lichtbasis

A wholesaler that counts on Shopware 

As a leading wholesaler of professional lighting equipment, lichtbasis carries a unique variety of lamps, power tracks and accessories. Its lighting know-how ranges from procurement and distribution to the planning and design of lighting solutions. 

In 2012, an ordering platform was integrated into the existing Typo3 website. However, this wasn’t a shop in the true sense of the word, so 2018 was a perfect time to redefine the website. 

Shopware gains an edge with B2B functionality, ecosystem and content options

Everyone quickly agreed on the requirements and objectives of a new e-commerce solution.

A new system should have a good SEO base, combine content and commerce, and better target new customers, ultimately increasing sales.

Even though Shopware has been known as an e-commerce solution since 2012, lichtbasis evaluated various other shop systems and ultimately opted for Shopware 5 Enterprise Edition, including B2B Suite and Enterprise Search.

Choosing Shopware turned out to not be a difficult decision. “With Shopware, we were particularly impressed by the large ecosystem, the ability to combine content and commerce, and the functionality of the B2B Suite,” explains Patrick Häse, e-Commerce Manager at lichtbasis.

Wide product range for B2B customers

Today’s Shopware shop offers the company’s B2B customers 14,000 items in 80 categories. lichtbasis customers include, for example, electricians and facility managers. In addition to the primary shop in German, there are English, Spanish, Italian and French language shops. 

The special feature of the lichtbasis shop

Storytelling and digital publishing form the basis for all content pages of the online shop. With the help of the shopping worlds, lichtbasis is currently creating a new solution area for the shop. This includes consulting, planning and implementation of lighting concepts for retailers and industry. This is an important project in order to communicate to new and existing customers that lichtbasis doesn’t only sell lamps and bulbs.

www.lichtbasis.com offers its customers not only simple items such as classic light bulbs but also products that require intensive consulting such as power tracks and LED lights. lichtbasis customers have access to a power tracks configurator that can be added directly to the shopping cart. Another special feature of the shop is its own sub-navigation with a prominently placed search field. lichtbasis also has an internal matchcode to describe items based on properties. This helps identify very closely related / interchangeable items, which is helpful considering the short product life cycles of LED bulbs.

In addition, special B2B requirements such as customer-specific prices were implemented in the shop. Customers who use the shop as an ordering platform have their own price lists, some of which are broken down to the individual item. There are currently 7,2 million database entries for individual B2B prices. In addition, release processes are stored with customers so that service providers, who do their shopping via a customer account, can’t see the pricing.

Creating the shopping worlds posed certain challenges. Special layout requirements that go beyond the basic elements in shopping worlds had to be handled using HTML and CSS programming. However, this was mastered in the course of the project.

Short time to market under in-house production

The MVP of the lichtbasis online shop was launched in just 6 months using an agile project approach. The project was implemented completely in-house without Shopware partner agencies. Shopware Enterprise Edition with the purchased Diamond subscription was especially beneficial for the customer in this case.

“We are happy to have purchased the highest license level with corresponding support. We use the manufacturer’s support with short response times very often,” says Patrick Häse.

Bottom line and a look into the future

The feedback summary for the new Shopware shop is very positive: “Since we started using Shopware, our new commercial customers have been able to search for the required products and to order directly for the first time. On our old ordering platform, this was only possible for our regular and registered customers. The new online sales channel opens up new opportunities for us to reach out to a broader target group and generate new leads,” concludes Patrick Häse.

In the future, lichtbasis would like to expand further in Europe and build country-specific shops with Shopware.