Case Study 3: Rebranding & Record Migration – From Schornsteinmarkt to cafiro.de
The Customer:
A market-leading specialist retailer (formerly Schornsteinmarkt) that, as part of a strategic rebranding to cafiro.de, migrated from an outdated xt:Commerce system to a future-proof Shopware environment.
The Challenge: Billions of Variants & Brand Transformation
The project was considered one of the most technically demanding in the industry:
Data Gigantism: More than 75,000 main products with highly complex variant logic in the existing xt:Commerce system posed an extraordinary migration challenge. The first test migration to Shopware 5 revealed the actual problem: transferring the variant logic created theoretically up to 750 million variants for individual products – several billion variants in total. The resulting combinatorial explosion made a 1:1 transfer of the existing data structure technically unjustifiable. A fundamental restructuring of the variant logic was therefore required in order to keep the data volume manageable and ensure the later Shopware platform could be operated with high performance.
Strategic Rebranding: The complete Shopware migration had to take place under the new brand name cafiro.de without losing the trust and search-engine authority built up by Schornsteinmarkt over decades.
SEO Requirement: A relaunch without loss of visibility. Every single URL from the old system had to be mapped exactly to the new cafiro.de brand structure.
High-Speed Hosting: A mobile PageSpeed score of 90+ was required – despite the massive database load caused by design requirements and more than 75,000 products.
Our Solution: High-End Engineering for Complex E-Commerce Systems
Custom Products Architecture Instead of Variant Explosion: Instead of transferring the millions or billions of individual variants created by the existing variant logic unchanged into Shopware, we transformed the product logic into Shopware's Custom Products model. Options and rules were represented structurally instead of pre-generating every possible combination as an individual variant record.
The technical challenge lay in the transformation into this significantly leaner data model. The existing product, option and rule structures had to be interpreted correctly, transferred and represented in Shopware so that the business functionality was preserved without burdening the database with a combinatorial volume of variants.
This is precisely where our many years of technical experience in complex Shopware migrations paid off. As a Shopware agency we combine data migration, custom development and system architecture to transfer even extraordinarily large and complex product catalogs into a Shopware platform that can be operated with high performance over the long term.
Precise Rebranding Mapping: We accompanied the switch to cafiro.de with a seamless SEO strategy that ensured Schornsteinmarkt's organic rankings were transferred to the new domain without significant loss.
Performance Architecture: Implementation of a highly optimized design that radically deviates from the standard, and provision of a specialized HQ GmbH server infrastructure, in order to minimize the extreme query times.
Das Ergebnis:
Successful Rebranding: cafiro.de launched with full SEO power and a modern, high-performance brand identity.
Technical Benchmarks: Despite the billions of variants, the goal of Shopware performance optimization with a PageSpeed score of >90 (mobile) was achieved.
Long-Term Support: HQ GmbH continues to support cafiro.de as a technical partner in its ongoing scaling after the relaunch.
The Long-Term Partnership: High-Performance Infrastructure & Evolution
The History: From the First Performance Analysis to Brand Transformation
The partnership with cafiro.de (then Schornsteinmarkt) began years before the rebranding and evolved from technical analysis and stabilization of the existing xt:Commerce system into long-term support for the entire e-commerce system landscape. In this context, Mathias Goldhan contributed not only his many years of experience in performance optimization and building high-performance e-commerce infrastructures, but also extensive practical Odoo experience.
This experience also formed a foundation for the technical support of cafiro.de's existing Odoo ERP integration. We initially supported the integration in xt:Commerce, technically continued it during the migration to Shopware 5, and then developed it continuously.
The following chronology shows the most important milestones of the partnership – from the first performance analysis through infrastructure, shop and ERP migration to the long-term technical development of cafiro.de.
| Period | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 03/2017 | Technical audit due to acute performance problems in the existing xt:Commerce shop |
| 04/2017 | Migration to a dedicated HQ cluster system; integration of Zimbra for the customer's internal communication |
| from 05/2017 | Ongoing support for xt:Commerce and the connected Odoo ERP solution, including continuous performance optimization |
| 05/2018 | Migration to Shopware 5 & Rebranding: The migration from xt:Commerce to Shopware 5, including the existing Odoo ERP integration and migration of the shop and ERP system landscape, was primarily supported by Lukas Ehrenberg and Christoper Einenkel The existing Odoo integration was technically transferred to Shopware as part of the system change and then continued to be supported. In addition, custom Shopware plugins, automated Shopping Worlds logic and a custom-developed Elasticsearch search were created. |
| 03/2020 | Replacement of Odoo with plentymarkets: The replacement of Odoo with plentymarkets was primarily implemented by Lukas Ehrenberg This included consolidating several projects, complete data migration and connecting Shopware via an externally licensed Plenty connector implemented and adapted by us. In addition, we developed several custom satellite tools for processes that neither Shopware nor plentymarkets could represent in the required form: a purchasing tool for automated merchandise management, price monitoring and automatic product translation. Because plentymarkets limits the number of API requests, we optimized the system integration through request bundling both in the tools we developed ourselves and directly in the connector. This significantly reduced the API load and made communication between Shopware, plentymarkets and the connected applications more efficient. |
| 01/2024 | Migration from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6, including reconnection to plentymarkets via an externally licensed connector implemented and individually adapted by us. |
After the successful rebranding, HQ GmbH's technological expertise forms the foundation for cafiro.de's continued growth. Our partnership today includes:
Scalable Cluster Architecture: To handle the high load stably and reliably, we operate the shop on a highly redundant cluster infrastructure. This includes dedicated load balancers, Varnish caching for fast delivery times, Elasticsearch and Redis instances for performance optimization, a MySQL cluster, and a separate infrastructure of web, backend and NAS servers.
Technological Evolution: We also supported cafiro.de through the next major transformation – the migration from Shopware 5 to the future-proof Shopware 6 platform.
ERP Integration & Ongoing Support: Christopher Einenkel and Lukas Ehrenberg supported the ERP integration and technical evolution of the system landscape. Christopher contributed in particular his expertise in API and integration architectures, while Lukas focused on Shopware development, migration and technical implementation.
Full-Service Support: Through monthly maintenance cycles, continuous updates and custom monitoring, we ensure stable and secure operation. With our 24/7 support and continuous agile further development, we ensure that cafiro.de remains technically high-performing and future-proof.
Mathias Goldhan
Mathias Goldhan legte 1994 das Fundament für die heutige Digitalagentur und führt die HQ GmbH seit 2005 strategisch und operativ. Mit über drei Jahrzehnten Erfahrung in der Softwareentwicklung und Systemarchitektur berät er den Mittelstand und Marken bei der Digitalisierung geschäftskritischer Prozesse. Er ist der strategische Kopf hinter der Positionierung der HQ GmbH unter den Top 100 inhabergeführten Digitalagenturen (iBusiness/BVDW).
Als anerkannter SaaS-Pionier und Spezialist für High-Performance-Hosting konzipiert er hochverfügbare Cluster-Infrastrukturen und leitet die technische Rettung festgefahrener E-Commerce-Großprojekte. Seine Expertise für ausfallsichere Systeme und API-basierte B2B-Automatisierungen steuert er international zwischen dem Hauptsitz in Thüringen und der Niederlassung in Spanien.
