With these tools, schuhe.de relies on a combination of online and offline business.

1. Simply (do it yourself)
2. Strong partner at the side
3. Importance of Social Media
4. Project management across national borders
5. On the search
6. These tools are used by schuhe.de

Online plays the music - a look into the inner cities of Germany is enough to see where the trend in retail is going. This also applies to the shoe trade. The online platform schuhe.de, can offer its customers over 200,000 different items. This is possible because many local dealers* have recognized how important online business has become. So more than 1,700 shoe stores cannot avoid the platform of schuhe.de. Here they can bring their range of shoes, accessories and sportswear to the man or woman even faster. For schuhe.de, this not only means success, but also a great challenge in the logistics of this cooperative group structure. How this works and which tools help is shown by Arlett Ruhtz, product manager of schuhe.de and responsible for internal/external communication and her colleague Martin Baumgartner, IT expert and product manager of Qualibet.

In our series "Tech Stack" we show which tools digital companies use and have them explain why they have chosen these software solutions.

The concept of schuhe.de is easy to explain: All shoes on the online platform are not in a central warehouse, but can be found at one of the affiliated shoe stores throughout Germany and Austria. Thus, customers not only support the online business, but also the local shoe retailers*. "The connection of online and offline goes even further, because we offer the function Click & Collect, which allows to reserve shoes and pick them up personally at a shoe store", says Arlett Ruhtz from schuhe.de. With the many possibilities and the continuous connection of online and offline business, the requirements for special software systems have become bigger. "The 'egg-laying wool milk sow software for e-commerce' is simply missing, but of course there will never be only one software that is tailored to the individual needs of a company and can do everything", explains Martin Baumgartner. In addition to numerous tools, schuhe.de also relies on its own software solution in the e-commerce sector.

Simply (do it yourself)

So that all dealers* can process their platform business on schuhe.de as quickly and easily as possible, the company relies on the completely self-developed tool Qualibet. This is a marketplace control tool for e-commerce in the B2B sector, which supports both in the control and in the administration and evaluation of the online business. "Our dealers* can create and configure their products on the marketplaces at schuhe.de and beyond - this also includes the entire shipping and returns management", explains Martin Baumgartner the process.

In the field of image production, schuhe.de also relies on its own development: "Last year we programmed an image app that allows our dealers* to shoot independent product images with just a few resources", says Arlett Ruhtz. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the images are cut out in real time and the dealers* only have to fill in a few mandatory attributes so that this information can be uploaded directly into the systems of schuhe.de. "We needed a technology that allows us to integrate more products quickly and easily in addition to our classic photo box processes. If this technology had been available earlier, we would have bought it just as quickly, but so we have also become creative here and have developed something of our own", says Ruhtz.

Strong partner at the side

To ensure that the shipping of the products runs smoothly with the different shipping service providers*, the online platform also relies on the tool Shipcloud."The software really provides a consistent interface for shipping and is a very big and important support for the labeling and tracking of all shipments", adds Baumgartner. The Hamburg-based shipping service provider is a cloud-based shipping platform and offers an interface to all relevant shipping service providers*, such as DHL, DPD, Hermes or GLS. With shipcloud, schuhe.de can easily switch between the various shipping service providers*. In addition, shipcloud offers the possibility to order decentralized shipping services - for example from the store or warehouse of the respective dealers* - at central shipping conditions. "This is of course a great advantage for us as a platform operator", says Martin Baumgartner. "And the service of shipcloud works very well, has probably also spread among our dealers*, because about 90 percent have decided to use it."

shipcloud and Qualibet are thus the tools that are used daily and most often at schuhe.de in operational business. "The provision of offers on marketplaces goes hand in hand with the fulfillment of the resulting orders", says Baumgartner. "In order to offer our customers the best possible service, we proactively control the flow of goods also via our shipping service providers*."

Importance of Social Media

Not only in the area of e-commerce, the online platform schuhe.de is testing and growing. Also the topic of influencer marketing has become bigger. "A few years ago we organized the area completely in-house and supported up to 10 influencers", tells Arlett Ruhtz. "The associated know-how has been built up in our team over time through experience values." Since 2019, an external agency has been supporting influencer marketing and now controls the majority of influencer campaigns. This has significantly reduced the administrative effort.

When it comes to further social media implementation, images are created with their own seasonal photo shootings. For image editing, the team at schuhe.de relies on the Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva Pro. With the tool Styla the creative team also creates landing pages, where seasonal theme worlds are created and offered as shopping aids through editorial shopping. Also on their own Instagram channel, schuhe.de relies on the shopping function and connects online business with storytelling here. The content planning is implemented by the team with the tool Flowbox, which serves as coordination and inspiration for user generated content.

Project management across national borders

In project management, schuhe.de relies on several tools. "We switched to O365 Microsoft over two years ago in the entire network and use especially Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Teams for our work", explains Arlett Ruhtz and confirms: "This has made a big step forward in communication and collaboration and replaced the classic network drive." This way, colleagues and teams can also work independently of location, which has brought great flexibility to the work. In addition, Jira and Confluence from Atlassian are used in IT project management.

To be able to flexibly view sales statistics for brands and products, schuhe.de relies on Qualibet Statistics for its dealers*, which is integrated in the tool Qualibet. Here, return and cancellation rates as well as key figures over different periods can be compared with each other.

On the search

When Arlett Ruhtz looks back at the past years, she confirms, schuhe.de was able to record many successes in new processes in addition to online business. However, according to Ruhtz, there is still room for improvement in the area of e-mail marketing. At present, the team uses the tool Newsletter2go from Brevo (ehemals Sendinblue), with which it has been satisfied so far. "However, we are growing so strongly with schuhe.de that we will switch to a new system that allows us to create and evaluate 360 degree profiles of our users", adds Ruhtz.

For this, the team is still in the final onboarding phase with the provider, through whom the marketing channels will be personalized and AI-based in real time in the future. "This should above all further improve customer loyalty and satisfaction on schuhe.de and in the long term lift it to the next level", says Arlett Ruhtz.

These tools are used by schuhe.de

Here is a list of the most important tools used at schuhe.de:

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