GSW Distribution

GSW Distribution imports and distributes premium spirits and wines across the Pacific Northwest — supplying retailers, bars, and restaurants in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. As a wholesale operation, their digital presence needed to work for two distinct audiences: suppliers looking for a reliable distribution partner, and dealers searching for specific products. The old site did neither well.

The catalog was the core problem. Products existed in the system but weren't browsable — filters were missing, navigation made it difficult to find anything by category, origin, or type. For a company with 30+ brand partners and hundreds of SKUs, that was a significant obstacle.

Beyond the catalog, supplier and dealer communication was mixed into one undifferentiated space. The company had no careers presence despite regularly recruiting. Product photography — sourced from brand partners — needed editing to hold a consistent visual standard across the site.

The stack was practical: Figma for design, WordPress and WooCommerce for the catalog engine, Excel as the source database for product import. Photoshop handled photo processing — cropping, color correction, and consistency across hundreds of product images.

Supplier and dealer audiences were separated into distinct sections with their own navigation logic. A careers page with an application form was added — a small feature with real operational value for a growing company. We wrote the first articles and handed content ownership to the client once the structure was in place.

The US hosting environment was more complex than expected — unfamiliar configuration, non-standard setup — but we worked through it. Total time including content: two months.