Case Study

Engbers

March 05, 2026

Engbers & Shopmacher: Partnership for sustainable digital development

A stable partnership gives rise to digital foresight: Engbers and Shopmacher have been working together since 2009 to keep the online pioneer at the forefront of technology. With a specially developed retainer model, three relaunches and the early introduction of headless architecture, the partnership ensures that Engbers is still at the cutting edge of technology today. The most recent step: a backend relaunch based on commercetools, made possible by the early introduction of composable architecture.

commercetools

Shop system

Expansion based on a long-term digital strategy

approach

Cooperation in three major expansion stages since 2009

Project duration

About engbers

Engbers from Gronau is a men’s outfitter that exclusively sells its own brands. With four labels – engbers, engbers XXL, ENGBERS Germany and emilio adani – the company offers a complete range for different target groups. Engbers has two online stores: engbers.com for all brands and emilioadani.com exclusively for the young brand.

In order to secure digitalization in the long term, the company is now the main shareholder of Shopmacher – a strategic investment since 2010, with which owner Bernd Bosch has brought a specialist agency firmly to his side.

Bernd Bosch, Managing Director of Engbers GmbH & Co. KG

Challenge:

Engbers has been one of the fashion industry’s online pioneers since 2000. Shopmacher has been supporting the digital development of the men’s outfitter since 2009 and has already implemented three relaunches during this period. The basis of the collaboration is a retainer model that Shopmacher developed especially for Engbers. Continuous optimizations are implemented with fixed monthly resources. This approach ensured that the store was still performing well after five years – without a large project load and without the need for constant relaunches.

As early as 2015/16, Engbers and the store makers opted for a headless architecture that separated the frontend and backend in Oxid eSales – long before headless approaches were common on the market. This laid the foundation for the gradual and flexible further development of e-commerce.

But even though the system worked well for Engbers on the outside, the technical basis was no longer fit for the future. The individually developed front-end solution was not being further developed, the server software was outdated and insecure, and the Oxid back-end no longer offered any prospects.

The implementation

In 2024, Engbers decided to relaunch with the support of Shopmacher. This step was possible because Engbers had already opted for a headless architecture with an independent frontend in 2015/16. As a result, the decoupling of the frontend and backend was established early on and could now be used to replace the backend and rebuild the frontend without any major changes visible to users.

Although the frontend was technically migrated on the basis of the commercetools frontend, its design and user guidance remained practically unchanged. The aim was to maintain the proven customer experience while replacing the outdated technical basis. Individual requirements that Engbers had for a service app in the course of this changeover were efficiently implemented using a Progressive Web App (PWA).

As part of the existing retainer model, the store is now being continuously developed and it is ensured that technical optimizations are implemented regularly and predictably.

Result

The new online shop offers customers a familiar user experience – with a modern, future-proof technical basis. Thanks to the complete headless architecture, Engbers is technologically flexible and can master future requirements in e-commerce with confidence.

Thanks to the strategic investment in the Shopmacher, Engbers also has a permanent agency at its side that keeps the company’s finger on the pulse and proactively points out necessary technological changes.

CHARACTERISTICS

Client:

Engbers GmbH & Co KG

Result:

B2C store

Web:

engbers.com, emilioadani.com

Last relaunch

August 2024

Performance modules:

Migration to commercetools
Headless architecture since 2015/16
Continuous optimization in the retainer model

Technologies:

Store system: commercetools
Frontend: commercetools Frontend
Before: Oxid + CommerceCockpit

Highlights:

Online pioneer since 2000
Strategic investment in SHOPMACHER
3 relaunches implemented together (last in 2024)
Successful retainer model for continuous further development

Back to references

From our news

Merch as a service

Merch as a Service is a curated operating infrastructure: we take proven SaaS solutions and orchestrate them into a functioning ecosystem – coordinated with each other, ready for production from the outset.

The result: an operation that runs reliably, predictably and efficiently. No vendor lock-in, no proprietary dependencies – all building blocks are established market solutions that we configure, orchestrate and operate for you.

Crew power: Why the best strategy fails without the right team

It may sound like a truism – but our experience shows that this perspective is often not sufficiently taken into account: In practice, it is often not tools or budgets that determine success, but people. After all, what good is the most modern tech stack if the team is not adequately staffed?

The initial situation: Why a foundation made of toothpicks brings down every project

Anyone building a house first checks the building ground. Anyone starting a digital project often ignores this step and is later surprised to find cracks in the façade. The problem: every unresolved assumption about the actual condition costs many times over in the later course of the project. If there is a lack of documentation and the knowledge only exists in the heads of individual employees, every innovation becomes a risky blind flight.