Brouwland Is Replacing a Pimcore Install That Is No Longer Supported

Brouwland selected a replacement for a Pimcore PIM that was no longer supported. The Belgian company sells everything for home and professional beer brewing, in a shop, online and wholesale, to hobbyists, craft brewers and retail partners across Europe. The old PIM was heavily customized, too complex to maintain, and out of support. PIMvendors ran the stakeholder workshops, drew where product data has to flow, and guided the selection of a replacement that can serve the webshop and the wholesale systems.

Client Introduction

Brouwland is a Belgian retailer and wholesaler for beer brewing. The range runs from ingredients to equipment. Thousands of hobbyists, craft brewers and retail partners across Europe buy from the shop, the webshop and the wholesale side. Product knowledge is the business. The PIM is how that knowledge reaches three kinds of buyer.

The Challenge

The customized Pimcore environment had done the job and then became the problem. It was no longer supported, and the customizations had made it too complex to maintain. Brouwland needed product data that was simpler to manage, a connection to the webshop and the wholesale systems, and a base it could keep running. Carrying the old custom logic into a new logo would have recreated the maintenance problem.

The Solution

PIMvendors ran workshops to capture requirements across departments and drew an architecture map: where data is needed, and how it should flow. That map gave the departments one picture of the future setup. Vendor selection used the map. The PIM had to serve the way Brouwland sells now and still leave room for what the webshop and wholesale side do next.

The Results

Brouwland has selected the new PIM. The architecture is what gets implemented, so webshop and wholesale customers can be served from one product setup, with less of the old complexity on the critical path. The unsupported system is the risk being retired.

The trade-off is the custom logic. A heavily customized Pimcore install contains years of brewing-catalogue exceptions. A new PIM does not arrive with those exceptions already modelled. They are redesigned during the workshops or they are dropped. Dropping them is how the maintenance cost actually falls.

Client Quote

"PIMvendors helped us turn a technical challenge into a strategic opportunity. They brought structure, alignment, and independence to the process, ensuring we selected the right PIM for our long-term needs. Today we feel confident that our product data setup supports both our webshop and wholesale ambitions."

The map is the lesson for anyone sitting on an unsupported, heavily customized PIM. Draw the flow, then select, and do not treat the old customizations as requirements. How to select a PIM is the vendor comparison Brouwland ran from that map, with independence from the incumbent. The commerce stack sets out how a webshop and a wholesale channel share one product record. The PIM implementation guide is the build that starts once the PIM is selected, which is the point Brouwland has reached. Product data quality and governance is what "simpler to maintain" has to mean once the custom Pimcore rules are no longer the process.