36% digital revenue growth: How BUS - Industrial Tools transformed complex B2B commerce into a consumer-grade buying experience

The Challenge

For more than six decades, BUS has built its reputation as a trusted supplier of industrial tools, equipment, and automotive products. As customer expectations evolved, its custom-built ecommerce platform could no longer support the digital experience the business wanted to deliver.

Today's B2B buyers expect the same speed, transparency, and ease of use they experience as consumers. At the same time, enterprise procurement teams rely on personalized pricing, approval workflows, customer-specific assortments, and seamless ERP connectivity.

BUS needed a commerce platform capable of managing this complexity without passing it on to the customer.

The objective wasn't simply to replace legacy technology. It was to create a digital commerce experience that feels intuitive for every buyer while supporting the sophisticated business processes behind every transaction. Delivered in just nine months—including a complete brand refresh—the project laid the foundation for the company's next stage of digital growth.

Why Shopware

Shopware Beyond gave BUS the flexibility to modernize its commerce strategy while preserving the advanced B2B capabilities its customers depend on.

Its API-first, headless architecture made Shopware the central commerce engine powering multiple customer touchpoints, while its open ecosystem connected ERP, PIM, search, marketing automation, and enterprise procurement systems into one unified platform. Shopware Beyond stood out by providing:

• A headless architecture powering multiple digital experiences from one commerce engine

• Native B2B capabilities including Employee Management, Role-Based Access Control, and Order Approval Workflows (B2B Components)

• Real-time ERP-driven pricing, inventory, and customer-specific assortments

• Seamless integration with best-of-breed technologies through an API-first architecture

• A scalable platform built to support continued digital growth

Rather than replacing one custom solution with another, BUS invested in a future-ready commerce platform capable of evolving alongside its business.

The Solution

Working together with Shopware Gold Partner Friday Digital Agency, BUS launched a completely redesigned commerce platform in only nine months. At its core sits Shopware Beyond as the central commerce engine. From there, multiple customer touchpoints—including the online store and BUS Scan App—operate from the same backend. Warehouse employees and procurement teams can scan products directly on-site and instantly add them to their order using their contracted pricing in real time. The result is a buying experience that combines the simplicity of modern consumer ecommerce with the capabilities professional buyers expect. Every customer receives a personalized catalog based on contracts, purchasing history, projects, and negotiated pricing. More than 200,000 products across 800 categories and over 2,500 brands remain easy to navigate thanks to Algolia-powered search, delivering relevant results within milliseconds. Behind the scenes, Shopware orchestrates a highly connected commerce ecosystem. Real-time ERP integration ensures every customer always sees current stock availability and their contracted pricing—including volume discounts and project-specific rates—without unnecessary quote requests. Enterprise customers benefit from advanced procurement capabilities including OCI Punchout integration, allowing purchases to flow directly into their own ERP systems. Employee Management, Role-Based Access Control, and configurable Order Approval Workflows enable each organization to mirror its purchasing processes within the online store. The result is a textbook example of modern B2B commerce: sophisticated where it matters, effortless where it counts.

"In industrial B2B, customers don't compare us only with other suppliers—they compare every digital experience with the best ecommerce experiences they have every day. We wanted to bridge that gap. Today, we offer the speed and simplicity customers expect while supporting the sophisticated workflows our enterprise accounts require. That's been a key driver behind our digital growth." — Jelmer Pepping, Manager E-Commerce, BUS - Industrial Tools

The Results

The impact of the new platform became visible almost immediately after launch.

Within the first months, BUS achieved:

• 36% year-over-year digital revenue growth

• 60% revenue growth in January alone

• 60% year-over-year growth in digital order intake

• 114% growth in new digital customers during Q4 2025

• 28% increase in returning digital users year over year

Beyond the numbers, the new platform fundamentally changed how customers interact with BUS. Faster product discovery, transparent pricing, personalized catalogs, and intuitive purchasing journeys reduced friction throughout the buying process and strengthened customer loyalty. Equally important, the new commerce foundation gives BUS the flexibility to continue expanding its digital business without rebuilding its technology stack. By managing the complexity behind the scenes while delivering a consumer-grade buying experience, BUS has created a benchmark for modern B2B commerce.

"The future of B2B commerce isn't about making business less complex—it's about making that complexity invisible to the customer. This project demonstrates exactly that. The result is a buying experience that feels as intuitive as leading B2C brands while supporting the enterprise workflows that make the business unique." — Bart Werink, Digital Strategist, Friday Digital Agency

Outlook: What's Next?

Building on that foundation, BUS is now developing several AI applications that run on the product, customer and order data the platform makes available:

1. A welding assistant that helps customers select the right combination of machine, wire and gas for the job at hand, based on BUS's own technical expertise.

2. Automated support for "specials", the non-standard products BUS configures on request: Work that is largely manual today is being prepared for automated configuration and quotation.

3. AI-supported product content: Thousands of products can be enriched with complete, consistent and findable information at a pace no content team could match manually.

This is exactly where the choice of platform pays off a second time. Because Shopware Beyond makes its data accessible through APIs, intelligence can be added on top of commerce instead of the business having to rebuild around it. The commerce foundation is in place; the next step is to make it smarter.