Blanche Dael: bringing shops, roastery and B2B together on Shopware

A platform that had grown organically, but no longer grew with the business

When Blanche Dael's physical shops had to close during the COVID period, the company put extra focus on its webshop. Since then, the online channel has been growing strongly. Most of the revenue still comes from other channels, mainly B2B and the two physical shops, but this year the webshop is overtaking the revenue of the nearly 149-year-old shop for the first time. However, the platform that growing channel relied on had not been built with that growth in mind.

The webshop was already running on Shopware, but it had been set up in a way that held growth back rather than supported it. Standard functionality had been replaced by custom solutions that presented themselves as regular Shopware components but were not. As a result, conflicts arose whenever something had to be updated or changed, and even simple content management became a cumbersome chore. Changes that would be done in a day elsewhere took weeks here, and the speed at which things were handled also left a lot to be desired.

In the meantime, Blanche Dael had long since become more than just a webshop. Besides online sales, the company runs physical shops, a roastery with tours and delivery routes to business customers in Limburg, Brabant, Zeeland and Belgium. The planning of those routes had also been awkwardly set up in the existing system for years. Blanche Dael is strong in B2B, but that business side received too little support on the platform: reorders were partly still placed by phone, while these are exactly the customers who benefit from convenience and speed. As the webshop became more important, other departments, from logistics to inventory management, increasingly came forward with issues that did not fit what the platform could offer.

On top of that, Blanche Dael works from a customer intimacy strategy, in which personal attention and customer relationships take centre stage. Its own customer research shows that customers who have visited the shops one or more times, for example during a day out in Maastricht, spend more on average and are more loyal. The experience of the brand, the roastery and the shops therefore had to be tangible online as well, and the different channels needed to be better connected. Blanche Dael clearly had the ambition and the customers to keep growing, but lacked a partner who showed what was possible and advised on the route to take.

First a healthy foundation, then targeted expansion

Strix did not start with a big reinvention, but with a controlled migration: within a few days, the team moved the webshop to a dedicated, properly configured Shopware environment. From there, a structured collaboration was established, with two-week sprints, weekly meetings and refinement sessions to translate Blanche Dael's wishes into concrete, manageable tasks. Building on that foundation, improvements have been rolled out step by step:

• Technical clean-up: the custom solutions from the previous setup are being replaced, one by one, with standard Shopware plugins. This removes the conflicts that blocked earlier updates and clears the way for new functionality and future version upgrades.
• One platform for consumers and business customers: Shopware is the foundation for both online sales to consumers and Blanche Dael's business order processing, so the strong B2B proposition does not have to run alongside the webshop.
• Smarter delivery routes: with the RouteLogic plugin, Blanche Dael gained route planning for deliveries across Limburg, Brabant, Zeeland and Belgium that is logically structured, instead of zigzagging between neighbouring addresses.
• Integrations that connect systems: webshop orders are shipped via both DHL and PostNL, and with XCore, shipping methods in Shopware are automatically linked to the correct method in Exact. Through an integration with AFAS, current vacancies are displayed on the website automatically. Under the hood, Strix uses the automation tool n8n to keep data flowing between these systems, without any manual work.
• A standard platform with its own identity: instead of an expensive, fully custom design, Strix proposed a standard theme (Katana), tailored with AI-assisted design work to Blanche Dael's own brand identity, so that the experience of the brand, the roastery and the shops becomes tangible online as well. By presenting this visually right away, the Blanche Dael team understood for the first time what a standard theme would mean for them, and confidently chose that direction.
• Staying in control with a staging environment: Strix set up a separate staging environment where Blanche Dael can experiment with colours, fonts and settings itself. This lets the team first discover what is already possible within the standard platform, before money goes into custom work that may not be needed.

Now that the foundation is solid again and the Blanche Dael team is getting a grip on what is possible, other departments are also coming forward with their own questions, from a central link between point-of-sale systems and inventory management to a ticketing system for the roastery tours. Strix helps give these questions a place, one by one, within the same well-organised platform, rather than as separate islands next to it.

From holding growth back to a foundation that grows along

• This year, the webshop is overtaking the revenue of the nearly 149-year-old shop for the first time, and it now runs on a technically sound foundation that makes changes quick again instead of cumbersome.
• Shopware supports Blanche Dael not only in online sales to consumers, but also in business order processing, so the strong B2B proposition and the webshop run on the same foundation.
• Deliveries to business customers in Limburg, Brabant, Zeeland and Belgium now follow a logically structured route plan, instead of going back and forth along the same streets.
• With the staging environment and a visual preview of the new theme, Blanche Dael understands for the first time what the platform has to offer, and feels confident making its own decisions.
• Because the platform is clearer and easier to understand, other departments, from logistics to inventory management, are now coming forward with their own questions: a sign that Blanche Dael is regaining control of its e-commerce landscape as a whole, instead of every team figuring it out on its own.
• Because the platform is becoming clearer and the collaboration has intensified, there is now, for the first time, a sharper picture of where Blanche Dael as a whole wants to go: a platform that looks beyond the current webshop alone, with room for new concepts, additional physical pick-up points, business customers who can easily order for themselves, and a closer connection between shops, roastery and online, in line with the customer intimacy strategy.
• A concrete roadmap is ready: completing the new theme, fully phasing out the last technical remnants of the previous setup, a self-service environment for business customers, a digital loyalty programme to replace the existing loyalty card, and new initiatives such as a separate sales channel for a younger target group, subscriptions, gift cards and a ticketing system for the roastery tours.

Blanche Dael combines nearly 149 years of craftsmanship with an online channel that is growing strongly and this year overtakes the revenue of the shop for the first time. With a platform that finally moves along instead of holding back, and a team that has regained an overview of the whole, that growth is no longer put under strain by the technology behind it.

Recognise this in your own webshop?

Growing as a business is fantastic, until your platform can no longer keep up with the ambitions behind it. Exactly the challenge Blanche Dael ran into before we started building on a healthy Shopware foundation together. Does that sound familiar: stores, B2B and webshop that still run next to each other instead of reinforcing one another, a growing organisation that is losing control of its e-commerce landscape, or a platform where every change takes too long and costs too much? We’d love to think along with you about what your next step could look like. Feel free to get in touch with us to discuss the opportunities.

This project is built with our technology partners: