Tracing its roots back 150 years, Beijer Ref embarked on its journey in 1866, swiftly ascending to become a key importer of coal and iron in Sweden by the early 19th century. The 1990s marked a pivotal era of expansion for Beijer Ref, characterized by strategic international acquisitions within the cooling technology and HVAC industry, it propelled its growth. A notable milestone was the acquisition of the Danish refrigeration conglomerate Elsmark, which cemented Beijer Ref's dominance in the market. By 2004, this strategic consolidation heralded Beijer Ref's status as the foremost wholesaler of refrigeration equipment in Europe.
In the present day, Beijer Ref boasts a formidable global presence with over 150 subsidiaries and more than 500 branches spread across four continents. The company's workforce of 6,000+ individuals is dedicated to servicing a vast clientele of over 200,000 customers worldwide. With an impressive annual turnover of approximately SEK 32 billion in 45 countries, Beijer Ref's diverse product portfolio spans commercial and industrial refrigeration, alongside air conditioning and heating solutions, setting industry standards for excellence and innovation.
With its global footprint, Beijer Ref operates a highly decentralized network of branches and subsidiaries, each utilizing diverse Ecom systems, from TradePro, Magento, and Shopify to DynamicsWeb and Custom. This varied technological landscape presented significant challenges, notably obstructing the uniform adoption of best practices across the globe. Furthermore, the existing systems fell short of delivering a satisfactory balance of standard features while also supporting central management with plugin enhancements. In response to these limitations, Beijer Ref initiated the search for a new shop system. The company sought a scalable solution capable of extending advanced functionalities across multiple instances through efficient plugin management.
Christian Hackmann from Beijer Ref elaborated, "Given our decentralized structure and business approach, our goal is to centralize critical applications to boost sales and introduce superior features, thereby enriching our customers' experience."
Enter Shopware 6, the chosen beacon for Beijer Ref's ambitions. The decision to adopt Shopware 6 was driven by its API-first strategy and robust plugin architecture. The company commended the platform for its exceptional performance, extensibility, global adaptability, and forefront technology, marking a strategic pivot towards centralization and enhanced customer engagement.
Shopware 6 stands as a pioneering shop system for Beijer Ref, enabling the operation of multiple online stores within a single instance, eliminating the redundancy of inputting product information multiple times. This system allows for the creation of distinct shops, each with its unique design and configuration tailored for specific regions like Germany, France and Australia. Thanks to its flexibility and scalability, Beijer Ref successfully launched 35 Shopware instances across 28 countries in the last 36 months. In 20% of these cases, Shopware 6 replaced an existing ecommerce platform, marking it the inaugural platform for the company in the remaining instances.
Beyond centralizing the company's international shop platforms, Shopware 6 also serves as a "Customer Self Service Portal" for Beijer Ref. This feature enables customers to access services outside business hours, facilitating a wide range of online tasks. The aim is to channel all "minor" orders through the shop, negating the need for manual ERP system entries. Additionally, invoice-related issues can now be resolved online, saving time for both customers and employees while boosting website engagement.
To enhance shop usability further, Beijer Ref has integrated new features, including Advanced Search, which halves the time users spend finding products and other self-development digital tools for example to configure a solution and selector wizards. The employee management feature supports large clients in workforce administration, and Upselling tactics have been employed to achieve higher online margins.
As a result, the company's total ecommerce platform revenue soared from 0.1% to 15% within 36 months, with Beijer Ref's SERP ranking benefiting from Shopware's swift performance and straightforward SEO maintenance.
Looking ahead, Beijer Ref has ambitious plans with Shopware 6 with high growth targets for its online revenue and is continuing to invest in its digital sales channels and development of digital tools to simplify the digital customer journey. The strategy also includes launching more Shopware instances in new market in the coming years. Beijer Ref intends using A.I. with the aim to automize and make services more efficient. Further enhancements are planned to refine the shopping experience, such as enabling customers to scan product codes to view exploded diagrams and spare parts.
Christian Hackmann from Beijer Ref expresses satisfaction with Shopware, stating, "With Shopware, we found a strong partner who can fulfill our needs and helps us to grow as fast as we can into digital directions."
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Personalize the customer journey based on the customer’s search queries. With its maximum reactivity, Advanced Search guarantees a better user experience — even with large data volumes.
The Shopware B2B Suite has been diligently developed to automate and facilitate the complex business operations that are prevalent in today’s B2B sector. It is the core of your business – strong, agile and intuitively supporting every move you make.
Little effort, big effect: Renew the design of your online store. Choose between our modern premium themes and customize the design as you like.
With Custom Products you can offer your customers tailor-made products. Define the selection interface according to the product and the opportunities: from checkboxes and text fields to a detailed step-by-step mode.
Create unique customer journeys. In B2B, you can decide which products customers can see, or use Dynamic Access to automatically display personalized content to your target customer group.
Automate e-commerce with Flow Builder. No coding needed. Define and execute business processes in one intuitive interface. Create flows for tasks, triggered by events, ensuring efficiency, faster reactions, and control, saving time and resources.
