Heaton Party is the UK's leading supplier to the independent party businesses, and was founded more than 60 years ago. We have recently launched the new website for Heaton Party to allow for the full catalogue to be displayed online and for trade customers, who own the party shops, to be able to easily order online.

Heaton Party has a really interesting history and has come along was since its founder Nonek Jacobson fled war torn Europe and arrived in Gateshead. He started out trying to raise a bit of money making carrier bags out of old cement sacks, until one day he did a wrong fold and made a paper hat instead of a bag. There was then more demand for his paper hats than there was for his carrier bags, and the business boomed from there. The Heaton Party Company is now a leading one stop shop for all party supplies with a buying office in China and European distribution.

When Andrew Bishop, the MD of Heaton Party, came to Bronco he needed a solution for his trade customers to be able to buy online and for only authorised account customers to be able to fully use the site. He needed the site to be easy to navigate, easy to use and well designed with a party theme. The site is a Business-to-Business site so needed to be straight forward and professional since when the party shops are looking to restock they just need to be able to place their order efficiently.

The site is built on a conventional ecommerce system to allow for the nearly 4000 products to be added with a title, image, description, pricing and availability to the relevant category and sub category. The ecommerce system then needed a user login area that would actually hide most of the product page and the "buy" feature until the visitor was logged in. Once the customer has an account and is logged in they can create baskets, wish lists, see order history and merge baskets. The customer accounts can also be set to pay by credit card or by credit account depending on their size and volume ordered. The customer orders can be handled efficiently in the administrative backend, as well as having the ability for uploading stock files and reporting sales details.

The site also makes use of key features such as a system so that Special Offers can be created as well as Popular items being shown. The Search function on the site makes it really easy to find what you are looking for by displaying relevant product and categories. The site also has a Countdown Calendar so that customers will never forget that important occasion and have plenty of time to get their preorders in. Did you know it is only 137 days until Christmas and 82 days until Halloween?