VitatheekPure player with a healthy e-commerce operation
Case summary
About Vitatheek
Vitatheek is a pure player in the online sale of health products, with a wide range of approximately fifty thousand items and multiple brands, including its own label. The webshop forms the heart of the operation and is directly connected to the operational processes.
With a compact organization, its own warehouse, and direct links with longtail partners, the focus is on efficiency, speed, and control. E-commerce is not a separate channel, but the foundation of the company.
“NextChapter offers strong functionality and has been consistently stable. It’s no coincidence that we’ve been a customer since 2006, already 20 years.”
Jan Veenendaal - Owner Vitatheek
Ambitions and challenges
As a purely online player, Vitatheek operates with a large and dynamic product range. Keeping a wide assortment available without unnecessary stock is the daily balance around which Vitatheek’s operations revolve. In this regard, sales, purchasing, and logistics function as a single chain.
Additionally, specific rules apply to products such as baby food and medicines. Discounts and commercial advertisements are not permitted for certain product groups. This affects multiple parts of the operation, from content in the webshop to price display in advertising channels.
At the same time, customers must be able to find the right product quickly and easily, without the range becoming cluttered.
Without a well-structured integration between systems, pricing rules, product restrictions, and inventory would have to be managed across multiple locations, with a high risk of errors and extra manual work.
What Vitatheek needed?
Vitatheek needed a platform that aligns with the way the company operates. Orders needed to be automatically processed in the ERP, where pricing rules, product restrictions, and other logic are applied without relying on manual corrections.
Additionally, the platform had to keep the wide product range manageable in daily operations. Navigation, search functionality, and personalization had to ensure that customers quickly find the right product.
Finally, the platform had to remain flexibly expandable. New functionalities and integrations had to be able to be added without disrupting existing processes.
What NextChapter has accomplished for Vitatheek
With NextChapter’s multi-suite, Vitatheek works with a single platform where webshop, ERP, and logistics come together. Orders are automatically forwarded to purchasing and inventory, creating a single continuous flow and limiting manual work.
The platform also plays a central role in the daily management of the webshop. Jan van Veenendaal, owner of Vitatheek, says: “NextChapter excels at maintaining the navigation structure and content, setting up promotions, and scheduling notifications and banners.”
Integrations and personalization
The integration with Clerk.io helps Vitatheek keep its extensive product range organized for customers. With tens of thousands of products, it is essential that customers quickly find the right product. Therefore, search results are determined not only by search terms but also by relevance and user behavior.
Additionally, Clerk.io is used for personalization within the webshop as well as in Copernica email campaigns. Based on search behavior, viewed products, and purchases, products and content are automatically tailored to the customer. Data from email interactions is subsequently fed back to Clerk.io to further improve recommendations.
As a result, customers are shown relevant products faster, without having to actively search for them. Shop reviews via KiyOh further reinforce trust.
App
In addition to the webshop, Vitatheek has a mobile app for iOS and Android, which went live in the app stores within six weeks. The app works natively with the NextChapter multiˣ suite and connects directly to the existing webshop without separate integration projects.
The app serves as a dedicated channel for customers, highlighting exclusive offers, products, and content such as blogs. On average, 65% of app users have notifications enabled, allowing customers to be reached quickly and easily.
Furthermore, the app lowers the barrier to repeat orders. Customers remain logged in, shopping carts are saved, and products can be easily found again via the built-in barcode scanner. As a result, customers return more frequently directly via the app, reducing reliance on paid traffic.
The result
Today, Vitatheek operates with a single e-commerce environment in which the webshop, app, and underlying processes seamlessly connect and function as a single entity. This makes it possible to manage a large product range with a relatively small team without additional operational pressure. The systems support the workflow rather than creating extra work. As a result, Vitatheek can continue to grow without the team and operational costs having to grow proportionally.
The technical management and development of the platform are handled by NextChapter. This allows Vitatheek to focus primarily on business operations, assortment, and growth.
The future
Vitatheek continues to invest in further growth and optimization of the webshop and the processes behind it. The focus is on further simplifying operations, while the product range and the volume of orders continue to increase.
New developments, including AI, are being deployed to make processes smarter and faster, without adding extra complexity.
The collaboration with NextChapter plays an important role in this. Jan: “NextChapter always actively contributes ideas and proactively suggests solutions that could be of interest to us. That openness keeps the collaboration honest and sharp.”
Download thewhitepaper
Whitepaper Replatforming: Best of Suite or Best of Breed
Explore our whitepaper to understand the current most popular Replatforming options. We break down the choice between e-commerce Suites and Best of Breed solutions. Learn about the opportunities and possibilities each option offers, and the challenges and risks you might face. Download the whitepaper to make an informed decision on the right Replatforming approach for your organization.