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Möbel Inhofer, established in 1931 as a small carpenter’s workshop in Senden near Ulm in Germany, has developed over more than 80 years to become one of the most successful furniture retail companies in Germany and is now the largest home furnishings outlet in Europe. With a store covering 85,000 m2, Möbel Inhofer offers customers an unforgettable shopping experience. Besides the retail store the company also has its own online shop offering customers the option of a cross-channel experience.
As an innovative company, Möbel Inhofer has already ventured into the digital world. But the shop system first used was unable to keep pace with the changing requirements in omnichannel ecommerce. These requirements also include the integration of a Proximity Commerce app which connects the online and offline worlds.
The company was faced with the challenge of moving existing technical solutions to a new technological platform, which meets the growing requirements in terms of reliability, range of functions and scalability, and also takes into account the rapidly increasing use of mobile devices (such as smartphones) appropriately.
The main requirements for the new ecommerce solution were as follows:
From a technology point of view, Möbel Inhofer opted to use software from Shopware, as the furniture retailer was particularly impressed by the functionality of the Shopware Shopping Worlds. Portaltech Reply, the first Shopware "International Enterprise Partner", presented an impressive overall commerce concept.
The whole process of implementing the new solution was split into two design-related and technology-related project phases. The first phase was designed as a technical relaunch with the migration to a Shopware 4 environment. With the development of the corresponding interfaces, the essential foundations were also established for the rollout of the next Shopware 5 release with the new responsive front-end templates its new storytelling content elements.
In order to facilitate cooperation in future between all parties involved, Portaltech Reply utilised a specially developed deployment for the Shopware platform. This deployment enables a significant improvement in quality assurance and an increase in productivity in terms of cooperation processes between developers, customers and external agencies. The deployment as testing and staging environment proved to be an effective method for this.
In this way, Portaltech Reply created the conditions for rolling out a planned second relaunch in the following phase of the project, the main objectives of which were:
By employing the expertise of Portaltech Reply, the relaunch went smoothly and succeeded at the highest technical level, and the range of functions for the consumer to use was effectively developed.
Once again, this project enabled Portaltech Reply to demonstrate and enhance existing knowledge in the furniture sector (industry and commerce), and in the use of Shopware commerce software. With this move, Möbel Inhofer proves once more that this long-established company focuses specifically on innovation to enhance the customer experience.