Lex & Hesse GmbH

B2B Shop for Vehicle Parts with 400,000 Products

Lex & Hesse is part of the Swiss HESS AG – an internationally active corporate group in its third generation. The core business is automotive parts wholesale, complemented by technical trade, hydraulic products and exchange turbochargers. The company specializes in spare parts for buses, rail vehicles and thermal management.

We have been maintaining the e-commerce platform for many years – from the migration to Shopware 6 to the current platform with approximately 400,000 products, multiple warehouse locations, and a deep integration with Sage b7.

This is not a standard setup. Customer-specific pricing with real-time calculation, a complex part number search, vehicle assignment via TecDoc and customer-individual payment and shipping options make this project technically demanding.

🔄 Migration from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6

The platform originally ran on Shopware 5. Growing requirements for performance, B2B functionality and integration depth made the switch to Shopware 6 necessary. Shopware 5 was increasingly hitting its limits – both in mapping complex B2B pricing logic and in scaling the integrations. Learn more about system modernization and migration.

The migration was completed within six months. Not only was data migrated, but the entire integration architecture was rebuilt from scratch. The existing Sage interface, the search logic and the TecDoc integration were completely redesigned and reimplemented. Existing workarounds from the Shopware 5 era were replaced with clean, maintainable solutions. The frontend was modernized and tailored to B2B daily operations – fast navigation, efficient ordering processes and a search built around part numbers rather than product names.

🔗 Sage b7 ERP Integration

The ERP system Sage b7 serves as the central data source for the entire business operation. All business-relevant data – from article master data to pricing logic to customer conditions – is managed in Sage and synchronized to the shop. The connection runs via the Sage b7 web service and was also upgraded to Sage b7.5 during the project. Sage-side customizations to the web service and specialized ERP configurations were implemented in collaboration with Schommers IT. Learn more about our approach to ERP integrations.

One of the central challenges was the performance of the Sage integration. The web service delivers data for prices, stock levels and article information – on every page load, individually per customer. In the original implementation, total load times for a listing page – including price calculation, stock queries and rendering – exceeded one second. Through targeted optimizations and an intelligent caching concept, we brought load times well below one second.

The interface synchronizes bidirectionally:

Products and Categorization – Article master data is imported from Sage and automatically assigned to the appropriate Shopware categories. With approximately 400,000 products, this is essential – manual assignment would not be economically viable. Changes to article data in Sage are automatically propagated to the shop without manual intervention.

Real-Time Stock Levels – Inventory levels across multiple locations including consignment warehouse are queried in real time and merged in the shop. The shop displays current stock per warehouse. Customers can see at a glance whether an article is available at a specific location and plan their orders accordingly.

Orders – Incoming orders are automatically transferred to Sage. Order status, shipping information and tracking numbers flow back to the shop. The entire process from order to shipping notification runs without manual steps.

Customers – Customer master data, delivery addresses, payment terms and credit limits are synchronized between systems. New customers registering in the shop are created in Sage. Changes to customer data in Sage are synchronized to the shop.

Customer-Specific Pricing – Every B2B customer sees their individually negotiated prices. The calculation takes into account discount levels, quantity scales, special promotions and individual conditions – performant even with 400,000 articles and thousands of individual price lists.

🔍 Product Search Based on Elasticsearch

Search is the central tool in the shop. Workshops and dealers don't search by product name – they search by part numbers: OE numbers, manufacturer reference numbers, cross-reference numbers. If you need a brake disc in this market, you know the number – not the name.

This makes search a fundamentally different challenge compared to a typical B2C shop. A single brake disc can be known under dozens of different numbers: the original number from the vehicle manufacturer, reference numbers from various parts manufacturers, cross-reference numbers from catalogs. Customers enter these numbers with spaces, hyphens, dots or in completely different formats. A standard search reliably fails here.

The solution is based on Elasticsearch (compatible with OpenSearch) and combines two search modes:

Exact Number Search – Precise hits when a known part number is entered correctly. If you know the right number, you get the right result immediately – no need to navigate through filters or categories.

Fuzzy Number Search – Tolerance for typos, missing separators and alternative formats. Cross-reference numbers, OE references and manufacturer numbers are mapped to each other, so a product can be found via any of its known numbers.

The combination of exact and fuzzy search ensures that precise queries hit immediately while imprecise inputs still lead to the correct result. For daily workshop operations, this means: enter number, find part, order. No detours.

🚗 TecDoc Integration

TecDoc is the industry standard for vehicle parts data in the automotive aftermarket. The data catalog contains structured information on millions of spare parts – vehicle assignments, original part numbers, technical data, images and documents. The integration connects the Shopware catalog with this data on multiple levels and strategically enriches the shop's own product data. A typical example of system integration in e-commerce.

Search – TecDoc is integrated as an extension of the search. Part numbers and OE references are found even when they are not maintained in the shop's own inventory. The customer doesn't notice – the search works transparently in the background and delivers a unified result.

Article Images – Proprietary product images and TecDoc images are merged. TecDoc fills in missing views and provides additional perspectives – such as technical drawings or alternative angles. With 400,000 products, this is a significant advantage for the visual quality of the shop. Very few articles remain without an image.

OE Numbers – Original equipment part numbers from vehicle manufacturers are displayed on the product and are searchable. Workshops can search directly with the number from the vehicle registration document. OE numbers from TecDoc are merged with numbers stored in the shop's own catalog to ensure the most complete assignment possible.

Documents – Technical data sheets, installation instructions and safety data sheets from TecDoc are merged with proprietary documents and available for download on the product page. Workshops get the information they need for installation directly in the shop.

Vehicle Overview – A searchable vehicle matrix enables parts search by vehicle manufacturer, model and engine type. Customers can select their vehicle and see all matching parts – filtered and sorted. Vehicle data comes from both TecDoc and an internal data source and is merged. Especially for special vehicles like buses and rail vehicles, which are not fully covered in TecDoc, the internal data source is essential.

🏢 B2B Suite and Customer-Specific Pricing

The shop is aimed exclusively at business customers. The Shopware B2B Suite provides the foundation for company-specific workflows.

Together with the Sage integration, it creates a system that maps the entire B2B purchasing process – from price calculation through ordering to delivery.

Customer-Specific Pricing – Every customer sees their individual conditions from Sage b7. In practice, this means: a customer opens a category with hundreds of articles and instantly sees their individual prices – calculated from discount levels, quantity scales and special conditions.

Roles and Permissions – Companies can create multiple users with different authorization levels. Buyers place orders, supervisors approve them. Larger customers with multiple branches can map their internal approval processes in the shop.

Structured Ordering Processes – Shopping carts can be saved, shared and used as templates for repeat orders. For workshops that regularly order the same wear parts, this saves considerable time. Instead of searching for the same articles individually every week, an existing template is loaded and ordered with a single click.

Customer-Individual Payment and Shipping – Not every customer sees the same options. Payment and shipping methods are controlled based on customer account, delivery address, article type and availability. Bulky goods and hazardous materials trigger dedicated shipping rules. A customer with a credit limit sees different payment options than a new customer, and an article with a hazardous goods classification is shipped differently than a standard part.

📊 Project at a Glance