The path to your own universe

With almost 45,000 followers on Instagram, Thomas Philipps has already tapped into a target group that surfs through the wide range of products beyond Sunday morning brochures. But on the current website, the digital power gets lost in space and time and the non-food discounter realised that in order to provide customers with a contemporary online shopping experience, the heart of the digital universe had to be brought back to life. A mission for which the Crew gladly donned their best spacesuits.

Thomas Philipps traditionally focuses on bricks-and-mortar retail, but we realised that we could also attract new customers online. For this target group in particular, but also for everyone else, the shop is no longer up to date. We need new functionalities, such as a better filter function and navigation, so that customers are not only presented with our products to buy, but also have a real experience. We also need a modern design and simple processes - in short: a development from a brochure to a digital experience.

Our aim is to provide our customers with both offline and online shopping experiences that harmonise perfectly with each other. Analogue brochures and our 260 brick-and-mortar stores remain an important pillar of our business model, but we also want to exploit our potential digitally. The new online shop offers an opportunity to properly reflect the further development of our brand. From speciality retail to our own product lines, a fixed range and themed worlds. We are also looking forward to finally linking the many contents that make Thomas Philipps a digital experience - such as DIY ideas for the garden or Christmas - optimally with the shop. The experience should go further and inspire, but at the same time we must not lose sight of our brand USP, the attractive price.

We knew that we wanted to set up the shop on Shopware 6, so they suggested three agencies that could help us with the implementation with a focus on the user experience. ONEDOT stood out because they focussed on us being able to run on our own from the start. Of course, they are also happy if this results in a long-term partnership - but they didn't necessarily want to create a long-term dependency.they clearly gave us the feeling: We're not selling you an unnecessary service, we want you to end up with a live shop that you're happy with - if you still need us afterwards, we'll be there. But it's not a must. That was important to us.

Definitely! ONEDOT is very down-to-earth and family-orientated, which also reflects us as a company. Thomas Philipps is also a 100% family-run and owner-managed company. Perhaps one of the reasons why the collaboration works so well is because our approaches and values fit together so well: Short decision-making processes, flat hierarchies, a family-like exchange.

We particularly like the way the Crew gets involved: For example, David, the Solution Architect at ONEDOT, advised us on the right ERP system. You could tell that he put a lot of passion and personal knowledge into it to give us the right recommendations. There is an honest desire behind this to put our shop on the right footing. We really appreciate that.

A lot of things really come together in this project. Firstly, of course, creating a user experience in which our customers can be intuitively guided through the multitude of products: Assigning attributes, creating meaningful categories, optimally serving the customer journey - to name just a few aspects. Through our discussions, we also became aware that there is still a lot to optimise in the area of SEO that needs to be included. However, the foundation has now been laid with a jointly developed strategy - and we can now continue seamlessly with the wireframes and designs.

We have just seen the first designs and ONEDOT has already delivered a good result. So far, the collaboration has also been such that we have always seen solutions quickly, even when there has been criticism. So it can go on like this!

An interview with Lena Rahe and Alexander Ginten, Thomas Philipps GmbH & Co. KG