From Shopware 5 to Shopify: Shop Migration with Connected Inventory Management
Kohlenstoff-12 ran a heavily customised Shopware 5 shop without connected inventory management. We migrated the shop to Shopify, redesigned the front end and connected the inventory system. Stock, orders and deliveries have run in one system ever since.
About Kohlenstoff-12
Kohlenstoff-12 sells jewellery, perfume and accessories to consumers. The brand focuses on a clearly curated range and an audience that values design. As sales grew, the existing shop and process landscape reached its limits.
The Challenge
The existing shop ran on Shopware 5 and had been heavily customised over the years. Updates were no longer safe to apply, known vulnerabilities remained open, and every change to the shop became costly.
The missing link to inventory management weighed even heavier. Stock, orders and deliveries sat in separate systems. This caused three concrete problems in day-to-day business:
- Duplicate maintenance: products and stock had to be entered more than once.
- Sources of error: diverging stock levels led to reorders and cancellations.
- No overview: the status of an order could not be traced in one place.
What was needed was therefore not just a new shop, but a solution that brings shop and inventory management together without interrupting sales during the switch.
Our Approach
We migrated the shop to Shopify and connected the inventory system. Shopify covers platform operations, security and updates, so customisation is limited to the front end and the interfaces.
Our approach in four steps:
- Assessment: we catalogued the existing customisations and decided which were still needed. Some were dropped entirely.
- Data migration: products, customers and orders were transferred and sampled against the old system before the switch.
- Front end and interfaces: in parallel, we built the new front end and the connection to inventory management for products, stock, orders and deliveries.
- Cut-over: before go-live we set up redirects for all existing URLs so that rankings and inbound links were preserved. The switch happened in a short, planned window.
The front end was aligned with the brand and designed for mobile devices, since most visitors arrive on a smartphone.
The result
The shop went live within the planned time and budget. Since then, shop and inventory management have run as one continuous process.
According to Kohlenstoff-12, visitor numbers and revenue developed strongly in the first six months after the relaunch: more than twice as many visitors and around three times the revenue.
Three changes are most noticeable in day-to-day business:
- One data source: products and stock are maintained once and are available in both shop and inventory management.
- Traceable orders: the status of an order is visible in one place, from payment to shipping.
- Less effort on the shop: updates and security sit with the platform, and customisation is limited to the front end and interfaces.
What Kohlenstoff-12 says
Since the start of our collaboration with code council GmbH, we have brought order to our IT systems. The creation of a new online store and the integration of an inventory management system was an important step for our company. We highly recommend code council GmbH as a partner!
Your contact for digital commerce
We develop online shops that work with inventory management, CRM and marketplaces, and we support them over many years. If you build a shop with us, you work with the same team in concept, development and operations.
Aziz Ajaghfouf, Managing Director
