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Founded in 1950, Van Tilburg is a family-run business that is now the largest independent fashion store in the Netherlands. As a household name that guarantees quality, craftsmanship, and service, it currently houses 800 leading brands that deliver an extensive range of fashion, footwear, and sporting goods under one roof for men, women, and kids. Apart from providing a holistic fashion experience for all kinds of customers, Van Tilburg pays special attention to customer service, wherein they treat every customer with personal care, plenty of inspiration, and friendly suggestions. They also help customers online with personalized recommendations. Van Tilburg has also won the professional jury prize for the best independent store in the Netherlands and various public prizes.
Van Tilburg began researching new ways to re-platform their e-commerce operations in 2021. They identified pain points in their IT landscape and realized they needed to have better control and oversight over their integrated apps. Seeing the future in moving away from monolithic platforms and avoiding vendor lock-in scenarios, they decided to move towards integrating best-of-breed SaaS apps. However, since these various applications have their own data entities and standards, they needed a solution that standardized data between these apps and made them all work together. As a result, Happy Horizon, the digital agency of Van Tilburg, introduced them to the Alumio iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service)!
Having acquired Calico Jack, which they rebranded to Calico Club, Van Tilburg decided to run a proof-of-concept with the Alumio integration platform. They decided to try using it to integrate Calico Club’s BigCommerce web shop with their ERP. During the project, they encountered an issue where the ERP was outputting files that were encrypted with a password, which Alumio didn’t initially support. Happy Horizon flagged this with the Alumio team, and within three weeks, Alumio added this functionality to their platform.
This was their first experience with onboarding and how quickly Alumio could adapt to new technical challenges. This set the tone for the rest of the proof of concept, showing that Alumio could deliver what they promised. It also reinforced their decision to use Alumio as an integration platform in the complete re-platforming and redesign of Van Tilburg’s e-commerce IT landscape.
Working with the Alumio integration platform and with Happy Horizon as their integration partner, Van Tilburg integrated a plethora of applications. This included integrating their ERP (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central) and their new e-commerce platform (Scayle). It also included integrating their transactional email management software (Mailjet), a product photography editing solution called Bright River, and a B2B platform (Fashion Cloud) that enabled them as a third-party stock provider to sell supplier inventory on their webshop. They also used Alumio to integrate their physical store’s cash register, which is a central point for creating and managing gift vouchers. And they are also in the process of integrating Adyen, a payment provider, as part of a specific sub-flow within their ecosystem.
Before using Alumio, Van Tilburg relied on a basic integration between their ERP and e-commerce platform, which faced limitations. Trying to expand their integrations with custom code led to a spaghetti of integrations and data silos that were difficult to manage. Changing a variable in the ERP could cause major synchronization issues because their previous middleware didn’t properly recognize or handle these changes. It often meant having to adjust multiple parts of the system, involving three external parties to make development changes.
Alumio’s API-driven integration solution helped them seamlessly integrate their Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP with their e-commerce platform and all other applications. It helped synchronize changes within their ERP across all integrated systems without custom code and by adhering to the e-commerce platforms standards. Providing great flexibility with their integrations, Alumio enabled them to designate which package was the master for each type of data flow and translate that effectively across the other systems.
“One of the most valuable features of Alumio, often underestimated, is its extensive logging and the ability to follow what’s happening with the actions being performed. Even as someone who isn’t an expert, I can understand what’s going on. Another powerful feature is the transformers within Alumio, which allow for extensive mapping and transformations, enabling seamless communication between systems.” - Erwin Zwijgers, Program Manager, Van Tilburg B.V.
Van Tilburg uses the Alumio integration platform to automatically send all product data from their Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP to their Scayle e-commerce platform. They’ve also built a separate data Route to send all product prices, including promotional prices, from their ERP to the e-commerce webshop. Alumio routes the stock updates from their warehouse and third-party warehouses via their ERP and Fashion Cloud B2B platform to the e-commerce platform.
At the same time, product images processed in their local photo studio are uploaded to SFTP, picked up by Alumio, and sent to Bright River for editing. Once they are ready, Alumio automatically sends them to the e-commerce platform and ERP to be used in their picking process. Additionally, all the stock Van Tilburg sells on their webshop is physically in the store instead of a separate warehouse. If something is sold online, they need to remove it from the shop floor as quickly as possible. Shoppers in the store pick from the same inventory, so the order picker needs to be efficient in collecting items. They use handheld scanners, which are driven by logic from the ERP, to guide the picker through the store via an efficient route. Product images are crucial here because they help the picker identify the right item. Alumio plays a key role in making sure that product images are always in sync across all systems in real-time, ensuring that what’s displayed online matches what’s in the store.
Simultaneously, all Van Tilburg orders from their Scayle web shop are sent via Alumio to their Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP to facilitate their in-store pick and pack process. The status of orders, based on their processing in logistics operations, is sent back through Alumio to Scayle and Mailjet (their transactional email manager) to notify customers. They also have microservices that allow them to set safe stock margins on their webshop during specific campaigns, which are also triggered by Alumio. Additionally, they have integrations for gift cards, whether digital or physical, for which Alumio sends the information to the ERP for logistical and financial administration. It also creates a real-time record in the cash register system, so gift cards can be used immediately in the store.
Van Tilburg is now continuing further development on a more personalized digital shopping experience, as that’s a key aspect of their store experience. Since their store and staff are their biggest unique selling points for providing a great fashion experience, they intend to create a more personalized digital shopping experience. This might require integrating more third-party applications into their e-commerce landscape, and Alumio gives them the freedom to build these integrations in a swift, scalable, and modular way.
