The challenge
Helitechnique International is a family-run supplier of helicopter parts, engine parts and avionics near Stratford-upon-Avon, trading since 1985 with customers around the world. Its stock is the business: hundreds of thousands of part numbers, some on the shelf, some consigned, all of it changing as orders go out and surplus inventory comes in.
The company asked for a fresh identity, a website that let a buyer search that whole catalogue and see what was actually available, and a replacement for the ageing system the team ran the business on. The three jobs were really one. A parts search is only useful if the number it shows is the number in the stock room, and that meant the website and the operating system had to be designed together.
The approach
We started with discovery and requirements rather than screens: how a part comes in, how a quote is raised, where the enquiry goes, what the directors needed to see at the end of a month. That gave us one data model for both halves and a clear line between what the public could search and what only the team could change.
The identity came next: a simple two-dimensional logo that suggested rotor and machinery without a stock helicopter silhouette, then a website in the same language, clean and dark with the photography doing the work. The search was the technical centre of the project. A catalogue of that size is far beyond what a page builder’s search can hold, so the site queries the live system directly, and a visitor searching a part number gets the current inventory rather than a copy that was true last week.
What we built
- A new logo and the brand applied across the website.
- A public website with a part-number search across the full catalogue, showing live availability, with an enquiry path from every result.
- A cloud application for the team: enquiries captured from the website, client and part records, the part-ordering process, and reporting built around the figures the directors asked for.
- Migration of the data from the old system, cleaned on the way across, and training for the people who use it every day.
The details
The site is mobile-first for the buyer standing in a hangar with a phone: the search is the first thing on the page at every size, and results are readable without zooming. Behind it, the application exposes inventory to the site through one controlled interface, so nothing the team does not want public can leak into a search, and a change in stock is reflected the moment it is saved.
The outcome
The website at helitechnique.co.uk is live and the search still runs against the company’s inventory. The team runs enquiries, parts and orders from one system rather than a spread of older tools, and the directors see their reporting without anyone building it by hand.
