Why ORTLIEB modernized its B2B portal — replacing Magento with Turis

For years, ORTLIEB’s wholesale operation ran on a Magento install that was originally chosen for D2C and then gradually bent into a B2B shape. As the dealer base grew, the cracks showed: plugin sprawl that nobody wanted to touch, upgrades that broke things weeks later, and a maintenance burden that scaled faster than the team did.

Cycling is a category that lives or dies by season, range freshness, and how easily a retailer can place a top-up order on a Tuesday afternoon. The Magento setup made that harder than it needed to be — every release came with a checklist of regressions to chase down, and the wholesale team spent more time validating fixes than improving the catalog.

The decision to leave Magento behind

ORTLIEB’s wholesale team ran a tight evaluation: the next platform had to be B2B-first (not a D2C engine wearing a wholesale costume), it had to handle multi-region distributor accounts with customer-specific pricing, and it had to integrate cleanly with the ERP so order data didn’t need re-keying. Critically, it also had to be configurable by the wholesale team itself — not gated behind every change going through engineering.

The Magento alternative on the table was another year of custom build. Turis was the alternative path: a platform with the B2B mechanics already in place, configured rather than coded.

Why Turis won

Three things tipped the decision. First, the B2B feature set was already there — tiered pricing, distributor-specific catalogs, order pads, ERP-synced product and customer data — none of it bolted on. Second, the implementation was scoped in weeks, not the year-long replatform Magento would have required. Third, the team could see the roadmap: an active product moving in the direction wholesale teams actually need.

“Intuitive platform, constant further development, outstanding service,” Anne Kalmutzki, Senior Digital Project Manager at ORTLIEB, summarised after going live. The point about constant further development mattered: a B2B platform that ships meaningful improvements every quarter is a different proposition from one that needs a major version upgrade to evolve.

Rollout in weeks, not years

The kick-off-to-live cadence was a few weeks. The work split into clear phases: configuring the product catalog and pricing structures on the Turis side, mapping the ERP integration so sales orders and customer records flowed both directions, branding the dealer portal to match the ORTLIEB visual language, and onboarding the first wave of dealers. No custom development, no plugin compatibility matrix, no risky cutover weekend.

Because the platform was configured rather than coded, the wholesale team owned most of the work themselves. Pricing changes, new product launches, dealer-specific catalogues — all manageable from inside Turis without an engineering ticket.

What changed once the team was live

Dealers now self-serve through a portal that reflects ORTLIEB’s brand language. Order data flows automatically into the ERP — no spreadsheets, no email back-and-forth, no manual entry to validate. The internal team’s day shifted from patching the platform to improving the offer: catalog quality, pricing strategy, dealer enablement.

The wholesale team also stopped being the bottleneck for routine changes. A new size variant, a regional price update, a distributor-specific assortment — none of those now require a developer or an upgrade window. The platform absorbs the complexity that the previous setup leaked into the team.

The bigger picture

ORTLIEB’s move off Magento is part of a broader pattern: brands realising that the B2B channel needs platform mechanics built around how wholesale actually works — accounts, segments, pricing tiers, ERP integration — rather than a consumer engine with B2B plugins layered on top. The result for ORTLIEB is a wholesale operation that scales with the dealer base instead of fighting against it.