Every Buyer. Every Order. From One Platform.

If you sell metal, you already know the truth: no two customers buy the same way. Strategic accounts want an exclusive, contracted experience built around them. New buyers want to find you online and place orders on their own time. Longtime customers don't want anything to change but they need a way to ease into your new digital workflows. And every order type (stock, hardware, part) has to be an option for every cart.

But most tools force every buyer through the same front door. You either build for the strategic accounts and lose the long tail, or you go wide and frustrate your biggest buyers. Or, more commonly, you do both manually and cap your revenue at the capacity of your team.

Over the past few months, we've shipped four updates that, together, close that gap. Strategic accounts get an exclusive experience. Long-tail buyers get a frictionless one. Your storefront stretches beyond cut-to-length. And your fab quotes get more complete.

Here's what's new:

Give your strategic accounts an experience worthy of the contract

Contract Parts

Your biggest customers don't want to call to order something they already negotiated. They want to log in, see their parts, see their pricing, and click order.

With Contract Parts, you can now sell fabricated items to a specific customer location at locked-in contract pricing and those parts are only visible to that customer. It's an exclusive experience for your strategic accounts, built around the agreement you already have.

The bigger win? Once that contract buyer is in the portal, they see the rest of your catalog too. Contracted items get them in the door and everything else on your storefront is one click away. Strategic accounts that used to be one-line-item relationships start growing transactionally.

What this means for your business:

• Serve your most strategic accounts with their exact contract pricing, on their schedule
• Deliver an exclusive, branded experience to the customers who matter most
• Grow contract accounts transactionally as they discover the rest of your catalog

Put your full catalog online, not just the metal

Catalog Items

If you sell it, your buyers should be able to buy it online, even if it isn't a coil, plate, or bar.

Catalog Items lets you put anything on your online storefront. Hardware. Fasteners. Fencing. Gardening supplies. Specialty products that round out an order or that your buyers expect to find under one roof. If it's part of your business, it's now part of your storefront.

This matters for two reasons. First, your buyers get a better experience. They're not bouncing between your online store and an offline call to add the brackets, the hardware, or the rebar accessories. Second, your average order grows. The customer who came for plate ends up ordering everything they need in one cart.

What this means for your business:

• Reflect your full product offering online, not just the metals catalog
• Improve the buying experience by keeping every line item in one place
• Increase order size as buyers add adjacent products to the cart

‍

Don't force customers to change how they buy

Quick Buy

Not every customer wants to put their orders in online. Some have been buying from you the same way for years, by phone, by email, through a rep they trust, and they don't want that to change. They just want to receive the quote, say yes, and pay.

Quick Buy is for them. It lets buyers accept an order and pay from anywhere, with no account or login required. Open it on a phone, on a laptop, from the truck. Then just click accept, pay and you're done.

This is the update we're most excited about, because it's the one that closes the loop on every quoting capability we've built. Your team uses the Quote Builder, the Intelligent Sales Assistant, and Customer Lists to take any RFQ, whether it came in by email, phone, or while you were out on the road, and turn it into a quote inside Stella Source in minutes. Quick Buy is how that quote becomes a paid order, without ever asking the buyer to create an account.

So now Stella Source works for the customers your team has always handled offline, too:

• The customer who's been buying from you for 20 years and still calls every order in? Your rep builds the quote in Stella, sends it, and they accept and pay from anywhere.
• The buyer whose RFQ landed in email at 5pm Friday? ISA matches it to your catalog, your rep sends the quote, and the buyer pays before close of business.
• The longtime customer who'd rather not log into anything? They click the link, accept the order, and pay. No account, no setup, no behavior changes for them, just easier ordering.

Same customer. Same relationship. No more chasing checks, faxes, or PDFs to close the order.

What this means for your business:

• Serve the customers who don't want to change how they buy without sacrificing speed or visibility
• Turn every quote your team builds with Quote Builder or ISA, into a frictionless path to paid
• Eliminate the manual back-and-forth of emails and phone and follow-ups at the close

A more complete online fab offering

Secondary Operations Support, bring on the bends

Stella Source supports the primary fab operations laser, oxyfuel, plasma, waterjet, and saw in our Fabrication Sales modules for a while now. This release adds the first of our secondary operations: Bend (press brake).

Bend is the gateway to quoting real fabricated parts online, not just flat cuts. Adding it means your buyers can upload a part file, get instant pricing on a folded bracket, and place the order without your estimator touching it. More of your offering, online. More RFQs captured.

Bend is the headline, but it's joined by two other fab updates worth calling out:

• Remnant policies — configure exactly how remnants are priced and handled so your nests reflect your real material strategy.
• Margin overrides on parts — edit margins at the part level when you need them. The ultimate control to dial in pricing for high-volume jobs or your most profile customers.

Together, these give your fab team more reach online and more precision behind the scenes.

What this means for your business:

• Quote a broader range of fabricated parts online, not just primary operations
• Reflect your real material strategy with configurable remnant handling
• Dial in pricing on the jobs and customers that matter most with margin overrides

The Bigger Picture

These updates look like four different features. They're really one idea: with Stella Source you can serve every customer you have, capture the new customers you want, and handle every order type that comes through the door.

Strategic accounts get an exclusive, contracted experience. New buyers can find you online and self-serve. Longtime customers get an easier way to accept the order and pay. Your storefront sells what you actually sell, not just the metal. And your fab quotes are getting more complete, with the controls to keep them profitable.

If you've ever felt like your sales tools were forcing you to choose which customers to serve well, this release is for you.

Want to see how it works inside Stella Source?

Book A Demo with our team. Or if you're already a customer, each out to your Stella Source contact to explore the latest capabilities today.

‍