How Vivid Adapt partnered with the UK’s leading promotional merchandise distributor to stabilise critical connectivity, deploy modern endpoint management, and achieve Cyber Essentials Plus certification through fully managed IT services.
Founded in 2004, Total Merchandise has grown from a spare-room startup into an industry titan operating out of a bustling headquarters in Colchester, Essex. Supplying a highly complex catalogue of over 10,000 product lines to businesses across the country, the firm is widely recognised for its exceptional service, vast product range, and industry-leading digital ordering platforms.
Their absolute dominance in the sector is reflected by a vast array of accolades, including being consecutively voted Sourcing City’s Promotional Merchandise Distributor of the Year since 2019, and securing the prestigious BPMA Distributor of the Year (£10M+) award in 2025.
Operating in a high-volume, fast-paced e-commerce environment, Total Merchandise processes vast quantities of bespoke corporate orders daily. In such a demanding, logistics-heavy setting, the reliability of their internal networks, the security of their customer databases, and the continuous uptime of their underlying technological infrastructure are intrinsically linked to their commercial success and industry reputation.
Summary
- Executed a comprehensive network remediation project, permanently resolving long-term latency and connectivity issues across the Colchester office’s Internet, LAN, and Wi-Fi networks.
- Transitioned critical backup architectures and daily network maintenance into a fully Managed Service, reclaiming thousands of hours for the internal IT team to focus exclusively on core software development and platform enhancement.
- Successfully deployed Microsoft Intune to establish a secure, frictionless ecosystem for mobile device and application management across the entire workforce.
- Conducted a rigorous, deep-dive cyber security audit, rectifying vulnerabilities and implementing stringent technical controls that enabled the firm to achieve the highly respected Cyber Essentials Plus certification.
The Challenge
For a rapidly scaling distributor operating at the pinnacle of the B2B merchandise sector, uninterrupted digital operations are the absolute lifeblood of the company. Total Merchandise possesses a highly capable internal IT department; however, the strategic focus of these resources is heavily weighted towards complex software development, backend engineering, and the continuous enhancement of the customer-facing digital experience.
As the company expanded, this intensive focus on software engineering left the internal team with severely limited bandwidth to manage the mundane but critical demands of daily IT infrastructure and advancing cyber security threats.
Consequently, the firm began experiencing chronic, long-term degradation in their physical and wireless network layers. Unreliable internet connectivity, intermittent LAN performance, and severe Wi-Fi attenuation in the office created internal bottlenecks that frustrated staff and threatened to disrupt high-velocity order processing.
The Solution
Vivid Adapt initiated the partnership by targeting the client’s most acute operational pain points – starting with the network. Vivid Adapt permanently resolved an underlying issue plaguing the internet connectivity, LAN, and Wi-Fi architecture – an intervention that was instantly appreciated by both the internal IT team and the wider workforce.
Building upon this strong foundation of technical trust, Vivid Adapt architected and deployed a robust, automated backup solution to safeguard critical company systems and digital assets against data loss and ransomware threats.
Crucially, both the network environment and the backup architecture were seamlessly transitioned into fully Managed Services, with Vivid Adapt assuming total ownership of 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, and helpdesk support.
To modernise the workplace and establish a secure perimeter, Vivid Adapt consultanted TM’s internal IT team on the deployment of Microsoft Intune, providing granular, cloud-based control over device compliance, application security, and user access.
Vivid Adapt is currently conducting a comprehensive, deep-dive cyber security audit. By systematically rectifying identified gaps, Vivid Adapt is guiding Total Merchandise through the rigorous independent testing required to achieve the prestigious Cyber Essentials Plus certification.
