Case Study: MakroShop achieves a rapid four-month webshop launch and increased sales with Sitecore

Built in only four months, the new Makro webshop offers an easy and fast way to make a purchase in one flow

MakroShop, the e-commerce arm of one of Belgium’s largest cash-and-carry resellers (part of Metro Group with six mega stores), needed an online experience that stood out and fully reflected its physical stores. The key challenges were continuous data flows for over 10,000 products, real-time pricing and stock synchronization across 12 data feeds, and generating invoices through existing cash register systems and Oracle 9–based back-end processes. MakroShop chose the Sitecore platform (implemented with partner The Reference) to meet these requirements.

Using Sitecore, The Reference delivered a four-server, load-balanced solution (two delivery, one authoring, one database) with extensive caching, an extended Sitecore publishing queue to update product info without full cache rebuilds, and a custom Sitecore UI that integrates external SQL Server pricing/stock data. Built in four months, the new Makro webshop hit its phase‑one targets within three weeks of launch, supports Dutch and French, and produced a noticeable increase in sales, guiding Makro’s next steps in sales strategy.

MakroShop