Schulrucksack migrates from Shopware 5

Southbag – one of the leading backpack suppliers in Germany

Founded in 1989, Southbag GmbH & Co. Handels KG has established itself as a leading supplier of high-quality school satchels, backpacks, and luggage. The company is headquartered in Puchheim, near Munich, with additional branches in Rosenheim and Salzburg.

In addition to its brick-and-mortar stores, Southbag sells its products throughout Germany and Austria via three online shops: the well-established schulranzen-onlineshop.de and trolley.de, as well as the newly launched schulrucksack.de. The company also sells its products on various online marketplaces, including Google Shopping and billiger.de. In 2022, Southbag had a turnover of approximately 10 million euros and employed between 25 to 30 people.

The challenge

Since its foundation in 1989, Southbag GmbH & Co. Handels KG has been a major player in the leather goods trade. The company leaped into the digital world in 2003 with the launch of schulranzen-onlineshop.de, powered by the CosmoShop ecommerce platform. This was followed by the development of the subsidiary store trolley.de. In 2009, the company upgraded both of its online stores to Shopware 3, the most advanced version of the ecommerce system at that time. This strategic move led to Southbag winning the Shopware Shop Usability Award in 2010 and 2011 . Over the years, the company has continued to develop its online stores and upgraded to Shopware 5.

Looking ahead to the challenge of the end of 2024 and the upcoming discontinuation of security updates for Shopware 5, Southbag has also made an early and forward-thinking decision to continue to drive the company's growth. Instead of relying on external service providers, Southbag is migrating to Shopware 6, focusing on innovation and further development. This ensures not only the security of the store but also saves Southbag unnecessary third-party costs.

Schulrucksack: the new store project from Southbag

To ensure a smooth transition during the migration of its online stores, Southbag strategically chose to launch the store on a new domain: schulrucksack.de. This approach not only allowed the company to gain valuable experience in working with Shopware 6 but also provided the opportunity to plan and implement the necessary infrastructure and critical programming tasks in advance. A crucial component of this process was the successful integration of the Shopware interface with the ERP system.

Shopware 6 includes these benefits

Using Shopware 6, Southbag's new online store, schulrucksack.de, boasts a contemporary and user-friendly design, specifically targeting teenagers in high schools. Although no data is available to compare conversion rates (as schulrucksack.de is a new venture), Southbag has already secured rankings for the top 1,000 relevant keywords in SERPs.

In addition, the Southbag team has noticed several enhancements in the Shopware 6 administration compared to its predecessor, Shopware 5. Not only has the creation of Shopping Experiences and subpages become three times faster, but it is now possible to create customized product comparisons across different brands and models. This feature is especially important for Southbag as most of their customers ask about the differences between various models from a single manufacturer.

In addition, Shopware 6 allows Southbag to use pre-designed feeds for other sales channels, such as billiger.de and Google Shopping. Product reviews from Trusted Shops can also be seamlessly imported into Shopware, enhancing the overall customer experience and trustworthiness of the Southbag brand.

Southbag: succeeding with vision and technology

Following the successful launch of schulrucksack.de, Southbag is now focused on further developing and refining the shop. Plans include the implementation of Shop-the-Look pages on the homepage, as well as introducing an intuitive product availability display using green and yellow dots. Next on the agenda is the migration of the sub-shop trolley.de from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6, followed by schulranzen-onlineshop.de. By sticking with Shopware, Southbag remains at the forefront of innovation and customer satisfaction.

Albert Brüggemann from Southbag expressed great satisfaction with the project: "By combining our in-house expertise with the excellent foundation provided by Shopware 6, we were able to cost-effectively implement a sensible and promising project. At the same time, we've cleared the first hurdle for the upcoming major shop relaunch".