Overview
GWS Connect is a wholesale brokerage connecting retailers, marketplace sellers, and manufacturers with verified suppliers of closeout and overstock inventory. CS2 built the public-facing site and the membership application layer — buyer and supplier authentication, deal feeds, demo-booking flows, and content structure that supports a managed-transaction business model.
The challenge
What the business needed
GWS Connect is not a storefront — it is a gated marketplace. Prospects have to be qualified before they see pricing or inventory, suppliers need a different onboarding path than buyers, and every flow has to reinforce trust (escrow, verification, managed logistics) because closeout wholesale is a trust-heavy category. A generic template couldn't handle two audiences, two login paths, and a demo-book-apply conversion funnel on the same marketing site.
The build
What CS2 shipped
CS2 delivered a custom Next.js site with separate buyer and supplier login portals, an "Apply Now" + "Book a Demo" dual-CTA pattern, a /deals feed for gated inventory browsing, and a newsletter capture for prospects not ready to apply. The information architecture walks cold traffic through solutions, how-it-works, and FAQs before asking for the application — appropriate for a high-consideration B2B offer. The whole site is statically exported and served from AWS S3 + CloudFront, so page speed stays fast globally despite the content weight.
Highlights
What's on the site today
- Separate buyer and supplier authentication paths
- Gated /deals feed for member-only inventory
- "Apply Now" and "Book a Demo" dual conversion funnel
- Newsletter capture for top-of-funnel leads
- Statically exported, served globally from CloudFront
Tech stack
What it's built on
- Next.js (static export)
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- AWS S3 + CloudFront hosting
- Two-audience auth (buyer / supplier portals)
- Demo + application intake forms
Outcome
How it operates today
GWS Connect now has a credibility-first public site that qualifies prospects before the sales team ever sees them. Buyer and supplier paths are segmented from the first click, and the site is fast enough to support paid acquisition without Core Web Vitals penalties. The platform sits between two sides of the closeout / overstock wholesale market — retailers and marketplace sellers looking for discounted inventory, and manufacturers or distributors trying to liquidate it — with verification, managed-transaction trust signals, and gated access baked into the funnel because closeout wholesale is a category where trust wins or loses the deal.
What this proves
How CS2 ships a two-audience B2B marketplace site — with gated access and segmented auth — on the same stack that serves a brochure site, without the platform tax of a SaaS marketplace builder.