From a jungle of tools to a conversion machine
Travelbags
Travelbags is a leading (online) retailer of bags, suitcases and travel accessories. Since the launch of its first-generation webshop in 2008, Travelbags has become a market leader. With a strong market position in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany and a collection of more than 20,000 products from over 100 top brands. To stay ahead and meet the high demands of consumers in 2025, a renewal of the entire IT landscape is needed.
Focus op online groei en verlagen TCO
Travelbags grew fast in recent years, both in sales and brand awareness. The next step? To create a stronger market position through additional focus on online, digital innovation and international expansion. At the same time, Travelbags wants to break free from licensing structures, the retailer is intentionally moving away from specific SaaS components and some functions are being brought back to basics. Less recurring costs, flexibility thanks to composable set-up and full control with open-source systems that allow scalability and customisation.
Renewed collaboration
To replatform and realise its online growth ambitions, Travelbags again engaged XSARUS. A great continuation of the previous successful collaboration.
The collaboration with XSARUS is once again a success! The team thinks along proactively, switches quickly and brings state-of-the-art knowledge in e-commerce, data, digital marketing and design.
Headless conversion engine
The headless Magento Open Source set-up suits Travelbags well. An ultra-fast custom frontend has been established in combination with the Strapi CMS system. Travelbags' base system is a big difference from before; the front-end design has been streamlined with the help of a design system and the webshop has been developed considerably in terms of CRO. A great, joint effort by the XSARUS experts and the Travelbags team.
Personalising products is getting a prominent place on the roadmap and will become possible for more and more items in the future.
Content management with Strapi CMS
Travelbags uses Strapi, a stable, licence-free and low-cost CMS that fits perfectly into its IT landscape. Travelbags' marketing team can create content quickly and easily thanks to its extensive content capabilities. Multi-language content is also supported for the three storefronts.
Social media plays an important role in reaching the target audience, which is why Strapi is linked to channels such as Meta, TikTok, Vimeo and YouTube Shorts. It is also easy to add customisation within Strapi, such as the XSARUS XCDN for scaling and optimal serving of product images.
More reach with every review
DeepL Translate translates on-site reviews directly on the e-commerce platform, so that a Dutch review also appears in German and vice versa. Does a customer write a review about a brown wallet? Then that same review also appears for other colour variants. This happens without external review tools. Via Spotler, Travelbags sends the review emails; this combination saves considerable costs.
Reviews are submitted to Google as structured data, which contributes positively to organic search results.
Always the best deal with dynamic pricing
Travelbags uses dynamic pricing to always stay competitive. The tool Symson contains the entire product catalogue and smart scraping rules continuously monitor competitors' prices. This keeps Travelbags competitively priced on all sales channels.
The new IT landscape gives us exactly what we need: front-end flexibility, the ability to scale up and smart applications like marketing automation that add real value.
Alumio streamlines IT landscape
In addition to the rebuild to Magento Open Source, these components have also been integrated into the IT landscape: KatanaPIM, TableTop Order Management, Picqer, Twinfield, ChannelEngine and Returnless.
Integration platform Alumio links these systems together in the composable e-commerce landscape, giving Travelbags a grip on all technology and ensuring that messaging runs smoothly. Dataflows appear visually in one overview, creating quick insight and enabling Travelbags to easily identify first-line issues itself. Thanks to Alumio, Travelbags saved precious development time.
Efficient stock management
With TableTop Order Management and input from Picqer, Travelbags keeps control of stock. The inventory and delivery promise modules enable backorder-stock and future-stock sales, including correct delivery times. In addition, Travelbags matches deliveries to DHL time slots, with the system automatically taking into account warehouse processes, opening hours, weekend and public holidays.
Travelbags' IT landscape is a smart mix of tools that are seamlessly connected to each other
Steering with data thanks to BI
Travelbags now makes even more data-driven decisions. We implemented Power BI and set up dashboards, giving the team instant insight into performance and opportunities. We also integrated Spotler Activate for personalisation and marketing campaigns.
Thanks to the FACTICX Merchandiser, the order and sorting of products on product overview pages is dynamically adjusted. This is done based on turnover rate, stock, margins and other crucial parameters.
A smart mix of tools
Travelbags' IT landscape consists of a smart mix of tools that are seamlessly connected. Each tool has a specific task, keeping the system organised and manageable. Which, if you manage them as effectively as Travelbags does, form a future-proof ensemble.
Collaboration with a view to the future
The result is great: the e-commerce platform is performing and the renewed IT landscape is future-proof. Within less than six months, this large-scale project was successfully completed, involving XSARUS experts from all sorts of expertises. Together with Travelbags, we continue to build on a long-term collaboration and further growth.
Marvin de Reuver
Senior Account Manager