WEB STORE RELAUNCH

The Solution

Our client, BASTUCK & Co. GmbH, based in Lebach, Saarland, commissioned us to implement the relaunch of its online store. Bastuck manufactures and sells automotive parts to a select clientele. Its customers include, among others, fans of classic MG, Triumph, and Volvo vehicles. 

Taking into account the complex inventory management system and individual processes in order and customer management, we are designing and developing the new online store, focusing on flexibility and sustainability through the use of a standard e-commerce framework.  

Integration with the ERP 

A key challenge in the project was the integration of the in-house merchandise management system, BM2000. Data synchronization was implemented using an interface developed specifically for our client. The functionality of the interface is automatically monitored with Datadog, ensuring high operational reliability despite the use of non-standard components. 

Responsive Design 

Whether on desktop or mobile: Vue Storefront, as the standard shop frontend, natively provides responsive views and forms and therefore required only minimal customization. This is a key advantage of using frameworks and is part of devsuit’s development guidelines: nothing is built (again) that already exists (in this form).

Automated Image Processing via AI 

A unique feature of the project is the so-called exploded views: technical illustrations of complex products that depict each individual component as part of the whole, for example, a specific gasket in a brake system. By using the Google Vision API, an AI for image processing, new exploded views are automatically scanned, and all individual components are highlighted and linked for the user. No more tedious searching—just add items to the cart with two clicks. This is how we define customer-friendly web shops and optimized processes for shop operators. 

Off-the-shelf software vs. custom development 

Should we use a standard shop system for the client’s relaunch, or should we develop a custom solution? In this project, the answer is: Both! Standard shop systems often come with their own backend and standard processes for order management. Our client’s custom processes and in-house ERP made implementing a standard system difficult, so we developed a tailored headless shop solution without its own backend—in this case, the backend is provided by the client’s ERP system. To ensure the frontend could still be implemented quickly and flexibly, we used the standard Vue Storefront framework, which works with a wide variety of backends. 

Software Architecture: Django Backend & Vue Storefront 

Our developers and software architects designed a flexible and suitable software architecture for the entire system, consisting of a backend ERP, shop CMS, and frontend. By using the standard shop framework Vue Storefront (based on Nuxt JS), our development team was able to build the frontend quickly and efficiently. Changes to the framework’s design template were implemented based on our client’s design specifications, while standard features such as the shopping cart and wish list were available out-of-the-box. This helped reduce development time. 

The client’s proprietary solution is used as the ERP backend; the shop backend was implemented with Django and the frontend with Vue Storefront. As is standard in all our projects, we use Datadog for infrastructure monitoring and Sentry for error logging. 

Learn more about our technology stack here: The devsuit Tech-Stack.