable with BigCommerce, he understands why I did it and what it’s meant for our systems. It’s made a world of difference.”
This meticulous migration has allowed Wheels and Wings’ web team to manage categories, products, and SKUs with a few simple clicks, organising the site and its data in a way they never thought possible. “Our customers love it,” he said. “We get so much great feedback from them on how easy it is to find things on the site.”
And when McCowan encounters an issue, he knows that there’s an entire knowledge base at his disposal to help. “All the information you offer is great. If I just sit down and start typing something, I can see what the platform can do in seconds. It’s got so many features and possibilities that I just haven’t got time to learn it all,” he said with a laugh.
“When people ask why I didn’t go with Shopify, I say ‘I don’t want a Swiss Army Knife that I have to pay to use. I want professionalism.’”
DON MCCOWAN, OWNER, WHEELS AND WINGS
“All the information you offer is great. If I just sit down and start typing something, I can see what the platform can do in seconds.”
DON MCCOWAN, OWNER, WHEELS AND WINGS
RESULTS
A site built for growth.
After being on BigCommerce for one full month, McCowan is more than satisfied with his choice. “To run my business on BigCommerce is an absolute pleasure,” he said. “People say it’s so hard to get good technology for a good price, but BigCommerce is literally right there.”
Apart from the technology itself, McCowan says BigCommerce’s support team was the biggest bargain in the industry. Moving his site from XCart to BigCommerce meant quite a technically challenging migration, converting over from Linux. “You guys have the best service in the industry. The support you gave us during that transition was unbelievable,” he said.
“They’re actually there. There are real people that will pick up the phone and actually know what they’re talking about. They actually care, and are so fast at picking up that it’s silly,” he continued.
But the largest benefit he sees is the peace of mind he gains knowing that BigCommerce is going to work no matter what. “I don’t have to worry. I don’t have to think about how something’s going to get done or how my team is going to do something. It works exactly how it says it does,” he said.
“People say it’s so hard to get good technology for a good price, but BigCommerce is literally right there.”
DON MCCOWAN, OWNER, WHEELS AND WINGS
LOOKING AHEAD
Creating a technological epicenter for future expansion.
With BigCommerce powering the site, McCowan feels confident in the company’s ability to grow, and is taking steps toward bringing more and more of the business online.
“When we first got into ecommerce, I really didn’t want to do too much. I didn’t advertise on Google. I didn’t advertise on other sites. The guys on our team used to bug me about it like you wouldn’t believe,” he laughed. “But now we’ve opened all that up. Since we started advertising on Google, sales have skyrocketed.”
“We’re also advertising on another site called Scale Mates, which is a database for hobby kits, and we’re advertising about 60,000 SKUs on there. We have so many kits to add, so many kits to sell, but inventory is moving really quickly. We’re really happy with where things are going,” he continued.
As the business grows, McCowan knows that BigCommerce will be there to act as a stable foundation for the future. “I recently instituted a BigCommerce policy for our tech, so any new tools that we’re looking at, they have to work with BigCommerce or we won’t take it. You’ve become our technological epicenter,” he said, laughing.
“I recently instituted a BigCommerce policy for our tech, so any new tools that we’re looking at, they have to work with BigCommerce or we won’t take it. You’ve become our technological epicenter.”
DON MCCOWAN, OWNER, WHEELS AND WINGS
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