Content & Community Commerce and Shopify Plus: Hecht & Barsch switches from Shopware to a modern and innovative Shopify solution

hechtundbarsch.de is the most modern, innovative and top-selling online store in Germany for the hobby of predator fishing in German and European freshwater.

The range extends from fishing lures and reels to clothing, equipment and all kinds of accessories, offering everything that makes fishing enthusiasts' hearts beat faster.

The brand, which has been commercially active since 2016, is family-run and mainly acquires customers from the fishing industry or the community. Hecht & Barsch successfully combines a very comprehensive e-commerce strategy with community marketing and content marketing.

Nils Rheinfeld, COO at Hecht & Barsch GmbH, tells us in an interview what challenges the brand faced before the migration and how Latori was able to solve these problems.

At a glance - this is what we implemented for Hecht and Barsch:

• Migration from Shopware to Shopify Plus

• B2B Commerce

• Design implementation and customization

• Rewind service

• Connection of the tools Klaviyo, Descartes Pixi, 8 Returns and Shipeasy

The Hecht & Barsch brand

Hecht & Barsch GmbH was founded back in 2016, but only had a very small product range and a limited budget until 2018, when they opened their first store under Shopware. The brand mainly sells its products via its own online store, but also via marketplaces. The range includes not only external brands, but also the own brand LMAB (Leck mich am Barsch), which Hecht & Barsch produces itself. They sell their products in the B2C and B2B model.

Most of the employees are also fishing fans and part of the community that Hecht & Barsch has built up over the years. Nils sums it up like this:

“We are a very informal young company, which has become what it is through community building and networking in the past.”

Crowdsourcing and community marketing

Crowdsourcing refers to the process by which companies obtain tasks, ideas or content from a large group of people, usually from the online community. This makes it possible to benefit from the collective intelligence and creativity of a broad mass. Community marketing, on the other hand, aims to build an engaged and loyal customer base by enabling brands to create a close connection with their customers through regular interactions and relevant content. Both concepts offer retailers significant benefits: Crowdsourcing can deliver innovative solutions and creative ideas cost-effectively, while community marketing strengthens customer loyalty and provides valuable feedback for continuous improvement.

Hecht & Barsch also attaches great importance to approachability and personality, which is why the brand has integrated its community from the outset. Hecht & Barsch has invited fans and the community to test the products it produces directly in use. Hecht & Barsch has been working with young protagonists in the fishing industry since 2018, when more and more of them emerged. This also resulted in image and video material that Hecht und Barsch uses for content marketing.

This is mainly played out via YouTube, where the brand has already built up a large community of 105,000 subscribers. The videos receive up to 330,000 views. In addition to product tests, the YouTube program also includes tournaments/competitions in which influencers, stars of the scene and brand ambassadors fish against and with each other. In other competitions, fans also have the opportunity to win the chance to take part in a small tournament.

Hecht und Barsch also involves fans a lot in other ways - in the form of surveys, interviews and reviews.

“We are working on being able to display the Instagram comments and direct mentions of our products on the product reviews in the store,” says Nils Rheinfeld.

This made the switch from Shopware to Shopify Plus necessary

Like many other Shopware retailers, Hecht and Barsch were faced with the decision of whether to update to Shopware 6 or move the store to a different platform. After the brand had a look at the new version of Shopware, they realized that it did not meet their requirements. As the brand was already struggling with some limitations under Shopware 5, the desire to migrate grew.

That's why Shopify and Latori were chosen

Hosting was the most important factor in the selection process. Hecht und Barsch wanted to use a cloud-based platform here, as they did not want to have to provide server capacity.

“We needed something that was hosted in the cloud, where we no longer had to provide server capacity and didn't have to ensure that we could access it almost without restrictions, even at peak times. That was the starting point and Shopify was the obvious choice as the most modern and innovative e-commerce software,” Nils Rheinfeld tells us.

At the Shopify Days in Berlin, Nils got talking to experts from Shopify and told them about how he envisioned the switch and about his requirements and wishes. Latori was then recommended to him - which is how Hecht und Barsch approached us in mid-2022. The implementation of the project started in March/April 2023.

The migration: How we supported Hecht & Barsch during the changeover

Since Hecht & Barsch sells in the B2C and B2B model, it was necessary to create two instances and to develop and implement designs for them.

Due to the complexity of the product catalog, data migration was one of the most important aspects of the store relocation. Hecht und Barsch has many products with variant depths and various properties in its range. It had to be possible to map this as well:

“We brought a very extensive category tree with us, which we didn't want to move away from. Our range has numerous properties and variants, which we have maintained for years via Shopware and displayed on the product detail pages in the form of variant tables,” says Nils Rheinfeld.

It was also very important to the brand that products are always correctly combined with the right accessories, as there are products that only work together in certain combinations. This must be recognizable for the customer and they should be able to find and order complementary products directly on the PDP.

Individualization

Because the product catalog was so complex, our developers worked out a technique to maintain and display the product data table. Products can have a large number of variants and these variants have specific information depending on the type of product. To display all this information, we used a table to organize the data so that customers can compare each variant to make the right choice.

The Rewind service on the product detail page is also an innovative and modern approach to integrating customer service into e-commerce. Here, customers have the option of having the right line rewound for a desired fishing reel directly with their order. To ensure that this works and can also be displayed smoothly in the frontend, Latori's frontend and backend developers worked together to develop a solution. For this purpose, each reel and each line has a list of “sizes” to compare whether the load-bearing capacity of the line fits the corresponding reel. Once the relevant variants/products have been defined, the reel is assembled to ensure that the recommendations work for the customer. These reels are then assembled in Hecht und Barsch's own warehouse.

App integration

Hecht und Barsch uses several Shopify apps that were installed and configured by us to extend the functions of Shopify Plus. These include tools such as Klaviyo as a CRM and newsletter tool, 8returns for returns, Pathway for accounting, reviews.io for reviews and Gorgias for customer service.

The logistics process is also a complex issue for the brand, as a distinction has to be made between B2C and B2B and exports abroad have to be taken into account. Hecht und Barsch uses the shipping solution Shipping Rates - Shipeasy and the logistics solution Descartes Pixi to map all processes.

What has changed since the migration and what else is planned?

After the move, Hecht und Barsch took advantage of its proximity to the community and created a survey about the new store. The feedback has been consistently positive and has also provided the brand with insights into what else customers would like, such as a wishlist.

In the future, the brand wants to continue to grow, open up new markets and find new channels. In the interview, Nils reveals that there are still a lot of innovative things in store for customers and that Hecht und Barsch wants to continue to develop:

“We also switched to Shopify because Shopify will never come to an end. We want to have the development power and the drive for innovation available to us so that we can continuously integrate new features, improve existing solutions and always have the latest developments in the world of e-commerce at our disposal. The advantage of Shopify Plus is that you benefit from every further development that Shopify makes as a company and thus offers directly to customers.”

Nils would continue to approach Latori in the future when it comes to solving a problem or realizing a wish.

“We are also very happy with our contact person Xuan Yen (Na) Theisen-Trinh at Latori. The cooperation with her is really excellent and you will certainly remain our partner or agency.”

Xuan Yen (Na) Theisen-Trinh, who is responsible for project management, sums up the project as follows:

Nils tells us that Shopify was also the right decision:

“We are very happy with Shopify. We are a marketing company at heart and can finally focus reliably on our competencies. There is a world of difference between the past and what we now use in all departments. It's much more fun.”

We would like to thank Nils Rheinfeld for the exciting interview and look forward to working with him again and again.