In this month’s Client Spotlight we spoke with Austin Lachlan from Motor Spirit. Learn about their work while seeing the success of our collaboration in building their website.
Tell Us About Your Organisation and What It Strives For?
Motor spirit is a company that, in short, sells anything liquid or semi-liquid that goes into anything interesting. By this I mean, we sell engine oils, hydraulic fluids, sustainable fuel and fuel additives for vintage and classic cars, bikes and aeroplanes. We can usually cater to any vehicle from the vintage and veteran stuff, all the way up to some modern cars and bikes. Although, most of the bread and butter of what we stock caters to post war classic cars. Most things most vehicle needs though, we can do – and what we can’t we know how to find.
Besides serving our customers, we try to make the industry as transparent as possible for them, because it is not straight forward. There are lots of technical specs that go onto labels of these products and matching the right chemicals to the right metals in these systems can be a challenge. These engines having evolved over a hundred plus years so not all oil is good in any engine. Not all chemicals are able to mix with all metals. These things aren’t easy to recognise, and if it’s not your job to know, it’s not obvious what does and doesn’t work.
Motor Spirit was formerly known as Classic Oils, but we decided to rebrand. This came at the time when we started to get into fuels, and we were supplying GT3 racing car teams with racing fuel. We felt that the name Classic Oils didn’t represent this work because we were putting modern fuel into modern cars, so we felt the need to rebrand. Originally, when petrol was sold at chemists it was called motor spirit, so we were inspired by this. We feel this new name reflects us being a friendly organisation that has the motoring spirit, and this is the message we want to get across.
What Is Your Role at Your Organisation and What do You Enjoy Most About It?
We are a small company here at Motor Spirit so me and my co-worker Emily are in the office everyday packing orders, answering the phones and speaking to people face to face. Those are the 3 main ways we deal customers on a regular basis. A typical day in my roles is basically getting web orders out of the door and dealing with the other specialists on-site. In this work you do get a lot of people with amazing vintage cars with handbooks from the 30’s come onsite. The stuff they need is either no longer made or is available under a different label and they don’t know where to find it, so we help them to understand how it all works now and what products they need.
What Challenge Did You Face and Want Framework Digital to Help You With?
Our previous supplier didn’t really provide us with a website that worked the way we needed it to. A lot of customers had complained about the navigation. The products we sell in general are not easy to navigate in terms of what the categories are. It’s not like a clothes shop where every category applies to every product. There’s lots of ways you can look for the products, which isn’t unique to the industry we are in, but something that isn’t common in most websites. Framework have completed our site and have been so helpful in recreating the website to feel familiar and have designed it so that it’s easy to navigate and use rather than how it was before.
Can You Tell us Something That Happened During The Project You Weren’t Expecting?
It’s not that it wasn’t expected, but it’s how Framework built the site. Speaking to Tomas in terms of streamlining everything from a user’s point of view in the back end was something we hadn’t really considered. For example, with processes like printing invoices, we made it far more difficult than it needed to be. We always got the job done, but it was a roundabout way of doing it which took longer. Obviously, we don’t build websites, so we didn’t know what the best options were when streamlining business processes through a website. Having an expert, like Tomas, giving us options to solve these problems was great. For example, with the invoice printing example, it took around a 6-step process to print the invoices and now it is much quicker. It’s streamlining small details like this, that has made the site as an owner far, far easier than before and it actually makes you want to do these tasks because they aren’t difficult and longwinded. Having these conversations with Tomas made us realise the importance of streamlining things from our point of view, which was helpful.
If You Were to Recommend Framework Digital to Someone, What Would You Say?
We certainly recommend Framework wherever we can. Guy, our Managing Director has known Tomas for a long time, and knows Tomas to be ultimately professional, relentlessly committed to problem solving and efficient with how he works. It relates back to what I was saying about how the site it built in an optimal way. There’s no faff, the job is done efficiently and quickly. Tomas and everyone at Framework are really approachable in terms of us coming forward with any issues or changes we wanted to make. We never felt like a burden by coming forward with these extra tasks, we felt listened to. Tomas is very good at understanding these issues and finding us solutions, so the whole process for us was very enjoyable.
Thank you to Austin for participating in our Client Spotlight! If you would like to get involved in our Client Spotlight next month, email amy@frameworkdigital.com
