Meet Metsätyö
Founded in 1946, Metsätyö is a Finnish company with deep roots in the forestry sector. What began as a supplier of equipment for traditional forestry workers has evolved into a comprehensive provider of wear-resistant steel products and equipment for forestry machine contractors, earthmoving operations, and road infrastructure maintenance.
“A lot of our customers are what we call ‘butt crack guys’ – when they bend over to work, their butt crack shows. We’re in a very traditional sector with traditional products,” explains Arto Suomela, Head of Sales at Metsätyö.
Metsätyö is leading their industry’s digital transformation by offering 24/7 online access to their extensive product catalog, enabling customers to request quotes and make purchases even during night shifts.
The Challenge: Serving Night Shift Workers in a Traditional Industry
Metsätyö faces a unique challenge: many of their infrastructure maintenance customers work during the night, especially in winter when snow clearing and road maintenance happens while cities sleep.
“A lot of infrastructure maintenance happens at night, particularly winter maintenance in the Helsinki metropolitan area and other cities. They work at night to stay out of the way when people are moving around,” says Arto Suomela.
This created a fundamental problem – their customers needed to place orders or inquire about products outside business hours, often in urgent situations.
At the same time, Metsätyö serves an industry where business has traditionally been conducted face-to-face or over the phone. They needed a solution that would bridge this gap between traditional buying habits and modern accessibility needs.
Breaking New Ground in a Conservative Industry
In an industry where digital transformation has been slow, Metsätyö made the bold decision to lead the way rather than follow.
“While it might not be absolutely necessary this year, if we look five years ahead and haven’t done anything about digital sales, we could be in a tough spot when all buyers suddenly want an online buying experience,” notes Suomela.
They recognized that although their current customer base might be traditional, new generations are entering the workforce with different expectations.
“The customer base is constantly evolving. New generations are coming in to do the work, and some have a strong desire to do things differently than previous generations,” Suomela observes.
The HeadQ Solution: 24/7 Access Through Self-Service buying
By implementing HeadQ’s B2B Shopping cart and quote cart, Metsätyö created a self-service channel that enables their customers to:
- Browse products outside business hours
- Configure basic product variations (length, thickness)
- Request quotes at any time of day or night
- Place orders when it’s convenient for them
This doesn’t replace their traditional sales approach but expands it to meet evolving customer needs.
“We’re trying to stay with the times and offer modern purchasing options. In the future, we want to offer broader possibilities for doing business. It’s not just about picking up the phone during business hours anymore,” says Suomela.
The initial implementation focused on their most straightforward products – those with limited variations that don’t require extensive technical consultation.
“Most of our products have a few variations. The variations might be product length or thickness or both. In that sense, it’s simple merchandise to sell, and we were able to build a configurator for them without too much effort,” explains Suomela.
Early Results: New Leads and Sales Without Marketing
Even though Metsätyö is still in the early stages of their digital transformation journey, they’re already seeing promising results.
“We’ve made sales through the HeadQ platform, and we’ve received several quote requests. It gives us good leads to follow up on and close the deal,” says Suomela.
What makes these results particularly impressive is that they’ve achieved them without any significant marketing effort.
“We haven’t really marketed this option yet,” Suomela notes, suggesting there’s substantial untapped potential as they begin to actively promote their new digital capabilities.
The Vision: Full Integration with Customer-Specific Pricing
Looking ahead, Metsätyö sees even greater potential for their digital commerce capabilities. Their vision includes integrating their ERP system to enable customer-specific pricing and order processing.
“One option could be to somehow link our ERP system so that customers can authenticate themselves and access their pre-agreed prices even at night, and get the ordering process started. They would immediately receive an order confirmation with the correct prices,” envisions Suomela.
This approach would maintain their ability to offer negotiated pricing – an important aspect of their business model – while adding the convenience of 24/7 access.
“It would essentially mean taking our current operating model and partially moving it online, which seems like a straightforward transition,” Suomela explains.
While they’re still at the beginning of their digital journey, Metsätyö’s partnership with HeadQ positions them as forward-thinking innovators in their industry. They’re proving that even in the most traditional sectors, there’s value in embracing digital commerce to better serve customers whenever and however they want to buy.
