60,000 parts ― from accelerators to Z-bars

The e-commerce site for Volkswagen Classic Parts, which is majority owned by Volkswagen Group, carries around 60,000 spare parts and accessories — everything needed to bring joy to fans new and old. It’s not just an ordinary shop, but also an emotional experience for customers — and for the shop’s 60 employees, who are often customers themselves.

For more than 20 years, Volkswagen Group has offered a supply of spare parts specially tailored to older car models through its Volkswagen Classic Parts brand. Unlike competitors that also specialize in parts for older models, the company can also supply parts no longer in stock by the group’s After-Sales department. It helps maintain a supply of spare parts far beyond the legal requirements intended for operational spare parts.

Volkswagen Classic Parts also closes supply gaps by remanufacturing spare parts that are in high demand, even when suppliers no longer have the tools to make them. These are not considered original parts, but they are 1:1 replicas that match the original quality.

Working with partners to upgrade e-commerce

While rare spare parts only get more coveted as years pass, an e-commerce site can show its age quickly. Volkswagen used Magento Commerce 1 for years, and recently upgraded to Adobe Commerce and Adobe Experience Manager.

After an initial proof of concept, the new e-commerce site went live less than ten months later. Adobe partner TechDivision and IT services provider LexCom were on board from the start. TechDivision has been an Adobe Commerce partner in Europe for many years, so Volkswagen felt confident entrusting the company with the upgrade to Adobe Commerce and introduction of Adobe Experience Manager.

LexCom is the world's leading specialist in after-sales solutions for parts and services. Its product portfolio sets the benchmark for the industry, supporting all sales of spare parts. During the migration to Adobe Commerce, LexCom helped integrate master and catalog data and set up shop navigation using parts modules. This helps customers find the exact parts for their vehicle in the Volkswagen Classic Parts catalog.

Better performance, more stability

The main goal of the Adobe Commerce upgrade was to improve e-commerce performance and stabilize the system as a whole.

“We wanted to create a user-friendly digital ecosystem for spare parts, merchandising items, and providing certificates for our business and private customers,” says Jens-Uwe Siebert, project manager for Volkswagen Classic Parts. “The e-commerce site needed to support customers who wanted targeted search as well as those casually browsing for spare parts. TechDivision and LexCom worked with us to help us achieve this goal."

A highlight of the new Volkswagen Classic Parts site is the option to search for spare parts by chassis number. For vehicles built after 1998, Volkswagen can use the vehicle identification number (VIN) to link a vehicle with parts and display the right spare parts for an individual vehicle.

Emotional storytelling around car parts

The new Volkswagen Classic Parts e-commerce site not only opens up better options for its customers to find the parts they need, but it also provides Volkswagen with new opportunities for emotional storytelling around the classic VW logo. With Adobe Experience Manager as the content management system, Volkswagen integrated a magazine into its digital experience. The magazine allows Volkswagen to tell stories, such as a history of the Volkswagen T4 or look at manufactured parts for the iconic Volkswagen Beetle.

To ensure that the combination of sales and experience works seamlessly, Volkswagen relies on the integrations between Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, and internal master databases within Volkswagen Group. TechDivision used its proprietary commerce integration platform, which is being successfully used for a large number of projects, to connect with the existing IT infrastructure.

According to Siebert, that was one of the greatest challenges of the project. Volkswagen Classic Parts handles such an extensive range of parts that it depends on internal databases. Product descriptions and dimensions come from the Electronic Parts Information System (EPIS) from LexCom. Data around inventories, availability, and prices are pulled from the merchandise management system. The content management system links relevant information from the spare parts technical documentation with the e-commerce parts module, creating a system that allows customers to find parts related to their vehicle in the simplest way possible.

Service layers and the close collaboration between partners were key to using data seamlessly across the e-commerce site. “The three teams worked particularly well during this critical phase to bring data together,” says Siebert. This phase expanded upon the capabilities within Adobe Commerce and Adobe Experience Manager to bring even stronger e-commerce functionality to the site.

“The majority of the customizations were implemented as part of the integrations,” adds Stefan Willkommer, CEO of TechDivision, which supported the implementation and also provided the right middleware. “We have been supporting Volkswagen Classic Parts for many years, and we were pleased that it relied upon our expertise to integrate Adobe Commerce and Adobe Experience Manager into a complex environment.”

Communication and integration: the secret behind success

The end result is a polished, high-performance Volkswagen Classic Parts e-commerce site that is ready for whatever the future brings. It also served as a strong experience for the three partners, who all attributed the project’s strong success through good cooperation and close communication. Working together, they overcame the challenges of integrating systems and data.

“The cooperation between the project teams at Volkswagen Classic Parts, TechDivision, and LexCom was extremely constructive throughout the project and always goal-oriented, even during the crucial phase before the go-live,” says Ernst Hagl, product manager at LexCom. “We could address issues quickly and complete this demanding project on time.”