Building a Scalable Platform to Power Kees Smit Tuinmeubelen’s Growth

Kees Smit Tuinmeubelen is a Netherlands-based retailer of garden and outdoor furniture. Their product offering contains more than 4,000 items. Starting as a local business, they grew to regional and now recognized as a national player with four branches and webshops in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. They have a reputation of affordability and customer satisfaction with a customer rating of 9.5/10 based on 55,000+ reviews.

Kees Smit wanted a renewed online presence that reflected the growth and ambitions of their business model. With an already extensive online landscape in place, Kees Smit sought a digital agency with whom they could build a long-term partnership as they hoped to renew their online presence. Magento 1 was officially discontinued, therefore this project developed into a replacement challenge as a transition to Magento 2 would be necessary. The partner for this project would need to contribute to the content and functionality of the new website for Kees Smit Tuinmeubelen. 

Kees Smit selected MaxServ as their partner to bring this vision to life due to their locality, expertise with similar project scopes and their readiness for a challenge.

Kees Smit desired a “best-of-breed” online landscape that would integrate e-commerce and content, while maintaining an optimal user experience and elite performance. To achieve this, TYPO3 CMS was selected due to its enterprise-grade architecture, capable of supporting complex, multisite installations. 

MaxServ leveraged their expertise with TYPO3 CMS and Magento 2 to develop a scalable and flexible solution, enabling Kees Smit to provide users with a high-performance webshop while giving their team the autonomy to manage their own content. MaxServ utilized their award-winning Magento and TYPO3 Environment (MATE) module, allowing users to choose between content or commerce as an area of focus.

The process began with a product discovery and an alignment of business goals between MaxServ and Kees Smit. For this relaunch, a replatforming took place to a brand new Commerce and Content platform featuring several integrations including Product Information Management (PIM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Warehouse Management System (WMS), and more. The development process was aligned with the business needs of Kees Smit, focusing on close collaboration, feedback loops and fine-tuning throughout the process. The team at MaxServ worked closely with Kees Smit to solidify trust and encourage open communication. MaxServ consulted on technology choices, architecture and overall online positioning.

The renewed online presence enables Kees Smit to scale sustainably without technical limitations. Thanks to TYPO3’s flexible and customizable architecture, internal workflows and content management have become significantly more efficient and user-friendly.

This strong sense of team work between MaxServ and Kees Smit facilitated a fruitful collaboration, enabling great results despite time pressure. The new website now showcases a modern, efficient, “best-of-breed” online presence that seamlessly integrates webshop functionality with rich content.