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Shopware Partner Day 2023 in Amsterdam: Highlights and takeaways

Shopware Partner Day 2023 in Amsterdam: Highlights and takeaways

On November 9 it was finally time for the Shopware Partner Day Benelux & ROW at the Renaissance Hotel Schiphol in Amsterdam. The event brought together many of our partners to hear the latest updates and do a spot of networking. Of course, many from the Shopware team were also there to meet our partners. Let us take you through the day with a look at the program, the highlights, and the key takeaways.

Program overview

Program item

Speaker

Welcome and agenda

Katy Wilson & Davide Giordano from Shopware

Keynote

Stefan Hamann from Shopware

Product Spotlight – a year of achievements and the road ahead

Moritz Naczenski from Shopware

An Outlook on Mollie’s Roadmap

Ksenia Zvereva from Mollie

Shopware Academy

Katy Wilson & Sander Mangel from Shopware

How to work best together! Partners + Sales

Anthony van Zaltbommel from Shopware

Masterstrokes & Innovation at Shopware

Vanessa Brauch from Shopware

Shopware United – connecting the Shopware community

Wouter den Otter from H1 Webdevelopment

Consulting Services – a partnership approach

Oliver Breitfeld from Shopware

Extension Partners & Shopware Store

Thomas Stahl from Shopware

Partnering with Shopware for success

Frank Bouwman from STRIX & Patrick Büngener from Shopware

Closing words

Stefan Hamann & Davide Giordano from Shopware

The most important takeaways

Let’s take a look at the talks in chronological order and summarize the key points.

Hosting and welcome

The day was hosted by Shopware’s Head of Academy, Katy Wilson. Together with Davide Giordano, she gave the guests a warm welcome and kicked off a quiz where Shopware experts were able to show off their in-depth knowledge of both the product and our company history. Congratulations once again to the winners!

Keynote speech by Stefan Hamann

Stefan Hamann, Shopware founder and Co-CEO, opened the Partner Day with inspiring words of welcome to introduce the day’s events and underline Shopware’s journey and achievements.

Stefan emphasized how much Shopware has learned over the years, continually evolving and honing its market position with many successes to show for it. These include the development of a partner ecosystem that continues to grow and thrive.

He also highlighted other significant successes, such as being named a Visionary in this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, and a G2 Leader in multiple categories. We’re grateful to you – our partners – for the role you’ve played in all these achievements!

“There are three things to note about momentum: It’s tough to build, easy to lose, and impossible to fake. We are 100% aware of why Shopware is where it is today, and that’s exactly why we will continue to investing in building and strengthening our community. The requirements in the mid-market are exciting and diverse. It’s all about more complexity and associated efficiencies – with different pricing, countries, and business models. And that’s where you’re the experts. You’re the specialists. You’re the ones who build the projects, deliver the technologies, and integrate them.”

– Stefan Hamann, Shopware founder and Co-CEO

Looking back and ahead on the product side, by Moritz Naczenski

Moritz Naczenski, our Director of Product Management, spoke informatively and openly about the past and coming year from the product perspective. We can look back on a highly productive year, with nearly 150 new apps in the store, 18 self-hosted releases, and 35 innovative features, including multi-inventory, subscriptions, and a new returns management system. In 2024, we’ll focus on five approaches that are based on current market developments and trends, and fulfill our customer promise. These will be the main waypoints on our product roadmap.

An Outlook on Mollie’s Roadmap

Ksenia Zvereva, Developer Community Lead at Mollie, shared exciting product updates during her presentation. First on the list were card payments, where she provided insights into the latest developments in Auth&Capture, currently in beta, as well as Acceptance & Risk capabilities. Moving on to alternative payment methods (APMs), Ksenia offered a sneak peek into local payment methods and what to anticipate in the first half of 2024. In-person payments brought exciting news about the already introduced Mollie Terminal offering and the upcoming introduction of Tap to Pay on Android functionality next year. With Tap to Pay, you can accept contactless in-person payments with any compatible NFC phone or tablet.

Then, in financial services, Ksenia highlighted Mollie Capital, a fast, flexible business financing option that you can obtain in less than 1 day. Additionally, she introduced a brand-new Mollie Dashboard designed to provide easier access to all insights into the performance of your business, allowing you to review critical actions to further drive performance. For those eager to explore these updates, Ksenia extended an invitation to join the Mollie community on Discord, where you can participate in ongoing product betas.

What’s new for partners in the Shopware Academy?

Katy Wilson introduced the Shopware Academy, of which she is the Head. The Academy provides valuable resources from within our company, as well as from Shopware partners and experts. This includes free training on various topics – for designers, developers, or solution architects. In addition, you can boost your expertise and market value with our training and certifications, including the new Solution Specialist certification and PaaS training. Find out more on our Academy page, subscribe to our Shopware Knowledge YouTube channel, and take a look at our info and marketing material for partners.

Shopware Knowledge

How can partners and Sales work even better together?

Sales Development Manager Anthony van Zaltbommel told us how Shopware Sales would like to work even more effectively with partners. In the last two years, we’ve intensified our focus on the mid-market. This has brought various changes, which Anthony explained in more detail. The key message of his talk was that if you want to win customers efficiently in the mid-market, it’s crucial to have open, trusting, and close communication.

  1. From leads to deals: Partners should register, qualify, and contact leads in good time. We recommend prompt registration of product-qualified leads to enable efficient processes.

  2. From deals to customers: We value consistent communication and use the MEDDPICC framework to gather relevant information for successful customer acquisition.

  3. Take rate and pricing: When working together, it’s important to have mutual respect with regard to pricing, so we can optimize overall costs and achieve the best results in the mid-market.

Sales and partner teamwork

Masterstrokes & Innovation at Shopware

Vanessa Brauch, Teamlead Product Marketing at Shopware, highlighted the five unique values, that Shopware brings to the table: having an open source core, being open & transparent in terms of feature roadmap communication as well as the opportunity to shape the roadmap, a product with the best value for money, and a focus on innovation. To underline them, she talked about several possibilities, how to contribute to the roadmap as a partner or merchant, showed two customer cases with higher conversion rates after switching to Shopware, and talked about how Shopware's approaching continuous innovation.

Shopware United – connecting the Shopware community

Shopware United presented an overview of its history and goals for the future. As an international community organization, the focus is on growth and training for the entire Shopware ecosystem, as well as increasing the visibility of the community as a whole. Many online and offline events in various formats are organized for different groups. Projects such as Community Voice or Solution Specialist certification are driven forward in close cooperation with Shopware. Shopware United also sees itself as a mouthpiece for the community, where even unpleasant topics are discussed controversially with Shopware.

Shopware's Consulting Services – a partnership approach

Oliver Breitfeld, Head of Consulting Services at Shopware, took the stage to introduce our Consulting Services. This is something we’ve offered since the beginning of the year, to provide support at the technical or business level. As these services are often misunderstood, we asked Oliver’s colleague, Manuel, a few questions about them.

What’s new in the Shopware Store?

Thomas Stahl is Head of Extension Partnerships & Growth. He told us about current projects and plans for the Shopware Store, which should interest (future) Extension Partners in particular. An important announcement: From 2024 we’ll be offering all extensions as a subscription model only – annually or monthly. This will boost development thanks to recurring revenue for Extension Partners. In addition, the Store will be migrating from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6 and will be reworked to significantly improve the user experience and make it even easier to access the extensions you need. Going forward, we also want to improve the account area, enrich the partner account with more data, and relaunch the feedback function in the Store. We’re happy to receive your feedback at alliances@shopware.com

The Shopware team says thank you!

partner day we love community

Stefan Hamann and Davide Giordano appeared together one last time, to express their enthusiasm and gratitude to the whole partner ecosystem. Stefan’s three key takeaways from the day were:

  1. The importance of teamwork between Shopware and its partners

  2. How much mid-market potential there is that we can tap together

  3. How fantastic it is that our industry is one of the fastest innovators

Let’s continue on this successful path together, conquering the mid-market with our teamwork and passion!