Bayerisches Münzkontor®

Collectors paradise: The product range at Bayerisches Münzkontors

The long-established company has been specialising in mail-order collector coins for over 40 years. Bayerisches Münzkontor is a pioneer in mail-order trade and is most likely known to anyone who has a passion for collecting coins. The coin dealer offers everything from its own in-house coinage in a variety of coin sets to individual pieces.

Customers in the B2C segment are able to choose from a range of around 1,150 products that are divided into ten categories.

Many reasons for relaunching with Shopware

With the relaunch, Bayerisches Münzkontor was aiming for:

• a shop system that could be easily expanded using internal web developers,

• an improved process environment through interface connection to an inventory management system,

• manageable licensing costs,

• the possibility to clearly measure cross-marketing activities.

Ultimately, the company decided to replace their previous shop system, Magento, with Shopware. The choice of Shopware was based on several factors: On the hand, because of its flexibility, clean programming paradigms and the possibility to easily develop it further. On the other, as Shopware is a German manufacturer, it provides faster, efficient support.

The Shopware partner agency, econsor and intoCommerce, came on board to help realise the project.

Particular requirements and functions

SPH was selected for Bayerisches Münzkontor for its inventory management system. This runs on an AS/400 with a Db2 database. The system also has a defined data and block-oriented interface. However, block-oriented files are highly complicated in structure, consume a lot of disk space (up to 2 MB) and do not allow any incremental modification of individual data sets.

The decision was therefore made to import data over a REST interface, ultimately meeting multiple requirements:

• Increased performance (no data streaming)

• No media disruptions

• Automatic processing, prompt product updates

• Transfer of customer numbers from the inventory management system after an order is placed

• Complete import and incremental import of advertising campaigns and product data

The connection was a challenge but works seamlessly. Via the REST interface, new product data, including product images, are transferred promptly from the merchandise management system to the shop system. Changes to the product data or images are also transferred to the shop system in small data streams with high performance.

Since then, the order data is always automatically generated at night from the individual shop instances and then prepared for the inventory management system for the generation of orders.

It was also possible to meet other requirements. These include promotional pricing via URL and hiding and offering products in the form of free gifts.

Improvements on several levels

Several work processes have been simplified since switching to the new shop system. For instance, product data and images are continually updated, freeing a great deal of resources, and orders can also be captured more quickly.

When time is saved, usually money is too. The connection with the SPH inventory management system, in particular, has resulted in a massive cost reduction through the elimination of manual order data entry. All that’s needed now is just a glance to check the incoming orders.

According to Daniela Häßler, head of the e-commerce department at Bayerisches Münzkontor, the design of the home page is much more user friendly: “Compared with the old Magento system, this aspect of the shop is now simple and intuitive.”

Simplified evaluation of promotional campaigns

Bayerisches Münzkontor often links online and offline advertising with special promotions. Successful promotions in the past included offering promo codes or freebies with the purchase of coins. Due to the fact that customers can only enter the promo codes in the online shop, the campaigns can be clearly measured and evaluated.

Bayerisches Münzkontor sums things up positively

Shopware was clearly able to meet the company’s expectations for the shop relaunch. The new system has made many of the procedures simpler and easier to track so that time and costs are being saved. In addition, the conversion rate has increased since the launch.

Daniela Häßler summs up the collaboration with all of the involved parties as “very positive”. She praised the Shopware partner agencies intoCommerce and econsor as well: “econsor was tasked with developing the REST interface. The competence and collaboration with econsor was extraordinarily good. The same is true for intoCommerce in the area of template and plugin development.“

What does the future hold?

Bayerisches Münzkontor has ambitious goals for the future. Both the usability and the performance should be increased in the near future. In addition, the company wants to further exploit the marketing possibilities of Shopware. Looking down the line, the company plans to use Shopware’s Storytelling feature as well as optimise its search functionality with the Shopware Enterprise Search. And last but not least, Bayerisches Münzkontor wants to further expand the backend area with role concepts.