STOCKIES WINNER – ACADEMIA
Scaling up Academia enjoyed a successful 2025 as the business scaled its digital and eCommerce capabilities, and this was topped off by winning Reseller Website of the Year at the recent Stock in the Channel Awards.
Staff at Academia were celebrating in November when the company scooped the Reseller Website of the Year at the Stockies, which capped an excellent year for the business. Here, Marc Winn, head of eCommerce at Academia, talks about the company’s recent success and the reasons behind it. News in the Channel: How was 2025 for your business? What were the main successes? Marc Winn: 2025 has been a very strong year for the business. One of our biggest successes was continuing to scale our digital and eCommerce capabilities while maintaining a high level of service for our customers. Winning Reseller Website of the Year at the Stockies was a standout moment and a real validation of the work that’s gone into modernising how we support customers online. Beyond the award, we saw increased adoption of self-service ordering, stronger engagement from procurement-led customers, and improved efficiency across sales and operations as more transactions moved through our digital channels.
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The biggest trend was a clear shift towards self-service and digital-first engagement, particularly from procurement and larger customers.
Did the business face any challenges in this period and how were they overcome? MW: Like much of the channel, we faced ongoing challenges around supply chain volatility, pricing fluctuations and rising customer expectations around speed and availability. Internally, managing scale while continuing to innovate was also a key challenge. We overcame these by investing in better data visibility, tighter system integrations and closer collaboration between teams. This allowed us to respond more quickly to changes, communicate more clearly with customers, and remove friction from the buying process. What were the biggest trends you saw from customers in 2025? MW: The biggest trend was a clear shift towards self-service and digital- first engagement, particularly from procurement and larger customers. Customers increasingly expect real-time pricing, stock visibility, instant quoting and the ability to manage orders online without needing to pick up the phone.
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Marc Winn (second left) and team collecting their
Reseller Website of the Year award
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