Speed Meets Flexibility: How OMG Helps Helm Launch Online Stores Faster—With Confidence

About Helm

The Challenge: Building Online Stores Quickly Without Sacrificing Functionality

With any business, speed is essential. When operations are faster, businesses can serve more customers, pursue new sales opportunities, and spend more time servicing technical customer requests. But without the right tools, moving quickly isn’t always an option.

When Helm was vetting online store providers, they agreed they needed something that was a more lightweight solution compared to Magento, but one that was more flexible and customizable than Shopify. More than that, they required a tool that was cost-competitive, and one that could quickly provide their customers with an online store without requiring a lot of manual work or detailed customizations often required when using generic eCommerce platforms not built for selling branded merchandise.

OMG Online Stores are the right choice for branded merchandise businesses because they offer more flexibility, faster setup, and a broader range of store types tailored for distributors and promotional product sellers. Unlike competitors that focus on narrow niches, OMG supports everything from quick-turn Pop-up and Redemption Stores to fully customized Company Stores with advanced features like single sign-on (SSO) and user permissions. Anyone can launch a store in minutes—no IT help needed—while still delivering a polished, retail-quality experience. OMG offers unmatched scalability and configurability from a single platform built for real-world promotional sales.

All of these features, functions, and benefits led Helm to select OMG as their global provider of online stores.

The Solution: Online Stores with Speed and Flexibility

Before using OMG, building online stores for Helm’s customer base was a very manual process that could take hours per store. “If I was building a store in ProfitMaker and it was five items, it could take hours and hours to build that store We’d have to go out to the supplier website, bring in the item details, use coding, add line breaks and page breaks: each item had to be done by hand and it was a nightmare,” said Charles Timber, Program Director at Helm.

But since transitioning to OMG stores, Helm is building stores for their customers faster than ever before. “When we began using OMG I got really excited, I can’t believe that I spent all of this time building stores in ProfitMaker. Now someone comes and says they need a store with 12 items, and in an hour it’s done.”

Key Results

415 Pop-up & 28 Company Stores launched	+322% YoY sales growth through OMG Pop-up Stores	5X faster store building with OMG

OMG makes it easier and faster for Helm to build online stores, which improves customer relationships, and allows Helm to service more customers, even those with quick-turn store orders.

According to Paul Carmouche, Information Technology Director at Helm, this has helped the company capture more business that requires lightning-fast turnaround times. “ When our team gets a panicked phone call from a customer, and they’re like, ‘I’m having an event in two days. I need a store.’ We’re able to service that now. That’s excellent.”

Increased Opportunity: Helm Leverages OMG for Low-Risk Business Growth

By spending less time on store-building, Helm has created more time to chase new business opportunities. Moreover, the cost-benefits of OMG Online Stores has reduced the financial risk of taking on smaller customers and programs.

“The speed and cost of OMG Online Stores lets you go to market with more stores and chase more business, including smaller online store opportunities. It’s less of a risk to take on a customer that will have an uncertain future for us because the upfront cost for us is much lower,” said Paul.

By using a light, cost-effective, and fast solution, Helm now has the ability to go after more new business than ever before.

Accurate Inventory & Product Data: Helm’s Confidence with OMG OneSource

When you’re working fast, it’s critical that every move you make is accurate. This is particularly true in branded merchandise, where inaccurate product data can lead to lost opportunities, angry customers, and missed sales. But by tapping into OMG’s growing ecosystem of validated supplier product data, the entire Helm team has gained data confidence, and protected themselves from stocking inaccuracies.

“I prefer the quality of supplier product information that I see on OMG comparatively. Once that inventory tool came in, it was a total game-changer. It allows us to protect ourselves from out-of-stock order issues,” said Gavin Long, Sr. E-commerce Specialist at Helm.

OMG’s supplier product data, which is validated by the industry’s only data validation tool OneSource, provides the Helm team with true data clarity, which reduces friction with its customers, and gives Helm the ability to open stores and confidently sell products that are in stock.

Gavin continued, “I think that the ability to integrate with PromoStandards from OMG Company Stores is an absolute game-changer. So any of the items that we don’t have in inventory at our warehouse, we can confidently sell on OMG and know that if something is out of stock, customers won’t be able to order it.”

Flexible & Feature-Rich: Helm’s Custom Store Solutions with OMG

In addition to making store-building faster, OMG Online Stores are incredibly flexible, and fit numerous use cases, customer and program sizes, and technical requirements. The feature-rich platforms make building custom online stores – even those with unique technical requirements – much easier and faster for Helm.

According to Rae Plugge-LeClaire, IT Project Manager, the Helm team frequently uses the Roles and Permissions capabilities on Company Stores. “When we have to customize, we’re really digging into that and we’re creating user groups to give each shopper a unique experience without having to create a separate store. Previously on ProfitMaker, each one of those groups was its own store, so a credit card would need its own store, and a purchase order would need its own store. And now we’re able to combine those stores into one on the OMG Company Stores platform. Instead of having two or three instances, we have one store with different permission groups.”

OMG’s rich feature set allows Helm to configure their online stores for numerous customers and technical requirements. This added flexibility allows them to satisfy more technical requests, and chase a variety of new business that may have been out of reach due to previous technical limitations.

Helm Uses OMG Stores to Pitch New Business

One unique way that Helm uses the OMG Pop-up Store platform is for pitching new business. Instead of sending a PowerPoint pitch with a mock store made up of static images, Helm builds OMG sample stores for new business opportunities, and when the customer gives them the green light, they simply turn the store on. This saves hours, and cuts out a lot of the manual work involved in earning new business.

“I was on InkSoft before, then moved to OMG because it was so much easier than InkSoft. I loved having the database of suppliers to use…It’s really, really cut down on store-building time to the point where I am building OMG stores as product presentations for people. I have all of the information right there, and if they like it, I just turn the store on for them,” said Gavin.

Seamless Support: Helm’s Success with OMG Client Success Team

In addition to the efficiency gains, Helm cites the OMG Client Success team as playing a pivotal role in supporting how they use the online store solutions. According to Rae, there’s no problem too large for the OMG team.

“We really appreciate all of the support that OMG, Emily, and Connor give us. We know we’re really coming in with some very edge case scenarios. But, time after time OMG has been able to help us figure out how to make the system work within parameters to come up with a solution. And, and that’s why we keep coming back…I don’t think there’s been a single customer that we’ve had to turn away because we’ve been unable to meet the technical requirements.”

Moving Forward with OMG

As a result of partnering with OMG, the Helm team has been able to boost the amount of stores they build per year. In 2025 alone, Helm has already created more than 24 stores, and they plan on building another 40 before the year is over.

Looking to the future, Rae is excited about the new solutions OMG is adding to the ecosystem.

“I am very, very excited about the presentation tool that’s coming for OMG. That’s going to make it a lot easier for the sales reps to source products that make sense.”