How 1A Medizintechnik digitalized the sale of emergency equipment

For over 20 years, the Bocholt-based family business 1A Medizintechnik has equipped rescue services, emergency physicians and occupational safety teams with high-quality first-aid products. Because a number of its more than 30 employees spent many years working in rescue services themselves, they know the industry's requirements first-hand, can provide the best possible advice and training, and deliver the ideal solution based on individual needs. Today the company handles more than 200 orders a day. Even so, short lines of communication and close customer relationships remain decisive.

To open up the private sector as a target group for its emergency product range alongside fire brigades and rescue stations, company owners Annette and Markus Nieuwenhuis decided in the fall of 2019 to digitalize their sales. The coronavirus pandemic that broke out just a few months later became a baptism of fire for the shop, which had only just launched.

The core target group of fire brigades and rescue stations is still extremely analog. The computers available are often technically outdated, and some depots still have no Wi-Fi connection. The usual ordering process therefore consisted of simply calling the sales team or sending a fax.

For this reason, 1A Medizintechnik took the path to digitalization step by step, with its ear close to the market. It started with an online ordering tool where companies could enter their order numbers, which then generated an email to the B2B supplier. But customers wanted alternative products with prices to be shown when an item was sold out. They also wanted delivery times and packaging units to be clearly visible. Additional product information was on the customers' wish list as well.

With the help of Shopmacher, the B2B shop was therefore steadily expanded on the basis of Shopware 6. One specialty is the dynamic product lists, which can be used to assemble tenders, for example, with the help of tags and filters.

Another innovation is a PWA app that lets rescue station staff record the products they need on site without internet access. To make this work, individual QR codes were attached to each product on the warehouse shelves, and all you have to do to place an order is scan them. As soon as the mobile device connects to the internet, the order is triggered. This saves staff the time of walking from the warehouse to the office to reorder products noted on slips of paper. 1A Medizintechnik's vision is to do away with the ordering process altogether and have reorders run automatically through the stations' inventory management systems.

1A Medizintechnik recouped its initial investment of 500,000 euros in just one year. A quarter of the shop's new customers found it via Google search, and many existing customers are now increasingly ordering digitally as well. Beyond that, the launch of the online shop also drove process automation within the company itself. An order now goes all the way through to the warehouse without anyone having seen it beforehand. The sales staff benefit from the web shop too, because for the first time they can show customers product suggestions by simply emailing them a link to the product detail page in the shop.