How Shopware enabled JACOB Elektronik’s B2B relaunch in six months

The Challenge

For more than three decades, JACOB Elektronik has grown from a garage business into a major German IT retailer. About 250 employees support an assortment of 1.2 million products from 3,000 manufacturers, backed by a network of 300 suppliers. Across six locations, 150 inhouse professionals actively support 2,500 companies. The business operates through 78 distribution and sales channels and has set an ambitious €400 million company revenue target for the 2026 calendar year.

The online store generates nine-figure revenue and plays a dual role: it serves consumers directly (JACOBs origin is in B2C consumer electronic) and brings new customers into the B2B business that accounts for about 80% of company revenue. Around 5% of B2C customers later develop into B2B relationships. Business customers have access to hourly updated prices across JACOB Elektronik’s extensive IT product assortment.

That scale had outgrown the technology behind the store. The previous platform was a custom monolith that tightly connected the storefront with core business logic. Its complexity made the system increasingly difficult to maintain and develop further, while previous attempts to relaunch the store did not reach go-live.

JACOB Elektronik needed a stable commerce foundation that covered its essential requirements while providing the flexibility for a highly customized B2B roadmap. The long-term vision is to scale to 500 customer-specific shops with tailored assortments, pricing, categories, and approval processes, and seven are already live.

Why Shopware

The selection process evaluated several enterprise and developer-focused commerce platforms, including commercetools, Spryker, Magento, and Sylius. JACOB Elektronik chose Shopware because it offered the strongest balance between a solid foundation across essential commerce domains and the architectural flexibility to build custom capabilities. Its API-first approach allowed the team to extend the platform without compromising the core.

"For us, Shopware offered the best combination of a solid foundation and the flexibility we need for custom development.” – Patrick Scherr, Head of Ecommerce, JACOB Elektronik

That balance mattered in a business where the majority of revenue comes from Germany. Shopware’s position in the German market, competitive licensing, and broad standard functionality gave the team confidence that it could launch quickly and succeed in extending the platform where JACOB Elektronik’s requirements moved beyond the standard.

This combination made the MVP approach possible. The project followed a practical rule: first check whether Shopware covers at least 80% of a requirement. If it does, use the standard. If it does not, build the missing capability around it. This approach allowed the team to use Shopware’s standard capabilities wherever they met the requirement while preserving control over its custom services and B2B processes.

The Solution

JACOB reset the project around a clearly defined MVP. Rather than transferring every historical requirement from the monolith, the team focused on the functionality that sales teams and customers needed for launch. Following the project restart in January 2026, the team moved nonessential features to the roadmap, and the shop went live on July 1, 2026.

"We delivered a successful relaunch in just six months by taking a disciplined MVP approach and deliberately saying no to features that were not essential for launch.” – Patrick Scherr, Head of Ecommerce, JACOB Elektronik

The storefront uses classic Shopware 6 with a custom theme rather than a headless frontend. The team based its design system on Shopware resources and stayed close to standard components to reduce implementation time. Shopware runs in AWS and acts as the commerce frontend, while APIs connect it to JACOB Elektronik’s distributed services.

Business logic sits outside the storefront in more than 100 small, independently replaceable applications. These services handle areas such as pricing, vouchers, inventory, orders, customer data, and product content across the online store and other sales channels. JACOB Elektronik also built an Elasticsearch-based search setup that can be managed through extensions in the Shopware administration.

The modular design avoids recreating the risk of the old monolith. Individual services can be changed or rebuilt without replacing the entire platform, and the same capabilities can support JACOB Elektronik’s marketplaces, procurement channels, and future B2B shops.

The Results

The relaunch gave JACOB Elektronik a maintainable, flexible system and a faster way to turn commercial ideas into live experiences. The team reported the following early results:

• B2B commerce foundation relaunched in just six months with Shopware 6
• Each core shop team member is now 75% more productive
• External toolset reduced from more than 40 applications to 14 as part of the wider simplification program, with a further reduction to eight planned by April 2027.
• Marketing campaigns and landing pages implemented twice as fast: By building on Shopware’s standard functionality for homepage management, scheduling, and targeted content delivery, JACOB creates landing pages, brand worlds, and categories with greater speed and flexibility.
• Increased revenue, with the online store operating ahead of plan

The commercial improvements reflect both the new commerce setup and favorable market conditions. With the MVP in place, JACOB is now maturing the platform step by step and introducing further enhancements as its requirements evolve.

The clearest operational change is speed. Campaigns, category updates, and landing pages now move from idea to launch in about half the time. With each team member now 75% more productive, the core shop team can support a store with 1.2 million products while preparing the next phase of B2B development.

Outlook: What's Next?

JACOB Elektronik plans to scale from seven customer-specific B2B shops to 500 by the end of 2027. Each shop can reflect an enterprise customer’s own assortment, pricing, categories, and approval structure. The company also plans to launch an English storefront in 2027 for customers outside Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

The wider goal remains automation. By the end of 2027, JACOB Elektronik wants most direct sales activity to flow through the store or its own AI-agents instead of requiring manual back-office work. The target is 50% growth in online store revenue over the same period, including sales that shift from existing direct channels.

With Shopware covering the commerce foundation and JACOB Elektronik’s services handling the specialized logic around it, the company can keep extending its B2B model without rebuilding the storefront for every new requirement. The continued performance improvements give JACOB confidence in the platform’s future and its ability to move beyond the MVP stage as the setup matures.