Bikes.de Customer Story

How Bikes.de simplified its online marketplace with flexible, composable architecture to supercharge growth.

The leading digital marketplace Bikes.de brings more than 100 specialized dealers online and offers around 5,000 bicycles and e-bikes from over 50 top brands to enthusiastic cyclists. Bikes.de provides a platform for local dealers to reach a broader customer base with high-quality product images, videos, comparisons and detailed test reports. What’s more, local dealers can carry out test rides, purchases, adjustments, personalized on-site services and repairs in the comprehensive Bikes.de network. Bikes.de is a joint venture of BICO Zweirad Marketing GmbH and TEC The Enabling Company, a subsidiary of Hubert Burda Media Holding.

Revenue

5 Million USD
Markets

1
Headquarters

Verl, Germany
Industry

Retail
Business model

B2C
Worked with Partners
- Contentful
- Symfony
- Heroku
- kernpunkt
- Unzer

Commerce APIs

Response Time (SLA)

Days for Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

The Challenge

Creating a minimum viable product (MVP) and launching an online marketplace for bicycles in under 100 days was an ambitious goal for Bikes.de. In addition to developing a modern frontend quickly, they needed to connect the various ERP systems of specialized dealers to map and simplify the digital reservation and payment processes.

The Solution

While Bikes.de already benefited from commercetools Composable Commerce for its B2B online shop, the next step was to connect its multi-dealer structure and respective ERP systems within the platform. Thanks to the commercetools API-first solution, the company was able to implement multiple purchase options quickly, such as click & reserve and click & collect. This enabled a future-ready business model to scale product variations.

The headless shop approach and composable architecture provide the flexibility we need in our complex marketplace model. Bikes.de offers 6,000 different bicycle models to the end customer, broken down into 33,000 variants in frame shape, color and size. These are, in turn, offered by more than 150 different dealers for different purchase options (click & reserve, click & collect and purchase & shipping). We are now able to implement the resulting complex combinations in a simple, manageable buy box logic with the help of commercetools.

Georg Wagner

Head of Marketing, BICO Zweirad Marketing GmbH

Why it was a success

The MVP launch provided a flexible infrastructure to power the different product combinations available on Bikes.de. Implementing composable commerce has led to higher speed conversions and less complexity in managing product information in the backend. At the same time, customers gained the option to configure their dream bikes easily — an appealing customer experience that drives conversions up.

After a successful MVP launch with the help of systems integrator kernpunkt, Bikes.de integrated a payment service by Unzer into its marketplace to streamline payment for local dealers. In addition, the team at Bikes.de developed a deeper integration into the retailers’ ERP systems for an optimized matching of products, availability and orders, reaping the benefits from the MACH architecture.

On top of backend changes, Bikes.de set up a magazine for biking enthusiasts available on its frontend. Powered by the headless CMS provider Contentful, this component enables the editors at TEC The Enabling Company, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Hubert Burda Media Holding, to create articles and landing pages independently from the IT team.