Special Edition: Shopware Community Day w/Basecom

Welcome to Commerce Famous, a podcast that celebrates the celebrities of our industry. Join us for a conversation with the taste makers in ecommerce. In their daily lives, these are just normal everyday people like you and me. But to us, they are commerce famous. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Commerce Famous, special Shopware Community Day edition, broadcasting from Cologne, Germany.

We've got a number of guests lined up. First off is a platinum partner of Shopware. A company is called Basecom, who is one of our largest German partners, but also has an office in North America, and is an expanding partner there as well. So, Torben Hahn. Did I say it right?

Yeah. Torben Hahn? Very accurate. That's fine. Feels like a very accurate one.

It's got a lot of lot of special characters there. Yeah. As well as Jonas Dambacher. Very good. That's pretty pretty close.

Danbacher. Long. Yeah. Yeah. So why don't you guys introduce yourselves, and and, describe kinda what's going on at BaseCon?

Yes. I can start. I'm Torben. I'm 35 now. I'm working for BaseCon since almost eleven years.

Did a very long history of ecommerce and the Magento business, business side of Basecom, doing it being a developer, being now since October in The US, doing sales related partnership growth, with Shopware, one of our main partners over there. Yeah. It's basically an ecommerce since eleven years. Fabulous. Jonas.

Yeah. Thank you. I'm Jonas. I'm with Basecom, for seven years now, and, I'm responsible for the sales part, at Basecom. I was responsible for, for the Shopware business unit, at Basecom.

And, I also have a technical background. So I I'm used to to be a developer for for a lot of years, and now I'm on the on the business side. Fantastic. Well, let's talk a little bit about your take on the keynote here at the community day. Obviously, it was kicked off by Sebastian Hamon, our CEO, and he had some special guests, talking about the vision and product strategy, AI, and a bunch of other great stuff.

Love to hear your take. What did you what did you hear that you especially thought was interesting? Yeah. So I think the, the whole AI part is, yeah, you have to talk about AI nowadays. And, it's it's pretty cool to, so merchants can, manage their their whole shop, completely through AI.

I think that's, where many vendors go, and, that's super interesting and cool to to to to be here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for me, it's the first SCD. So also my first keynote to see over here, like, it's a very nice, area what what we are in here.

They're here, like, like, the place where it is in Yep. The conference center. And it's like, the keynote was great. I really like the part, like, where we showcase the content creation piece inside of software. What was the name again?

The exact name? Experience Studio. Oh, yeah. The Experience Studio. It was crazy to see how how product pages will change in the future and how fast you can generate these.

And I also like the vision like that. There's not like a target is not anymore like a target group or a customer group, more like every client or customer has to get a specific page for each individual. This is like the idea is great. Yes. That we're getting to a spot where, you know, a a lot of people in ecommerce have marketing degrees, and there's this concept of mass dynamic personalization, which basically means everybody gets a relevant experience for them.

Yeah. Yes. Their age, their their all their preferences. There's an experience that's delivered that's purpose built for them. And that's really what the heart of Experience Studio is, is the ability to create those experiences on the fly autonomously that match their their their use case.

Yeah. And also what, Sebastian, told us. So, in the b two b, there's a change. So mostly, I think it the number was, over 70% of the people, millennials or Gen c in b two b, business. So they they are used to buy online Yeah.

And not offline. So this changes. Commerce payments is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open source ecommerce platform for mid market and lower enterprise merchants. More than 50,000 clients already process over $25,000,000,000 in annual GMV through Shopware. Find out more about Shopware and the best value in e commerce at shopware.com.

Yes. Exactly. We'll talk a little bit about, what you guys are seeing at Basecom. You know, Basecom is a world class system integrator who makes these companies basically implement Shopware and other technologies. What are you guys seeing and hearing on the ground when you talk to merchants?

What are some of those themes? You know, obviously AI, but more specifically, what are some of the things that are resonating with the market today? I think one of the things that, like, people want to own their data and have the full flexibility inside of a system. Like, they want to have, like we want to make sure who got the data at which time and really want to integrate to different systems for sure, but still want to know where this data is flowing and which countries the data is used to. And this is one of the main pieces.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree on that. Yeah. That it's an excellent point because there's a I mean, we're getting to the spot where there's as many agents in the world as there are podcasts, which means probably too many of both.

But, what's interesting about it is when people are utilizing all these new AIs, they're essentially giving a lot of their customer data, a lot of their data, a lot of their proprietary business processes, a lot of the things that really are gold for these businesses Yeah. But they're giving them to these shared services, which can use that information for whatever purpose they want. Yeah. Right. Is that when you talk about data sovereignty and control, is that what you're talking about, Torben?

Yeah. This is what I meant. Like, you are admin possible is, like, you want to make sure that your data is on your own servers and you you didn't know what was only on your server or your infrastructure because you you you controlled it on your own. But now, whereas, like, you more or less have to use external services, of course, there's also open and open source alternatives. Yep.

But these were, I think I don't have as much experience with it right now, but I think these are not as far as the changes outside with the big players in the in this market. So for sure, open source can also have a have a, have a place in this whole journey, but it's still like they they cannot move as fast as the big players, I think. Yep. And it's super interesting that that Shopware is still open source. So Sebastian, also told us today, so it's still open source.

You can still, so developers can still, enhance the, the software solution, and that that's pretty cool. I think we're getting more crisp as well on where we're different, where we're special. You know, I've been in ecommerce for a long time, twenty six years. And what I've noticed is it's a it's a really follow the leader kinda game, where if one, let's call it platform, does a certain thing, charges a rev share, monetizes payments, whatever, you see a lot of people fast follow, and they basically copy those practices, copycat league. But what I love about what I heard today is, yeah, we've got a Shopware payments offering.

However, it's the but that matters more, which is no fees for using other third parties. Still gonna be open to your data at your customers. Like, it those things that are different, I think I think stand us apart. And there is a Shopware merchant that is a great fit for us, and making sure we know where those lines are drawn, I think, is part of the goal of today. Yeah.

I think you want to make it as easy as possible to use your platform or your solution. So, like, Shopware is providing this this Shopware payment is one of his many examples, I think. But we are still open, like, if you have a more, like maybe it's a more difficult setup. Maybe they have an existing contract with another payment provider, for example. Maybe they use your payment provider for the next two years because we have the contract, and then we can move to Shopware payments if they want to do so.

But also, like, I'm maybe a new client, can, like, okay. I can start right now. I can see if I see limitations. Maybe there are limitations, maybe there are not. And if I see anything, I can still decide if I want to go to another solution or do I maybe have the same limitations.

So it's open for me to choose what I want to have. And the same for the data. So you can simply start. You you can, you can create your shop. You can, upload your your product data, super simple, or you can use Nexus, for example, to integrate your ERP system.

So, also, you can start simple, but you can grow, with your business. And the platform will also grow. Absolutely. So you talked, Jonas, about NexSys. For the listeners, what is Shopware NexSys based on what you heard today?

How do you describe it? Yeah. So so, basically, Nexus is, is a middleware. So you can connect your, APIs, or you can connect different, APIs, to the to the shopper system. So, for example, you can connect your ERP system.

You can connect, your, shipment service provider and so on. And, you you just so, we saw that on the on the stage today. You can just, with a few clicks, your workflow is done, and your data is in the system. And that's pretty cool. Yeah.

And it does, where you effectively have all the automatic mapping of all the fields, and you can modify them in real time. So, you know, as an agency who monetizes the implementations, how do you guys view something like a nexus, which will ultimately make it both faster and less expensive to do, a new stand up of a new store? How do you guys view that? I think it's also more even okay. Maybe for us, it's more competitive, like, which deals we win, what we can do, which way you can we provide, but we can also, like, focus on the real things that matters at the end.

Like, because okay. Also, of course, we can spend many, many hours integrating EAP or something, but this is more like a fun way to do it. And so if a developer experience is better, it makes more fun. It's also like, okay, then I can do another job, and I have more time to think about with something else. Maybe I have new ideas.

I have time to think how can I provide value? In the past, it was more like, I got this whole bunch of tickets I have to work through, so there was no real time to think about providing value to the client. So I think this is a great approach to do so. And the merchants, can can use their budget, to to invest, in in in in the client, in the customer. So they don't have to to pay a lot of money to get their APIs and systems integrated, but they can focus on have a nice, product detail page, for example.

Yes. And or redirect some of those those costs towards things like marketing, which will effectively grow their business or other things. No. I I really appreciate you guys' perspective on that. One one of the debates we had internally is, you know, when we roll out Nexus, it's gonna dramatically improve the time to launch Shopware, but it's also gonna dramatically reduce the cost for merchants to launch, which has an implication on our agency partners.

Yeah. We're very, very partner centric here at Shopware. And so we were very concerned about how will agencies embrace this if they will or won't. Yeah. So your take was very healthy.

Yeah. I think it's, like, it's maybe the same with other platforms as well. So when it is still, like, a budget for us, but maybe not as a big budget anymore like it was in the past, but still fine for us because we want to provide value. So, okay, then you have to get more clients to get the same kind of revenue at the end. Okay.

That's fine. But there's a market that that's challenging for sure, but I like the the the competition. Fabulous. Talk a little bit about Basecom, the company. You guys have some unbelievable customers.

Like I said, I think you're a top five shopware agency globally. Who are some of the companies you work with, that utilize shopware? Talking about b to b or b to c? Whatever you want. Okay.

So so in b to c, I think, also, so so it's a worldwide company. In Germany, it's called Florop. Yeah. And in The US, it's called Interflora. No.

It's called FTD. Okay. But but it's, it's the same. So they are globally connected, and you can send flowers. You can send flowers to nearly any address, in the world.

And, we implemented the, the German shop for them. So, actually, if you are living in Germany and you want to to send flowers to your relatives, whoever, in The US, for example, you can just do that, through our shop. And that was a pretty cool journey. For for example, on on mother's day, it's the sales are increasing on that day, and we also have to so so they are also on, on Shopware, pass. So we have to, to scale the the whole infrastructure behind it.

So so that's one client, we Let me pause you on that one because I love that example. So Americans know it as FTD. And so, again, when you send flowers to someone, you're using the FTD network, which is a network of boutique florists in every small town across the country. Absolutely. The world, Europe.

Yeah. My wife is from a small village in Switzerland. And when you walk down, you see a little flower store, and they have the FLUOROP sticker in it, which basically means it's this network of think of them like fulfillment engines and entities, that take these orders, process them, and fulfill them wherever the order needs to be fulfilled. Absolutely. And in the in this case, Shopware is not only a simple online shop.

It's it's more like a marketplace. So when you when you, when you go on the website, you you put in the delivery address, and then there's a live live call. And we, we're getting all the information, which floors, which bookies are available at that, exact address. And that's pretty cool. Yes.

And if you think the analogy we use in The United States is, do you have to build the church for Easter Sunday? Meaning, do you have to build out enough capacity and support for everybody who goes to church once a year to show up all on the same day? Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. And that's what happens for fluoro with Mother's Day. Everybody remembers their mom. Yeah. Way too late, by the way.

The data shows that people are ordering very last minute Yeah. When they order them flowers for their mom. And this is also what we see in the numbers. Right? If we look at the reportings during Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, like, the day before, VEP really has to it's a challenging time for VEP at the end, like, to get all the right data and to to transfer all the orders at the end.

Yeah. And you have to be able to scale on a dime. Yeah. You're getting race conditions worth millions of users all hitting the system at the exact same time, placing orders for their mom. Yeah.

And it's also interesting how long this business exists in general. Like, now we digital it it's digitization, so we have it in the ecommerce shop for sure. But even my grandma already knows it before. So because this business exists for such a long time already. Absolutely.

Okay. So, Jonas, that was an excellent b to c customer. Do you have a b to b example? Yeah. Actually, it's, so we we have a lot of hidden champions, in the market.

For example, one client is, here today. It's called Filande. They are selling, a pomfruit and French fries? French fries. Sorry.

In, in English, it's French fries. Freedom fries if you really want Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

And and and what's pretty interesting, they have a lot of people, doing manual, sales stuff, like, you have sales reps out there. And, with Shopware and, the support of AI, you can, automate a lot of things. So that's one example. We have, a client, which have over, 2,000,000 products in the shop, and it's still running smooth. So a lot of, a lot of a lot of examples here.

I love that. And the the the two things I think that matter the most, from what I heard, the two takeaways I had, one is enormous catalog. And the second is the sales rep need to get value out of the commerce system. Absolutely. And so the problem when we start talking about b to c versus b to b is b to c are fairly standard trading patterns.

You have the business and you have the customer and how do you optimize for that. But then in b to b, you've got the sales rep, you've got, in in some cases, the installer, in some cases, the designer, you've got the website itself. I mean, so it's this complicated trading pattern that really companies like Basecom utilizing Shopware can can really optimize for. Yep. Yep.

And you have a lot of different requirements for for b two b. So, in in my in my time at at Basecom, I saw a lot of b two b shops, like, thirty, forty shops, and all of them are completely different. Yeah. So so there are some parts which are, the same, like like, individual pricing, but but some are totally different. Yeah.

And every workshop, like, we do a workshop upfront with all of our clients for sure to get all the requirements and to understand their business. And this is the main part that we that we have to focus on. We have to understand the business to rebuild this business in an e commerce solution at the end. Like, you really have to understand all the business logic that is that you have to implement afterwards. And so which really came to the details at the end to understand how they use and shop, how do did they do it before, which processes do we do they do manually, Which ones can we do with AI now?

So where can we help you? Where can we help? Where can we provide value again? Like, it's it's the same over and over, but every time it's different. Yeah.

They all have what I find fascinating about the b to b businesses we work with is they're let's call it 70% the same, but the 30% that varies is what the secret sauce is. It's the way they price, the way they deliver, the way their sales reps engage. It's those things that make them different from everybody else, which is in that 30%. Yeah. Correct.

Correct. And so, you know, you don't wanna force everyone into the same box with a standard solution that everyone has to fit into. You'd rather give them the you'd rather force the software to work with the way their processes work. Mhmm. So you gotta find a platform that's designed, which is what we think Shopware is, to to kinda meet those unique needs.

Yeah. You have to be very flexible, when it comes to implementation. So Anchorpo, has all the right toolsets to do so. Yeah. And I you said something earlier around automating business processes.

One of the things I've seen from Basecom is, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and so and expecting a different result. What's interesting about automating of processes, it's insanity to automate a process that shouldn't exist. And so through your, workshops, you guys essentially go in and you analyze these processes actually make you a better company, make it a differentiated. These other ones just need to go away. And so your process digitizes businesses, but in the process, optimizes them for kinda today.

Yeah. You agree with that? Yeah. That's right. And still, it's like not to ex to replace existing employees at the company, but these employees should focus on things that matter again.

Like That's right. They have to focus on other things. They can work on content. They can work on making sure that the client gets what what he really wants. Maybe can can do it spend time in a call afterwards to make to make, like, is the customer satisfied with all the things that they are doing?

And, like Yep. Instead of having spreadsheets, typing orders manually inside VIP or something like that. Yeah. I've never met anybody who works in ecommerce that can get through their to do list. Yeah.

I know. And so if you take the lowest value, highest automatable stuff and you automate it, it leaves a lot of time and energy to focus on the stuff that matters the most. Correct. And that is also like the fun part because this time where you spend so much time, normally, it's not the fun part. You want to get to the other things because you you had a thought, having a shower, had a new thought, write it down.

It's the lightest item on the action item on the action item list. Yep. But the top part is, like, where you focus on the most of your time. It's just like, but you don't want to do that. Love it.

Love it. Well, gentlemen, Torben and Jonas, thank you for joining me in the mobile podcast, the first one we've ever done. Thanks for being our guinea pigs. Thanks for having us. And, appreciate your partnership, and enjoy the rest of community day.

Yeah. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye.