More than 90 years of family tradition, experience and know-how in terry towel production to the highest standards characterize the products of Frottana Textil GmbH & Co. KG. At the company headquarters in Großschönau, in Upper Lusatia/Germany, Frottana today produces a wide variety of first-class quality terry products. Towels, bathrobes and bath rugs are made from 100% cotton using state-of-the-art technology.
The MÖVE brand, the best-known German terry towel brand, is now represented in upmarket specialist retailers in over 40 countries worldwide and also has 25 of its own monobrand stores across Europe, where the brand exclusively offers its products. In addition, around 170 shop-in-shops with renowned partners contribute to sales of the goods. However, the company's fastest-growing sales channel is the online store.
In general, online retail is currently booming. However, the reason for this is not just the coronavirus pandemic, which has been ongoing since 2020, but increasingly the unstoppable digitalization, which does not stop at idyllic Großschönau.
Even before the pandemic, the company made the decision to further expand its own webshops moeve.de and frottana.de, which are operated alongside sales via major platforms such as OTTO and Amazon. During the search for a provider, supported by an agency, the choice fell on the Shopware online store system.
The aim of the expansion was to link the previously separate merchandise management and web store systems and thus create a seamless exchange of data.
In order to ensure a smooth link, a few things need to be clarified in advance, for example how the webshop customers are managed, who maintains the webshop prices and which stocks are to be kept. "There is no universal template for this," says Martin Speidel, texware/CS-project manager at update texware GmbH, "the processes of the individual alternatives are too different for that".
Frottana wants as little manual effort as possible. The connection of Shopware with the existing ERP system texware/CS takes place via various import and export interfaces, each of which has been adapted or extended. The interfaces are used, for example, to transfer information such as quantities in stock from texware/CS to the online store, while Shopware transfers order data to texware/CS. The ERP remains the leading system.
"Item data, orders, stock levels and customer data are now automatically exchanged between texware/CS and Shopware. This not only saves us double the maintenance work. The entire processing and management of order processes is faster and more efficient. Errors that could occur when manually entering and transferring order data, for example, are avoided," summarizes David Stephan, Head of IT at Frottana.
However, the webshop connection alone was not enough. Special plug-ins had to be written for the connection to third-party systems, such as that of the shipping service provider, so that the texware/CS user can operate the shipping service provider's software from texware/CS as a single system. The parcel label is generated via the Web API interface from the delivery note release in texware/CS is created by the shipping service provider and transmitted to texware/CS together with the tracking number. Depending on requirements, the customer can then be informed about the shipment by the shipping service provider, texware/CS or the webshop by e-mail, as the data is passed on to the store.
Shopware provides standardized modules for connecting to payment service providers so that, for example, a new payment service provider can be activated with just a few clicks.
The "Webshop expansion" project was implemented in close cooperation between cross-departmental teams at Frottana and the texware/CS-team Martin Speidel and Frank Wittrock. "Communication with everyone involved was very constructive and solution-oriented. When questions arose, a solution was found very quickly," praises David Stephan.
A B2B webshop with secure access for specialist retail customers has also been in use for several months. The interaction between merchandise management and the web store ensures a professional and economically efficient workflow for Frottana's online business. True to the principle of "first create the basis, then scale up", further increases in online business can be handled without any problems.
