← Work · Website + e-commerce + business software
La Bottega del Colore · Hardware and paint shop
La Bottega del Colore: 50,000 tiles from 500 catalogues, found with a photo and sold without a warehouse. And a shop that Google puts at the top.
A hardware and paint shop that didn’t exist online. Today it sells tiles from a whole market without keeping a single one in store: one photo, and the software finds it among 50,000 items. Around it, an online shop with 35,000 products, business software that does the counter’s work, and a website that Google’s AI cites as a source.
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The client
La Bottega del Colore is a point of reference for tradespeople, decorators, carpenters, metalworkers and anyone who works with paints, tools and technical materials. It carries brands such as Arreghini, AEG, INGCO and U-Power, and its colour-mixing system is one of its most distinctive services.
The problem wasn’t the quality of the products, nor the reputation, which was already there. It was that online it didn’t exist, or almost. Anyone searching for a hardware store or a paint to be mixed found nothing pointing to the shop, and anyone who didn’t know it by word of mouth passed it by.
Tiles: 50,000 items, zero warehouse
The most important piece is the tile software. One photo is enough: the system searches for the tile across about 500 supplier catalogues, around 50,000 items, and suggests the right one. Then you order it from the website.
The Bottega keeps no tiles in the shop. The order goes to the supplier, and the tile arrives in a few days for small jobs, in a couple of weeks for large areas. The tradesman buys tiles and adhesive together, and it all arrives on site.
For a shop it means selling a range that no showroom could display, without buying or storing a single square metre of goods.
The online shop, for private customers and businesses
At login you choose whether you are a private customer or a business. Private customers go to the normal online shop. Businesses go to a B2B shop, made for people working on building sites: painters, builders, tilers, plumbers, electricians, roofers. There are 35,000 products, each with its own photo and product page, and they can also be found with AI-powered search.
The B2B side works without a warehouse. Clients create the orders; the system groups them and sends them to the Bottega’s suppliers. Those who deliver to the site receive the order as it is. The others receive a single order, deliver to the Bottega, and the next day the material leaves for the site.
Every B2B client has their own area with delivery notes, invoices and quotes, and makes their own quotes. Most clients now work this way, and the counter has less work.
The shop, inside a piece of software
Quotes, delivery notes, counter sales and invoices are done by scanning products with the reader: the line writes itself, and nothing is written by hand any more. Documents go out by themselves, by email and on WhatsApp. Stocktaking is done with the reader too: code, quantity, next.
The mark-up rules are written into the system: when an invoice arrives with a price rise, the software notices and suggests the new price. The owner decides. Every morning the «Today» screen lines up the tasks and deadlines. Private customers and businesses sit in the same CRM.
The software talks to the thermal label printer, the till and the card terminal. And from the phone you can ask the artificial intelligence for a report, or to print labels.
Being found on Google
Before all this, the shop had to be found. Building a physical shop’s online presence from scratch, without losing its identity and without inventing anything that didn’t already exist.
In a hardware store customers look for expertise before price. The website mustn’t look like a catalogue: it had to convey the same trust the shop conveys every morning, from the moment it opens at 7:30. And it had to be found by people searching on Google without knowing the name.
The website
Built from scratch, without WordPress and without templates. A page for every department, written for people who really do the work: hardware, colour mixing, building, metal, wood, power tools, equipment, workwear.
The text starts from conversations with the shop: what customers look for, the questions asked at the counter, the products that are really needed. Complete structured data, a connected and well-kept Google profile, and AI engines let in on purpose.
The results
Three months after going live, one new customer in five said they had found the shop online. For a hardware store where word of mouth had always done everything, it is a new channel.
Then came a result we didn’t expect so soon: Google’s AI Overview, the box written by artificial intelligence at the top of the results, started citing La Bottega del Colore as a source for colour mixing and hardware in the area. It is a space that can’t be bought.
And anyone looking for a paint shop in the province finds it first in the map box, ahead of the long-established paint shops of the provincial capital.
The other tools
For private customers, a materials calculator for painting, electrical and plumbing work. Rendering: you upload a photo of the room to renovate and see what it could become. Guides, from how to paint to how to change a socket. And colour recognition: from a photo, the system suggests the nearest RAL.
How it went
The website is fast, has the content people look for and speaks the way people speak in the shop. Whoever reads it understands that at the Bottega they can ask for technical advice, not just buy a tin of paint.
What used to take minutes now takes seconds. And the B2B side, all run by the software and without a warehouse, turns over hundreds of thousands of euros a year.