Quooker
From B2B to B2B2C with a fully integrated IT-landscape
The Quooker case is a great example of how a fully integrated IT-landscape, improved data quality, a user-friendly, attractive design, and features including a store-locator blend together into one seamless, harmonious retail experience for the B2C stakeholders of the manufacturer. Which made a global rollout happen in a matter of months.
Historically a Dutch B2B manufacturer, Quooker designs, develops, manufactures, and sells taps providing instantaneous boiling, chilled and sparkling water. The company was founded in 1970 and nowadays sells over 110.000 units each year. Quooker is a traditional Dutch family company, but Quooker is on the verge of conquering the rest of the world. Providing as many private kitchens as possible with boiling water, in a smart and responsible way with a Quooker tap, that is the ambition. The taps are sold all over Europe, the UK, Nordics, the Emirates, and even Asia. As a traditional B2B company the Quooker taps are distributed through more than 10.000 dealers and because of their growth, the company's turnover doubles every 3 years.
Through the new online platform, Quooker has evolved from a B2B manufacturer to a B2B2C company, serving the client directly through its web portal. The digital transformation was needed for Quooker because of the launch of the Quooker CUBE where consumers have to buy CO2 cylinders for sparkling water. Later they started to sell service-parts directly to consumers and in new countries complete Quooker-systems. By using a state-of-the-art Magento 2 e-commerce platform and a fully optimized PIM platform Quooker uses its websites to drive traffic to its reseller network, thereby closing the gap of the channel conflict emerging from an online approach targeting end-users.
The company is growing immensely, and they are having tremendous international success. Quooker is rapidly expanding to new foreign markets to scale its business. Therefore, the company needs to go live with new storefronts both quickly and efficiently, their online services need to be able to keep up with this rapid growth and the systems load that is generated. Additionally, the internal systems and software require continual evaluation to determine if they are still a good fit for the growth ambitions and scale of the business.
13
Online shops in a matter of months
3
Turnover doubles every 3 years
110.000
Quooker units sold each year
Customers can find product information on the site, find a store close to them and order accessories and supplies needed to keep their Quooker product running smoothly.
Our solution
Quooker is a B2B company that transformed into a B2B2C business by starting to serve end-users on their website via an e-commerce platform. This demanded a different approach and strategy. The platform also offers a store-locator, driving traffic to the dealers. Customers can now easily access information, while sales traffic is still drawn to the distributor network. To realize the new and improved platform, Youwe’s design team created a new brand style to improve the customer experience, Quooker chose a modern e-commerce platform from Magento and used the Product Information Management system Pimcore to its full potential.
Magento
Magento offered Quooker a way to showcase their brand and the functionalities of their product on a responsive, design-oriented site that offers a great user experience. The possibilities to integrate with a PIM system and their own ERP system in addition to the many available plugins and possibilities to tailor functionalities such as a store-locator as well as the opportunity to launch a website in a bespoke design created by Youwe's design team were crucial to the decision. The brand moreover was convinced by the flexible CMS, mobile-friendly configuration, and multi-lingual and multi-currency support. Modules including the store locator and payment interfaces were built using the Magento Marketplace. On top of that, Youwe developed some extra features.
The modular setup of Magento allowed us to extend the platform in a way that it stays easy to maintain. Youwe is responsible for the continual development of the Magento 2 platform Quooker is using to conduct online sales. Continual development consists of delivering new features, ensuring the technical architecture can keep up with the growing demand, as well as discuss implementation options with Quooker. Youwe also ensures the platform can be rolled out to new countries in an efficient manner and provides support and guidance to Quooker in terms of using the Magento 2 platform as seamlessly as possible.
Pimcore
Quooker uses Pimcore as both PIM (Product Information Management) and DAM (Digital Assets Management), Pimcore contains all the product information, descriptions, and prices used on the Magento 2 platform. Additionally, Pimcore is also functioning as a CDN (Content Delivery Network) by serving all image assets to the Magento 2 storefronts directly. This prevents overhead and increases store performance. Finally, Pimcore is also used as an API to allow additional retrieval of product information. The API allows Quooker to use the data in a dynamic and innovative way.
PIM
Quooker uses Pimcore to create, update, and manage product information. In this case, product information contains all information about products such as descriptions and prices, but also all associated category information. All this information is exported by Pimcore on an hourly basis and then imported into the e-commerce application. This allows Pimcore to be a one-stop-shop destination for content editors to edit all product information, category structures, and the relationship between the two. Through the sheer number of options to extend and expand product information, managing a catalog of products, categories, and all associated information, Pimcore is the single point of truth.
DAM
Besides product information, Quooker also uses Pimcore to maintain digital assets. This is not simply limited to product images but supporting files and documentation can also be maintained through Pimcore. The ability to link digital assets to specific products or categories makes it easier to manage assets on a product level. Additionally, since all assets are also retrievable on an individual level, this allows external applications to simply request an asset and show it directly, as opposed to saving a duplicated copy and serving it from local storage. In a way, this can turn PIM into a lightweight Content Delivery Network.
API
Due to the Pimcore architecture, the sky is the limit when working with product data and using it in innovative ways. The platform is capable of storing and managing complex relations between different pieces of product information, this creates unique opportunities to create additional value; both to merchants as well as customers. Quooker decided to leverage these opportunities by offering customers a product configurator to empower them to construct their own ideal Quooker system, which improved the customer experience tremendously.
The results
The result is a Magento 2 webshop with several external integrations that can keep up with Quooker’s high growth demands for years to come. We built a service parts shop, a savings check tool, a renewed product/tap configurator, a brand and dealer portal in Pimcore, an address check, and an entirely new deploy structure. There now is a solid foundation to expand and extend the platform to new markets and territories, allowing an immense upscale potential of the business and digital presence.
After an initial go-live in The Netherlands and Belgium, the platform has since been rolled out to multiple countries, such as the Nordics, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and the United Kingdom (including its overseas territories), Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. Also, we transformed Pimcore into a way that it can be used as a CDN, which serves all webshop assets directly instead of only using it as a product management system exporting data and images and making sure the PIM system is a single point of truth which took the data quality to the next level. Pimcore is used in the best possible way and contributes to a better customer experience just as the new and improved UX design and brand style of the brand.
