Freedom Paper is a business-to-business e-commerce company that happens to sell paper. “We sell paper but I consider myself an e-commerce company because we would do the exact same things no matter what widget we’re selling,” CEO Duana Bullins says. 

The Dallas, Texas-based distributor of paper and printing supplies projects $2.9 million in B2B e-commerce this year, up 16% from $2.5 million in 2015. FreedomPaper.com attracts 5,500 monthly unique visitors, mainly from the some 4,500 U.S. companies that range in size from mom-and-pop shops to Fortune 500 companies that shop its site, Bullins says. She declines to name any of Freedom’s customers, but says its buyers come from industries including education, government and architecture. 

The online-only distributor grew over the years through maintaining a high ranking in natural search results and via paid ads on Google, as well as by testing and deploying software designed for larger customers. Bullins would attend conferences like the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition, network with the vendors displaying their wares in the IRCE exhibit hall and agree to test emerging technologies.

In return for Freedom Paper’s help testing software, vendors would offer the paper distributor a discounted price for deploying their software and grant it some say in future software features.

Bullins declines to name specific vendors she negotiated such deals with, but says Freedom Paper has tested cart abandonment, browser abandonment and email marketing software. “I’m an early adopter,” she says. “Sometimes it can be really good, and you get to have input on new features on the things that are coming forward to the forefront, as well as get a negotiated price on it. But there’s pain points a lot of times, like broken search or slow load times.” 

Nonetheless, Bullins credits adoption of these technologies for reducing Freedom Paper’s overhead cost. Just six full-time employees work at the distributor. “We’re using all these enterprise platforms as a small- and medium-sized enterprise, and that allows us to have six people and not a whole lot more,” she says. “I would rather have technology do the job than humans do it. I think you can do a lot more that way.”

During the first quarter of this year, Freedom Paper began testing price-optimization software from epaCube Inc. The software took two weeks to deploy, and now Freedom Paper plans to use the technology to offer differentiated prices to individual customers based on their industry and previous purchases. “When you’re an e-commerce company, you’re expected to publish your most competitive rates, but if you’re going to do price segmentation, it’s hard,” she says.

By optimizing prices for individual customers, the distributor projects an 11% increase in revenue this year.

FreedomPaper.com operates on SuiteCommerce Advanced e-commerce technology from NetSuite Inc. The company also uses NetSuite software for its enterprise resource planning, or ERP system, which the distributor uses to organize information on inventory, financial records and customer activity. NetSuite says its e-commerce software starts at about $1,600 per month and is adjusted upward based on the type of installation and the number of users. 

Bullins presented at the 2016 SuiteWorld conference this week in San Jose, Calif.

Sign up for a free subscription to B2BecNews, a twice-weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly business magazine Internet Retailer. Follow Nona Tepper, associate editor for B2B e-commerce, on Twitter @ntepper90.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when B2BecNews publishes new content.

Favorite