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How Bender Launched a Regulated B2B MedTech Commerce Platform in Six Months

From a legacy in-house shop to an orchestrated B2B platform built for the complexity of medical regulation. Live in six months, with over 700 orders and room to grow into Switzerland and France.

  • 6 months from first conversation to go live
  • 700+ orders processed since launch
  • 600 products at a pilot customer with 50 sites
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Challenge

Legacy Commerce Couldn't Keep Up With Medical Regulation

Bender Gruppe's in-house e-commerce solution had reached the end of its useful life. Regulation in radiology and medical supply is not a side constraint. It shapes every product, every customer relationship, every order.

The legacy stack could not keep up with what the business actually needed:

  • DocCheck verification had to gate who can see and order specific products. Only qualified medical professionals get access to restricted ranges.
  • Three distinct billing modes (prescription, inpatient, private) had to be handled cleanly for each customer.
  • Multi-level customer structures with dozens of locations per client required precise assortment and permission control.
  • Product data sat inside the ERP, which made every regulatory change a manual, slow, error-prone task.
  • Customers depended on field sales for orders, limiting flexibility for the customer and scaling for Bender.

What Bender needed was not a newer version of the same thing. It needed a platform built for B2B complexity from the ground up, ready to grow from one pilot customer to an international operation across Switzerland and France.

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About Bender Group

Founded in 1970 and headquartered in Baden-Baden, Bender Gruppe is a family-owned supplier of radiology products and services. For over 50 years, the company has equipped practices, clinics, and medical institutions across Germany with a broad range of medical and pharmaceutical products in radiology.
SIZE

> 200 employees

INDUSTRY

MedTech

BUSINESSMODEL

B2B

PARTNER

Shopmacher

Centric 

Project Highlights

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months

From first workshop to live platform, December 2024 to May 2025

Icon Big Number 700+

orders

Orders placed through the new shop since go live, trending up

Icon Big Number 600

products

A focused MVP for one anchor customer with 50 sites, built to scale

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Solution

From a Rigid In-House Shop to an Orchestrated B2B Platform

Bender Group rebuilt its commerce foundation on Emporix, supported by SHOPMACHER as implementation partner and Centric Software for PIM. Emporix was selected because it covered Bender's B2B requirements natively, out of the box, without custom development on the commerce core.

The solution rests on three capabilities of the Emporix ACE Platform:

  • Cloud-native headless commerce that supports multi-level customer hierarchies, assortment control per customer and location, and three distinct billing modes without custom code on the commerce core.
  • Orchestration layer that connects the shop to Microsoft Business Central ERP and Centric PXM PIM, so product data, pricing, and permissions stay in sync across systems.
  • Customer-specific product catalogs that control exactly which products each customer sees and can order, a central requirement for regulated medical supply.

A fully custom frontend was built on Vercel to handle the specific navigation, search, and checkout experience the pilot customer needed. Personalized order lists, which let users save and reorder their regular combinations, became the most used feature in the shop

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Journey

Scope Discipline, Not Speed, Delivered Six Months

The project started with a scope, not a system. Before any code was written, Bender invested in a structured consulting phase with SHOPMACHER. Workshops covered vision, MVP definition, system selection, and data flows. The decision to build on Emporix came out of that phase, based on how closely the platform matched Bender's B2B requirements out of the box.

Phase one focused on one anchor customer: 50 locations, 600 products, German market only, closed shop with access granted exclusively by Bender. During the build, features that were not needed for the first customer were actively removed from scope rather than added.

Development began in mid December 2024. The official go live followed on May 7, 2025, with a gradual rollout starting from a single test account. In late October 2025, customer-specific product catalogs went live, completing the core capability Bender needed for regulated medical distribution. Switzerland and France are next.

Results

Self-Service Replaces Phone and Fax, Customers Order on Their Own Terms

The platform is in production. Over 700 orders have been processed. Customers can now order independently online instead of depending on field sales, which frees the sales team and gives customers the flexibility to order from anywhere at any time. Assortments and permissions are tightly controlled. Internal processes are visibly leaner. Load times, a focus throughout development, hold up in daily use.

Personalized order lists became the favorite feature among users. The product catalog architecture delivered in October 2025 makes it possible to define exactly what each customer sees and can order, which is the level of control regulated medical supply requires.

Bender Success Story Screenshots 2

What we achieved together in the first twelve months is something we can be proud of. Customer feedback is positive, the new processes work internally, and costs stay reliably within budget. Our digital direction is clear.

steven klix bender
Steven Klix Deputy Head of IT at Bender Group

Build Your Regulated B2B Commerce Platform on Emporix

Bender replaced a legacy in-house shop with a regulated, scalable B2B commerce platform in six months. If your business runs on complex customer structures, strict assortment rules, and legacy systems that slow you down, we should talk.

Book an Autonomous Commerce Lab