How Howard Elliott transformed wholesale buying with AI
Industry
Home Decor Wholesale
Website
WProducts
WizShop, WizOrder, AI Sales Assistant, AI Order Entry Agent, WizStudio
The Howard Elliott Collection is a well-known name in the home accents and decor industry, serving a wide base of retailers and interior designers with an expansive, design-driven catalog. As buyer expectations evolved and digital interactions became central to the wholesale buying journey, the team at Howard Elliott recognized that their existing systems were no longer supporting how their customers wanted to shop — or how their internal teams needed to operate.
They were managing a combination of legacy ecommerce tools, a separate sales app, manual order workflows, and a time-intensive product imagery process. The experience felt fragmented for customers and inefficient for teams. Howard Elliott needed a platform that could bring everything together — website, sales reps, customer support, and marketing — without sacrificing speed or flexibility.
That search ultimately led them to WizCommerce.
The challenge: Disconnected experiences and manual workflows
Before WizCommerce, Howard Elliott’s B2B website and sales tools created friction at nearly every step of the buying journey. Customers often struggled to understand the experience once they logged in, as the site looked and behaved differently. The previous site was cumbersome and didn’t have the capabilities they needed as a home accents provider. Customers weren’t shopping with the velocity they were looking for, and that was a real problem for them.
Sales reps didn’t have the tools they needed to quickly guide customers through a large assortment. On the operations side, customer support teams spent hours each day manually entering emailed and faxed orders, carefully checking pricing, addresses, and item details.
At the same time, the marketing team faced long lead times and high costs to produce product imagery. Every new collection required coordinating photography, editing cycles, and internal handoffs — slowing down go-to-market timelines.
Howard Elliott needed a modern wholesale platform that could simplify operations, improve the customer experience, and scale with their business.
How WizCommerce helped
A seamless B2B website that customers actually use
With WizShop, Howard Elliott launched a new B2B ecommerce experience designed specifically for wholesale buyers and interior designers. The transition replaced a confusing, disjointed experience with a clean, intuitive site that looked and functioned the same before and after login.
Customers now have access to rich imagery, better filters, real-time inventory visibility, and the ability to shop on their own schedule — without relying on sales reps for basic information.
As Colleen Daly, VP, explains, “In just six months, WizCommerce helped us drive around 15% growth in website orders and activate roughly 600 new customers.”
The website quickly became more than a digital catalog. It became an active sales channel that encouraged browsing, cart building, and repeat engagement.
Kai empowers sales reps with AI-driven selling tools
For the sales team, WizCommerce introduced Kai, an AI sales assistant built directly into both the website and sales workflows. Instead of relying on memory or manual searching, reps can now instantly understand customer preferences, past buying behavior, and relevant product recommendations, with AI summarisation feature.
Kai’s image search and “view similar” capabilities are especially valuable in showrooms and on the road. Sales reps can take a photo of a product — or an inspiration image from a customer — and immediately find comparable items within Howard Elliott’s catalog. This makes it easier to suggest alternatives, handle out-of-stock situations, and upsell complementary products.
The result is a sales process that feels more consultative, faster, and more confident — both for reps and for customers.
Ella automates order entry for customer support team with AI
Before using Ella, Howard Elliott’s customer service team spent nearly 4 hours every day manually entering orders received via email and fax—deciphering purchase orders, verifying customers, correcting pricing, and fixing shipping details. The process was tedious, error-prone, and took time away from serving customers.
With Ella, the team now simply forwards emailed or faxed orders to the AI Order Entry Assistant. Ella processes each order — often within 15 minutes or less — and automatically pulls it into WizCommerce just like a website order. It flags pricing discrepancies, catches address issues, and helps add new contacts directly from purchase orders. As Ella learns Howard Elliott’s ordering patterns over time, the need for manual instructions has reduced significantly — cutting order entry time from 4 hours a day to just minutes, while virtually eliminating human errors.
WizStudio transforms product imagery and speed to market
On the marketing side, WizStudio replaced a slow, expensive photography workflow with AI-powered image generation. Instead of coordinating repeated photo shoots and long editing cycles, the team can now create studio-quality lifestyle and catalog images directly from product photos.
Bree Cassidy, Marketing Coordinator adds, “WizStudio is faster, more cost-effective, and the images look like they came from a real photography studio. It’s completely changed how we bring products to market.”
This has allowed Howard Elliott to launch collections faster, maintain visual consistency across channels, and support both ecommerce and sales with high-quality imagery — without the traditional overhead.
WizCommerce is rebuilding wholesale from the
ground up, with AI at the core that helps you sell
smarter, faster.
Results
15%
600
New website customers acquired
15%
Increase in website order volume
2Hrs TAT
Buyers start building carts within 2 hours of approval
AI solved Howard Elliott’s most pressing challenges such as product discovery, recommendations, content creation, customer re-engagement, rep enablement and order entry automation. In just six months, WizCommerce’s AI capabilities transformed how the company sells, supports, and grows.
“What intrigued me most about WizCommerce was that we could see the future and grow with it. It’s added value not just for our customers, but across how we operate and market the business every day.”, concludes Brian Berk, President at Howard Elliott.
More importantly, the platform has aligned Howard Elliott’s teams around a single system—one that supports how modern wholesale businesses actually operate.
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