aktivshop's successful marketplace integration drives over 20% revenue growth

When aktivshop, a leading German health and wellness retailer, looked to centralize their operations, they partnered with Channable and external marketing strategist Christiane Bode.
This collaboration did more than just solve their immediate technical hurdles, it paved the way for international growth. By using Channable to launch on the Dutch and Belgian marketplace bol without needing a local webshop, aktivshop unlocked an impressive 20% boost in marketplace revenue.

From migration hurdles to multi-market efficiency

The journey began when aktivshop realized their existing third-party feed solution could not fully leverage the Shopware 6 environment. The status quo was unsustainable:

• High development costs: Custom solutions to sync items were estimated to be time-consuming.

• Manual order management: The team relied on workarounds to handle orders, as their previous tool lacked native order sync.

• Complex scalability: Connecting new marketplaces was a slow, fragmented process.

• Data silos: Performance monitoring required manual gathering of statistics from multiple platforms.

The first step was that aktivshop integrated their German ecommerce channels into Channable. The team was immediately impressed by the data management and the seamless "out of the box" Shopware integration, which saved significant development time and service hours.

"Developing a custom solution would have been extremely time-consuming. We were forced to rely on various custom workarounds… making new marketplace connections complex and slow." — Christiane Bode, Digital Marketing Strategist (Channable Agency Partner)

Deep dive: Why Channable + Shopware?

As part of their platform migration, aktivshop chose Shopware for its flexibility and ability to support complex, multi-market commerce setups. This provided a strong foundation to scale their international marketplace strategy.

“This project highlights the value of a platform approach: Shopware provides the core commerce foundation, while partners like Channable accelerate marketplace execution. The team standardised data, automated optimisation, and shortened time-to-list with clear, sprint-based go-lives. That’s exactly the kind of scalable operating model modern commerce needs.” — Sebastian Hamann, Co-founder & Co-CEO of Shopware

The synergy between the two platforms allowed aktivshop to leverage specific functionalities that solved their previous bottlenecks:

• Shopware Integration: Eliminated the need for expensive custom coding and manual data management.

• Quality Step: Caught errors early, allowing for a seamless "first-time-right" export to new markets.

• Order Connection: Centralized all marketplace orders directly back into Shopware for unified fulfillment.

• Enriched Attributes: Allowed the marketing team to optimize data independently of the IT department.

For Gerd, the difference between Channable and previous solutions came down to autonomy.

"The biggest differentiator is operational efficiency. We can onboard marketplaces significantly faster and optimize product data independently, eliminating lengthy coordination cycles." — Gerd Mügge, Project Lead - Web Development & Marketing Technology, aktivshop

The next frontier

Two years after successfully growing their German operations, aktivshop’s Project Lead - Web Development & Marketing Technology, Gerd Mügge, and his team recognized a unique opportunity. They wanted to expand to the Dutch market via bol, but they faced a major hurdle: aktivshop did not have a Dutch-language webshop.

The team realized that Channable’s data management capabilities could bridge this gap. Instead of building a localized shop from scratch, they used Channable as the "translation and enrichment engine," combining German Shopware data with language-specific text imports.

This allowed them to launch high-quality Dutch and Belgian listings directly on bol using their existing infrastructure.

A 14-day sprint to scale

To execute this "agile workflow," aktivshop set a target Time-to-List of just 14 days per marketplace. Channable became the central control system, enabling them to manage:

• Localized content automation: The team intelligently combined their Shopware webshop data with language-specific attributes within Channable to ensure professional Dutch listings.

• Rule-based optimization: Automated product data standardization to meet bol's marketplace specifications.

• Real-time synchronization: Automated stock and order syncs replaced manual updates, ensuring the correct delivery window was always communicated accurately.

• The "Quality Step": This feature allowed the team to identify and fix errors before exporting to bol, ensuring a smooth "first-time-right" launch.
  

Scaling at speed on bol

The expansion to bol marked a major milestone in aktivshop’s international strategy. In the Dutch and Belgian markets, where logistical reliability is a primary driver for conversion, a stable data connection is a must.

By using Channable as their "backbone," aktivshop gained the transparency and automation required to manage their international orders at scale.

This automated Shopware integration has transformed their operational efficiency, allowing the team to focus on strategic growth rather than technical maintenance, ensuring a professional and consistent presence on bol from day one.

Key performance indicators from their switch

• Revenue growth: A 20% increase in total marketplace revenue via bol.

• Time-to-market: Successfully hit the 14-day sprint goal for new marketplace launches.

• Error reduction: Dramatic reduction in manual rework and listing errors thanks to the pre-export Quality Step.

• Operational savings: Significant reduction in development time and customer service hours previously spent on manual order fixes.

Scaling with confidence and the path forward

The collaboration between aktivshop, Shopware, and Channable proves that a strong technical foundation can turn a migration into a launchpad for international success. By utilizing Channable's data enrichment to enter markets where they lacked a local presence, aktivshop transformed their growth potential.

Free from the burden of constant custom coding, the team is now focused on advanced advertising and profit-driven growth across Europe.

For other Shopware merchants, this story proves that the right integration and platform partner is the key to building a high-performance, international multichannel strategy.