Building one scalable platform for international B2B growth.
Elka Pieterman is a major international wholesaler. Their online sales ran on IBM AS400 systems across different countries. Old foundations, modern ambition.
Elka Pieterman
UX design, web design, web development, Shopify, tech strategy
The challenge
Elka Pieterman's online sales were powered by outdated IBM AS400 systems across different countries. That created real business problems:
Complex data handling. Every customer had unique pricing, discounts and contracts.
Legacy technology. Old systems couldn't support modern e-commerce or scale further.
International fragmentation. Each country operated separately, with no unified platform.
They needed a single modern system that could handle the complexity and fuel future growth.
Our move
We believe in planning deeply to move faster later. We started by mapping every detail of their business logic and data flows. That upfront work prevented surprises during the build.
We then built a platform that bridges the old and the new:
Shopify Plus for its strong, native B2B capabilities.
Shopify Markets to manage multiple countries within one environment.
A custom Fightclub connector to sync complex product data and real time pricing from the legacy AS400 systems into the new platform.
Smart work
