K&N Engineering sells high-performance air filters and intake systems to enthusiasts, dealers, and OEM partners across 30+ countries. Their product catalog includes thousands of application-specific fitments, each with unique dimensions, filter media options, and performance specifications. Before their digital commerce transformation, a dealer requesting a quote for a custom filtration assembly waited 3 business days. After: 15 minutes, self-service, with accurate pricing and lead times.
This is the story of how customization flexibility in the right commerce platform turned a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.
The Problem: Customization at Scale Was Breaking the Sales Process
K&N's business sits at the intersection of standardized products and custom configurations. About 60% of revenue comes from catalog products: you look up your vehicle's year, make, and model, find the right air filter, and order it. That part works fine on any eCommerce platform.
The other 40% is where things got complicated. Dealers order custom assemblies for modified vehicles. OEM partners request filtration solutions with specific flow rates, dimensions, and mounting configurations. Racing teams need one-off builds for competition applications. Industrial customers need filtration for non-automotive applications entirely.
Each custom request required a sales engineer to:
- Review the customer's specifications
- Check compatibility against K&N's manufacturing capabilities
- Price the custom configuration based on materials, labor, tooling, and minimum order quantities
- Calculate lead time based on current production capacity
- Generate a formal quote document
- Email it to the customer and wait for approval or revision requests
This process took 48-72 hours per quote. K&N's 12-person inside sales team processed roughly 200 custom quotes per month. At 2-3 hours per quote including revisions, custom quoting consumed over 50% of their selling time. Meanwhile, dealers who needed a fast answer were calling competitors.
Why Standard eCommerce Wasn't Enough
K&N had a functioning eCommerce site for catalog products. The challenge was extending it to handle the custom/configurable side of the business without building a completely separate system.
They evaluated several approaches:
CPQ bolt-on (Configure-Price-Quote software). Tools like Salesforce CPQ or Oracle CPQ could handle the configuration logic, but they operated as separate applications. Customers would need to leave the eCommerce experience, enter a different interface, configure their product, get a quote, and then return to the eCommerce site to place an order. Two systems, two logins, two user experiences. Dealers hated it during testing.
Custom-built configurator. Building from scratch offered maximum flexibility but meant maintaining a proprietary system indefinitely. K&N's engineering team estimated 18 months to build and $400K+ to maintain annually. For a manufacturer whose core competency is filtration, not software, this was the wrong bet.
Platform-native customization. The winning approach: use an eCommerce platform whose architecture supports deep product customization natively, so the customer experience is seamless between catalog products and configured products.
The Solution: Adobe Commerce with Custom Product Architecture
Bemeir built K&N's solution on Adobe Commerce, leveraging the platform's configurable product architecture and extending it for manufacturing-specific requirements.
Product Configuration Engine
The heart of the system is a multi-step configuration flow that guides customers through valid options while preventing invalid combinations. For a custom air intake assembly, the flow looks like:
Step 1: Select application type (automotive, marine, industrial, motorsport). This filters available base products.
Step 2: Select base product. For automotive, this means selecting a filter shape and size range. For industrial, it means selecting a flow rate requirement.
Step 3: Configure dimensions. Length, width, height (or diameter for round filters), with real-time validation against manufacturing constraints. If a customer enters a diameter that K&N can't produce, the system suggests the nearest available size.
Step 4: Select materials. Filter media (cotton gauze, synthetic, dual-layer), housing material (aluminum, carbon fiber, composite), and finish (polished, powder-coated, raw).
Step 5: Review pricing and lead time. The system calculates price based on materials, dimensions, complexity, and current production capacity. Lead time is pulled from the production scheduling system.
Step 6: Submit as quote or order. Low-complexity configurations below a cost threshold are auto-approved and flow directly to production. High-complexity or high-value configurations are routed to a sales engineer for review, who can approve, modify, or contact the customer within hours rather than days.
Pricing Rules Engine
The pricing engine was the most complex component. Manufacturing pricing isn't simple multiplication. K&N's pricing for custom products depends on:
- Base material cost (fluctuates with commodity prices)
- Dimensional complexity (non-standard sizes require tooling adjustments)
- Minimum order quantity (a single custom filter costs more per unit than a run of 100)
- Finish and treatment (powder coating adds cost and lead time)
- Rush fees (expedited production at premium pricing)
Bemeir built these rules into Adobe Commerce's pricing architecture using tiered price rules with attribute-based conditions. The system calculates a real-time price estimate as the customer configures, then validates the final price server-side before the quote is generated. This prevents the frontend from showing a price that the backend can't honor.
Integration with Manufacturing Systems
The portal connects to K&N's ERP (for inventory and cost data), their production scheduling system (for lead time calculation), and their CAD library (for generating spec sheets for custom configurations). When a customer submits a configured product, the order flows to production with a complete specification package: dimensions, materials, finish, quantity, and a reference CAD drawing.
This integration eliminated the sales engineer as a translator between the customer and the factory floor. The system speaks both languages.
Results: What Changed
The portal launched in phases over 4 months. Results after 12 months of operation:
| Metric | Before Portal | After Portal (12 months) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average quote turnaround | 72 hours | 15 minutes (auto) / 4 hours (engineer review) | 95% reduction |
| Custom quotes per month | 200 | 340 | 70% increase |
| Quote-to-order conversion rate | 34% | 52% | 53% improvement |
| Sales engineer time on quoting | 55% of workday | 18% of workday | 67% reduction |
| Average custom order value | $2,800 | $3,200 | 14% increase |
| Customer satisfaction (custom orders) | 3.2 / 5.0 | 4.5 / 5.0 | 41% improvement |
The 70% increase in custom quotes per month is the most telling number. K&N didn't suddenly have 70% more demand. That demand always existed. Dealers who previously didn't bother requesting a custom quote because the process took too long now configure products in minutes. The portal removed friction, and hidden demand surfaced.
The 14% increase in average order value was unexpected. When customers can configure products themselves and see real-time pricing, they tend to select higher-spec options. A dealer who might have asked the sales engineer for "the cheapest option" now sees the price difference between standard cotton gauze and premium dual-layer media and frequently opts for the upgrade. The configurator is a silent upselling tool.
The Customization Flexibility That Made It Work
Several architectural decisions were critical to the project's success.
Attribute-driven product architecture. Rather than creating separate SKUs for every possible configuration (which would mean millions of SKUs), Bemeir built the system using configurable attributes. A base product might have 8 configurable attributes, each with 5-15 options. The system generates a unique configuration from the combination, calculates pricing dynamically, and creates a production specification on the fly. This scales to handle new product lines without rebuilding the catalog.
Rule-based constraint validation. Not every combination of options is valid. Carbon fiber housings aren't available below a certain diameter. Dual-layer media isn't compatible with certain housing shapes. Rather than hard-coding these constraints, Bemeir implemented them as business rules that K&N's product team can update without developer involvement. When K&N introduces a new material or removes a legacy option, they update the rules themselves.
Tiered approval workflow. Not every custom order needs human review. Configurations within standard parameters (materials in stock, dimensions within normal range, quantity above minimum) are auto-approved and flow directly to production. Only configurations that fall outside parameters trigger an engineering review. This means 70% of custom orders are fully automated, and the remaining 30% get human attention where it actually adds value.
Customer-specific pricing memory. When a dealer orders a custom configuration, the system saves that configuration to their account. On reorder, they select from their saved configurations and order instantly. This is critical for dealers who order the same custom assembly repeatedly for a specific vehicle application. Bemeir built this as a "my configurations" dashboard within the customer account, accessible alongside order history and standard requisition lists.
Lessons for Other Manufacturers
K&N's implementation highlights principles that apply to any manufacturer dealing with configurable products.
Don't separate configuration from commerce. The moment a customer has to leave your eCommerce platform to configure a product, you lose them. Configuration and purchasing must be a single, seamless experience. Adobe Commerce's architecture supports this natively, which is why Bemeir recommends it for manufacturers with complex configuration needs. Read more about Bemeir's approach to Magento-based B2B solutions.
Pricing accuracy beats pricing speed. Customers will wait 30 seconds for an accurate price. They won't tolerate receiving an order confirmation at one price and an invoice at another. The pricing engine must be authoritative. If commodity prices fluctuate, build in a validity window on quotes rather than showing a price you might not honor.
Let the product team own the rules. If every constraint change requires a developer sprint, your system will always be out of date. According to Adobe Commerce's B2B documentation, the platform's business rule engine supports non-developer configuration of product rules and pricing logic. Build on that capability rather than around it.
Measure the demand you're suppressing. K&N didn't know they were leaving 70% more custom quotes on the table until the portal removed the friction. Most manufacturers underestimate their custom demand because they only count the quotes that make it through the current painful process. The customers who don't bother asking are invisible until you make it easy to ask.
The flexibility to customize products, pricing, and workflows without rebuilding the platform is what separates a commerce system from a commerce limitation. K&N's transformation from 72-hour quotes to 15-minute self-service wasn't a technology moonshot. It was the result of choosing a platform that bends to the business rather than forcing the business to bend to the platform.
