Platform in 7 months. 21% more conversions. Zero compromise on design.
How Divante implemented Shopware 6 for ikarus — Germany's leading online retailer of designer furniture and lighting — in an ultra-short timeframe, delivering measurable business results from day one.
Background
ikarus was founded in 1993 in Kiel, Germany, and has grown into one of Europe's leading online retailers of designer furniture, lighting, and interior accessories. The store carries over 20,000 products from the world's most respected design brands and serves a premium customer base that expects a seamless, design-forward shopping experience to match the quality of the products it sells.
The company's existing Magento store had served them through their early growth phase, but by 2021 it could no longer keep pace with their ambitions. Expanding the product range, launching new categories, and delivering the kind of curated editorial experience their audience expected had become technically constrained by the platform's architecture.
The Challenge
The brief from ikarus was clear: migrate off Magento, launch a new platform in the shortest possible time, and do it without disrupting ongoing business. Key constraints and challenges included:
- A very tight delivery window — launch was needed to coincide with offline retail milestones
- Over 20,000 products requiring careful catalogue migration and attribute mapping
- Integrations with ikarus's existing external marketing and analytics systems
- A requirement for high-quality product discovery — critical for a retailer whose customers search by designer, material, style, and application
- Mobile UX needed to match the brand's premium positioning
Our Solution
Following discovery workshops to understand the full scope and de-risk the migration, Divante recommended Shopware 6 as the optimal platform — offering modern architecture, strong European community support, and faster time-to-market than a custom headless build. Work began in October 2021 and the site launched in May 2022 — seven months from kickoff to live.
The project ran in two-week sprints with demo presentations and transparent budget reporting after each sprint, giving the ikarus team continuous visibility. Findologic's product discovery platform was integrated as a native Shopware 6 plugin, delivering Assisted Suggest (real-time search-as-you-type), did-you-mean spelling correction, intelligent filter navigation, and mobile voice assistance — dramatically improving product discoverability across the 20,000+ SKU catalogue.
All existing integrations with external marketing and analytics systems were re-implemented and validated before go-live.
Impact & Results
- Conversion rate increased by nearly 21% year-over-year after launch
- Revenue grew by more than 11% year-over-year
- Average session duration grew by 4.39%, reflecting improved engagement with the editorial and product content
- The project earned the highest NPS score in the company's partnership history — a score of 9
The cooperation with Divante was efficient and focused. Although the implementation time was very short, we were able to achieve a high degree of completion at the time we went live. The transfer to a high-level process of continuous improvement was also implemented very well.