Walter Schork GmbH

Online Shop for Car Accessories with 200,000 Products

Walter Schork is a retailer for car accessories – roof boxes, rear carriers, bike racks and transport solutions for passenger vehicles. The company is part of the Carat Group, one of the largest purchasing cooperatives in the automotive aftermarket.

We took over the shop as an existing Shopware 5 installation. The system was running, but the integrations were outdated, performance was hitting its limits with 200,000 products and search engine visibility had room for improvement. Our brief: modernize, stabilize and increase visibility.

🔄 Migration from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6

As with many Shopware 5 projects, the switch to Shopware 6 was not simply a data migration but a rebuild of the technical foundation. Shopware 5 was reaching its limits with the product volume and integration architecture. Learn more about system modernization and migration.

The migration included transferring 200,000 products with all master data, categories, customer accounts and order histories. At the same time, the entire integration architecture was rebuilt – moving away from file-based imports toward real-time web service connections.

🔗 Sage b7 ERP Integration: From CSV to Web Service

The existing ERP integration with Sage b7 was entirely based on CSV file exchange. Product data, prices and stock levels were exported and imported at regular intervals as CSV files. This was error-prone, slow and difficult to debug. Changes in Sage took minutes to hours to appear in the shop, depending on the import cycle.

During the migration, the critical interfaces were moved to the Sage b7 web service:

Prices – Prices are now queried in real time via the web service instead of being periodically imported – without delays from import cycles.

Stock Levels – Inventory is queried live instead of periodically imported. The shop displays the current state, not the state from the last import.

Orders – Incoming orders are transferred directly to Sage. Order status and shipping information flow back to the shop.

CSV-based synchronization was retained for product master data, where batch imports are more efficient than individual queries for 200,000 products. The combination of real-time web service for business-critical data and batch import for master data is a pragmatic approach that balances performance and data freshness.

📈 Automated SEO Generation for 200,000 Products

Manual SEO maintenance for 200,000 products is not economically viable. At the same time, many product pages lacked meaningful titles, descriptions and meta information – a significant disadvantage for organic visibility.

We implemented workflows that automatically generate SEO-optimized information:

Titles – Product titles are composed rule-based from product attributes: manufacturer, product type, vehicle compatibility, key features. No generic titles, but specific descriptions that work for both customers and search engines.

Descriptions – Meta descriptions and product descriptions are automatically generated from existing product data. The texts follow a consistent structure, contain relevant keywords and are optimized for search result pages.

SEO URLs – Human-readable URLs are automatically generated from product information, replacing cryptic IDs or article numbers.

The SEO efforts were carried out in collaboration with Dennis Ommer, who is responsible for strategic SEO and SEA management.

⚡ Performance Optimization of Product Interfaces

200,000 products with real-time price queries and stock checks are a challenge for any e-commerce platform. The product interfaces between Shopware and Sage were the bottleneck.

We fundamentally optimized the interfaces:

Import Performance – The master data import for 200,000 products was optimized to complete updates within an acceptable time window without impacting live shop operations.

Caching Strategy – Intelligent caching for prices and stock levels drastically reduces the number of web service calls without showing customers stale data.

Listing Performance – Category and search result pages with hundreds of products load performantly.

📊 Project at a Glance