Southwest Valve, Inc.

Southwest Valve, Inc. is a privately owned stocking distributor of pipe, valves, fittings and flanges in Houston, Texas. For years the company sold under two names: Southwest Valve for wholesale and distribution, and Discount Valves, a brand the company had spun off as an online store for buyers who needed a few valves shipped to their door.

We started with Discount Valves in 2020, maintaining the store and handling the details that make industrial e-commerce work: tax-exempt purchasing, free ground shipping over an order threshold, freight quotes and product cut sheets. In 2021 Southwest Valve decided to bring Discount Valves back into the main brand and asked us to merge the two sites.

When we went to Caffeine, we had a basic idea about our content and marketing. Caffeine helped us turn our ideas into a website that really matched our needs. Their understanding of lead generation, sales funnels, and marketing has been paying dividends for us.

Ryan Key, Southwest Valve, Inc.

Two sites meant two sets of content, two stores of product data and two places to keep up to date. It also split the audience. A contractor comparing gate valves wants manufacturer specifications, catalogs and someone to call. A maintenance buyer wants to find the right needle valve, see the price and check out.

The merged site had to do both without either audience feeling like a guest, and it had to carry over everything the online store already did, from shipping rules and tax exemptions to payment, so the store kept selling through the switch.

One structure for two audiences

We mapped both buyer types and their tasks, then built the navigation around them: products and manufacturers for the distributor side, and a Buy Online section for the store. A new style guide, header and sticky navigation tie the two together.

Manufacturer pages

Southwest Valve is an authorized distributor for several manufacturers. Walworth, ANIX, Powell, US Valve and Orbinox each got their own page, with downloadable catalogs built on a reusable PDF resource template and embedded product videos.

A product catalog people can filter

Category pages for valves, ball and butterfly valves, needle valves, flanges and fittings, with filters and specification tables reworked so they stay readable on a phone.

The store, rebuilt inside the new site

WooCommerce with PayPal checkout, live FedEx and UPS shipping rates, a tax-exempt option for business buyers and order confirmation emails. Local pickup was added in 2023 for customers near the Houston warehouse.

Content that answers buyer questions

A Valves 101 page and an FAQ written for the questions the sales team answers every week.

A clean launch

Staging with automated deployment, cross-browser and mobile testing on real devices, DNS and SSL migration, Google Analytics and Search Console, email deliverability records, and redirects from the old Discount Valves address. We recorded training videos so the Southwest Valve team could edit manufacturer pages themselves.

• One site to maintain instead of two, with one set of product data behind both the catalog and the store.
• Distributors and online buyers each have a clear path from the first page they land on.
• The online store moved into the main site with its shipping, tax and payment rules intact, and it has kept changing with the business, from local pickup to new shipping options.
• Southwest Valve has kept us on for updates and support since launch.