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Your best customers still order by email.

In B2B trade the shop is rarely the problem. The problem is that regular customers order by email, phone and PDF anyway – because the portal does not know their terms, does not understand their part numbers and does not reflect their ordering rhythm. Every one of those orders is keyed into the system by hand. We build the portals and processes that put a stop to that – and advise where the process itself is the real issue.

See the use cases Discuss a process

Experience in e-commerce

E-commerce process consulting and Amazon Seller Central have been part of our work for years – with pages of their own, not as a footnote.

B2B is not B2C with a discount

Individual prices, framework agreements, approval limits, customer part numbers and reordering from history – a B2C shop covers almost none of it.

Connected to your merchandise system

The ERP or merchandise management system stays in charge. Portal and processes sit in front of it and hand over through the existing interfaces.

In short

Who this is for: wholesalers and B2B distributors, manufacturers with direct sales, retailers with an online business, marketplace sellers, D2C brands.
Typical trigger: orders arrive by email and phone and are keyed in by hand; or product data is maintained separately for every channel; or the marketplace business is running without anyone having sorted out the processes behind it.
What we build and advise on: B2B customer portals with individual terms, ordering and reordering journeys, product data management and channel integration, Amazon integration and Seller Central consulting, process consulting from enquiry to return.
What we do not do: run your Amazon account operationally. We advise and integrate – ongoing account management stays with you.

01 — Starting point

Where the manual work sits in retail.

Rarely in the shop. Almost always in the stretch before and after it – where orders come into being, and where they are processed once the click has happened.

Orders by email and PDF

The regular customer sends their list the way they have for fifteen years. Somebody types it up. One transposed digit in it costs more than the whole order is worth.

The portal does not know the terms

Individual prices, volume tiers and framework agreements are held in the ERP but are not visible in the shop. So the customer picks up the phone – and the digitalization was for nothing.

Customer part numbers are missing

The buyer works with their own numbers, the portal only knows yours. That single gap is enough to keep the email orders coming.

Product data maintained several times over

Shop, marketplace, catalogue, customer portal: the same data in four places, each at its own level of currency. Errors do not travel between them, and neither do corrections.

Marketplace business without a process

Revenue is coming in, but returns, refunds, stock management and reviews are handled on the side – until they no longer can be.

Returns as a blind spot

What comes back is processed but rarely analysed. Yet return reasons contain the clearest statement there is about what is wrong in your product data or your range.

02 — User stories

What we build for retail and e-commerce.

Use cases from sales, internal sales, product management and fulfilment.

“As a buyer I want to order using my own part numbers.”

A B2B portal that knows customer part numbers, shows individual terms and allows reordering from history. The email order then ends by itself – not by instruction, but because the portal is faster.

“As internal sales I do not want to type up orders.”

Incoming orders from email and PDF are read out with AI assistance and presented for checking. For all the customers who cannot be moved into the portal – and there are always some.

AI Automation

“As product management I want to maintain data once.”

Central product data management that feeds the shop, marketplaces and catalogue. One correction, every channel – instead of four versions of the same record.

“As a retailer I want Amazon integrated cleanly.”

Integrating Seller Central into your existing processes: stock, orders, refunds. Plus advice on structure and positioning – operational account management stays with you.

Amazon consulting

“As management I want to know what returns cost.”

Capture and analyse return reasons in a structured way. A cost block turns into a statement about which product, which description or which size guide is causing the problem.

E-Commerce process consulting

“As a D2C brand I want an app for regular customers.”

Where the same people buy regularly, an app is worth it: reordering in two steps, notifications, loyalty. For one-off purchases it almost never is – and we say so too.

Fashion & Lifestyle

03 — B2B

Why B2B portals fail – and what makes them work.

Almost always the same mistake: a B2C shop is given a login and called B2B. The requirements, though, are different – fundamentally so.

Prices are customer-specific – In B2B there is no price, there is your price for this customer – from the framework agreement, the volume tier and the history. If the portal shows a list price, the customer phones, and the whole effort was wasted.
Ordering is a matter of habit – B2B orders are repetitions. Reordering from history, saved lists and order templates matter more than any product search – nobody browses their supplier’s range for pleasure.
The person ordering is not the decision-maker – Approval limits, cost centres, several users per customer with different rights: a B2C account does not cover that, and without that structure the portal is unusable for larger customers.
The customer’s language wins – Customer part numbers, the customer’s own descriptions, stored delivery addresses. Force the buyer to think in your taxonomy and you lose them back to the email order.
The ERP stays in charge – Stock, prices, terms and orders come from your merchandise management system and go back into it. The portal is an interface, not a second system – anything else ends in double maintenance.
Switching needs a reason – Customers do not move into the portal because you ask them to, but because it is faster for them. You have to build that advantage – delivery date visibility, order history, status tracking – and then point it out.

Existing pages

E-Commerce Process Consulting · Amazon Seller Central Consulting

Shop & web

Astro E-Commerce for fast, content-driven shops and catalogues

Integration

ERP and merchandise management through existing interfaces – ERP project management

Regulation

For many product groups the digital product passport is coming – with data requirements that land on retail

04 — FAQ

Common questions from retail and e-commerce.

Should we build our own shop or take a standard system?

In the vast majority of cases: a standard system. Building a shop from scratch is rarely economical, because payment processing, tax logic and shipping rules are already solved in off-the-shelf systems. We come in where standard ends: B2B terms, customer-specific ordering journeys, integrations and processes between systems. If a finished product covers your case, we say so.

Will you take over our Amazon account?

No. We advise on structure, positioning and processes and take on the technical integration into your systems – ongoing operational account management expressly stays with you. The details are on our page about Amazon Seller Central consulting.

Our customers have ordered by email for years. Can they be moved into a portal?

Some of them, and the rest you handle differently. Customers only switch if the portal is faster for them – with their part numbers, their prices and reordering from history. For those who stick with email anyway, the pragmatic solution is to read the order out with AI assistance instead of typing it up. The two together achieve considerably more than trying to re-educate every customer.

What about our product data?

That is frequently the real bottleneck. If the same data is maintained in four places, none of them is current – and every new channel makes it worse. Central data management that feeds every channel sounds like a large project, but it can be built up step by step. We start with the channel that causes the most errors.

Does the digital product passport affect us?

If you manufacture or import into the EU products from the prioritized groups: probably yes. The first ESPR work plan names, among others, iron and steel, aluminium, textiles, tyres, and furniture and mattresses; batteries run through the Battery Regulation with a mandatory date from February 2027. For retail it mainly means this: data nobody captures systematically today becomes something you have to evidence. What that means in concrete terms is on our page about the digital product passport.

Can you integrate with our merchandise management system?

If it provides an interface: yes, that is routine. Your system stays in charge – stock, prices and orders come from there and go back there. If your vendor has no open interface, we say so up front and check what routes remain; sometimes a governed data exchange is the more pragmatic place to start.

Is an app worth it for our shop?

Only if the same people buy regularly. With a regular-customer business, reordering and subscription models, an app can pay off clearly. For predominantly one-off purchases, almost never – then a fast, well-built website is the better investment. We tell you which category your business falls into before you spend money.

How many orders does somebody type up at your company?

That single number says more about the potential than any analysis. Tell it to us – we will say whether a portal, an extraction pipeline or a process change is the shortest route.

Discuss a process

05 — Related