APS Glass & Bar Supply
APS Glass & Bar Supply is the Benelux hospitality wholesaler for glassware, bar equipment, tableware and disposables, trading from Amsterdam since 2004.
About this project
Shopware 5 was reaching end of life. After four years working together we ran a full requirements evaluation, selected Shopify, and rebuilt a B2B store with conditional invoice payment, a second checkout and a complete SEO migration.
Client Introduction
APS Glass & Bar Supply is the inspiring wholesaler for hospitality and retail across the Benelux. From vintage cocktail glasses to functional bottle openers, their range spans glassware, bar equipment, tableware, cutlery and disposables, carrying brands including ONIS, Royal Leerdam, Spiegelau, Luigi Bormioli and Churchill. Founded in 2004 in a modest building in Amsterdam Oost, they now operate from Keurenplein with a 150 square metre showroom and working bar where customers can bring their own cocktail menu and test glassware before ordering. Their team behaves like the hospitality businesses they serve: loyal, energetic and fanatical about service.
The Challenge
Shopware 5 was reaching end of life. The platform had begun showing faults and would no longer be updated, which put a working B2B business on a countdown. We had already been working with APS for four years, including sustained SEO investment, which meant the replatform carried two distinct risks. The first was functional: B2B wholesale has requirements a standard store does not meet, above all the ability to let VIP customers pay on invoice while everyone else pays up front. The second was the accumulated search authority. Years of SEO equity sat on the old URLs, and a migration done carelessly would have thrown it away.
The Approach
We started with a full evaluation rather than a preference. A detailed functionality list was drawn up and worked through requirement by requirement, and Shopify came out best on the test: everything needed was achievable, the system is future-proof, and it is genuinely pleasant to administer. The hardest build problem was conditional invoice payment, because Shopify does not permit custom development on the standard checkout. We solved it by building a second checkout with a conditional pay-on-invoice function tied to the VIP customer tag. We also built a wishlist and connected products and orders to Exact. Running alongside the build was a full SEO migration: URL redirect mapping and a backlink recovery programme to carry the search equity across intact.
Results & Impact
APS now runs a future-proof B2B store on Shopify with the invoice-payment capability their wholesale model depends on, connected to Exact for products and orders, and with years of accumulated search authority carried across through a structured migration and backlink recovery. The platform gives considerably more room for strategic online marketing than the one it replaced, and it loads in 2.5 seconds.
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