Nieuwkoop Europe Customer Story

How Nieuwkoop Europe digitally bloomed with commercetools.

Nieuwkoop Europe is a leading international company in interior landscaping and the related supply chain market. Based in the Netherlands, the company provides an extensive range of plants, planters and value-added services to interior landscapers, exporters, florists, webshops and green retailers in over 40 countries. The floriculture B2B company specializes in cultivating and acclimatizing imported plants into a "hardened-off" product suitable for an indoor climate. As one of the founders of the modern hydroculture system, a method for plants to grow in water with added nutrients, Nieuwkoop Europe has become the leading producer of hydroculture on the continent.

Markets

40
Headquarters

De Kwakel, The Netherlands
Industry

Wholesale
Business Model

B2B
Worked with Partners

increase in online revenue

languages

countries

The Challenge

Nieuwkoop Europe’s first inroads into eCommerce aimed at increasing revenue beyond its direct sales department, but the webshop worked well only for customers that knew exactly what they wanted. With an extensive offering on display, the webshop required scrolling page by page and lacked intuitive product discovery capabilities to capture new clients.

With a homegrown eCommerce technology reaching the end of its lifecycle, Nieuwkoop Europe decided to future-proof its eCommerce with MACH-based architecture (Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless) powered by commercetools.

The Solution

With the digital agency Incentro, Nieuwkoop Europe selected commercetools Composable Commerce to revamp its B2B eCommerce shop and make it available in four languages and over 40 countries. Beyond placing orders, the new webshop inspires clients with interior landscaping ideas to increase cross-selling opportunities; for example, customers who buy a particular plant may be interested in matching pots or even a complete plant display that can be assembled for them.

Nieuwkoop Europe can also adapt product catalogs to segmented target audiences, such as florists, project designers and garden centers, and differentiate those by country. Capturing this data, the interior landscaping wholesaler can feature products that match specific customer needs, per customer, customer group or country.

Providing personalized commerce experiences is powered by the MACH principles, which leverage APIs and cloud-native architecture with Microsoft Azure and Cloudflare to maximize flexibility and scale online capacity when needed.

As a result of this implementation, we have taken a big step forward in our goal of customer autonomy: Our customers can easily do all their business with Nieuwkoop through the website and our sales department can focus on customer acquisition and value-added services. And, looking at our commercial results, we are seeing nearly 100% increase in our eCommerce revenue.

Paulien Van der Zwet

Manager Marketing & eCommerce, Nieuwkoop Europe B.V.

Why it was a success

Nieuwkoop Europe has set the course for transforming its webshop into a digital world full of inspiration and ideas, with B2B customers now experiencing a smooth UX flow with a B2C-like look and feel. From an old product inventory list to a modern digital experience, the company has fully embraced customer-centric eCommerce and planted the seeds for growth. In three years, eCommerce revenue has nearly increased by 100%.

This digital transformation enabled Nieuwkoop Europe to automate core eCommerce functions, such as advanced search, order history and delivery information. This transition to eCommerce also means calls to internal sales staff are reduced significantly, paving the way for sales reps to focus on their roles as trusted advisors.