Case study · SinaTools
Prices that follow the market, and evidence for every supplier negotiation
SinaTools is an industrial cutting-tools distributor importing drills, taps, dies, end mills and abrasives. ShiftedLabs transformed its website into a multilingual commercial platform in Persian, English and Chinese, with automated pricing and procurement intelligence. Website prices can adjust to market movements while the team keeps full control to override them. We also built a supplier negotiation tool that combines historical prices, raw-material costs, freight and market conditions to estimate what products should reasonably cost — and to challenge price increases that aren't justified.
- Client
- SinaTools
- Sector
- Industrial tools distribution
- What we built
- Multilingual commercial website, market-responsive pricing with manual override, centralised price and price-list management, and a supplier price-evaluation tool
- Live at
- sinatools.co
The business challenge
SinaTools sells hundreds of product lines whose costs move with exchange rates, commodity prices and shipping. Every price change meant editing pages one at a time, and the published price list was often behind the website.
The buying side had the mirror-image problem. Suppliers raised prices citing rising material costs, and SinaTools had no independent way to tell whether an increase was fair or opportunistic.
The site also had to stay reachable for customers at home and suppliers abroad, after the previous one had been attacked.
What ShiftedLabs delivered
1. A multilingual commercial website. Product, size-table and guide pages in Persian and English, plus a Chinese section for suppliers, served so that local customers and international visitors each reach a fast, working copy of the site.
2. Automated, market-responsive pricing. Product prices on the website can adjust automatically as relevant market inputs move. Administrators keep full control: any price can be overridden by hand, and product prices and the downloadable price list are managed centrally so they stay consistent.
3. A supplier pricing and negotiation tool. This estimates the underlying, reasonable price of goods. It weighs:
- historical prices and trends for each product family
- raw-material and commodity prices
- freight and shipping costs
- export restrictions and supply disruption
- wider market movements and other commercial cost drivers
Give it a supplier’s previous quote and it estimates what a fair price looks like today, given how those drivers have actually moved.
How it works, in business terms
The pricing system and the negotiation tool rest on the same idea: price from evidence, not habit. On the selling side, that keeps the catalogue current without anyone chasing it. On the buying side, it turns “your prices went up 12%” into a conversation backed by numbers — which part of the increase the cost drivers explain, and which part they don’t.
The tool doesn’t track commodity prices for their own sake. Its job is to answer one commercial question: is this supplier’s proposed increase justified?
What changed for the business
-
Pricing that keeps up with the market
Website prices respond to relevant market movements automatically, instead of waiting for someone to edit pages one by one.
-
Control stays with the team
Any price can be overridden manually, and product prices and the downloadable price list are managed from one place, so they never disagree.
-
Supplier increases tested, not taken on trust
When a supplier proposes a rise, the team can check it against what the underlying costs have actually done and negotiate with evidence.
-
One platform for three audiences
Customers, international visitors and overseas suppliers each get the site in Persian, English or Chinese.
Before and after
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Prices edited product by product, often out of date | Prices adjust to market movements, with a manual override |
| Published price list lagging behind the website | Product prices and the downloadable price list managed centrally |
| Supplier increases justified by "material costs" and hard to question | An evidence-based estimate of what the goods should reasonably cost |
| A site in one language for one audience | Persian, English and Chinese for customers and suppliers |
Capabilities delivered
- Automated, market-responsive pricing
- Manual price override
- Centralised price-list management
- Procurement and cost intelligence
- Multilingual website
- Resilient hosting across regions
- Automated publishing
Related services
- Custom software development Established and growing businesses held back by tools that do not fit: a generic CRM, a pile of spreadsheets, or several SaaS products that do not talk to each other.
- Business process automation Businesses whose contact or product data goes stale, or who employ people to research, check and re-key information that exists somewhere already.
Related guides
- How to know whether a spreadsheet should become software Five signals that a business-critical spreadsheet has outgrown itself, and the ones that mean you should leave it exactly where it is.
- How to calculate ROI before investing in custom software A simple, honest method for estimating the return on a software or automation project before you commit: what to count, what people forget, and how to sanity-check the result.
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