At this year’s B2B Digital Commerce event in Rotterdam, we sat down with Denise van Mourik, Digital Improvement Lead at BOSKA, to talk about digital transformation, scaling B2B commerce on Shopify, and the lessons learned from balancing custom-built infrastructure with long-term scalability.
About The Brand
Ryan: For those unfamiliar with BOSKA, tell us a little about the company.
Denise: BOSKA is mostly known for our cheese slicers. But over the years, we’ve expanded our assortment to include pizza tools, chocolate, meat, vegetables… really anything that brings good food and good experiences to the table. We focus on creating quality food tools and making sharing food more enjoyable.
Ryan: And tell us a little about your own journey at BOSKA.
Denise: I’ve been at BOSKA for around eight years now. I actually started in the back office, so I was very close to our operational side from the beginning. Over the past three or four years, my role has become much more focused on our digital landscape, optimizing processes, improving systems, and reducing manual work wherever possible.
How it started
Ryan: Before the digital transformation, what did B2B operations at BOSKA actually look like?
Denise: Honestly… very manual.
We had around eight people in the back office full-time answering phones and manually entering orders. We still had fax orders coming through. Thankfully, we had a smart IT person who managed to route those into our inboxes instead of printing them physically.
But the whole process was very reactive. The phones were constantly ringing, and the team spent most of their time processing orders rather than actually doing sales or supporting customers strategically.
Ryan: Was there a particular moment where the business realized things needed to change?
Denise: The biggest realization was scalability. Manual order entry simply wasn’t sustainable long term.
Around 2016 or 2017, BOSKA signed with Shopify because we knew we wanted a B2B webshop. At the time, Shopify didn’t really have native B2B functionality yet, but our goal was clear: we needed a platform that could help us modernize operations and support future growth.
Building B2B on Shopify before Shopify B2B existed
Ryan: Shopify wasn’t really known for B2B at that point. Why did BOSKA still decide to go in that direction?
Denise: We knew we needed something scalable and flexible. The challenge became figuring out how to make Shopify work for our operational needs such as customer-specific pricing, discounts, ERP logic and B2B account structures.
A lot of it had to be custom-built at the time, and Domaine helped create a bespoke B2B environment for us on Shopify with customer-specific pricing and minimum order quantities, which we were able to then manage in-house.
Ryan: What did that level of customization teach you?
Denise: At first, it meant a lot of ongoing adjustments. We had one in-house IT person who understood how all the integrations worked. But, if something broke between Shopify and our ERP system, nobody knew immediately what the issue was and where it was happening. Over time, we realized we didn’t necessarily want “more customization”, we wanted smarter customization.
Now our mindset is:
- Start with standard platform functionality first
- Understand your real business requirements
- Only custom-build when truly necessary
- Make sure customizations evolve alongside the platform
That’s probably one of our biggest learnings.
Today’s B2B stack
Ryan: Can you walk us through BOSKA’s technology ecosystem today?
Denise: Now we use Shopify B2B and it’s native functionality. And then the stack looks like Microsoft Business Central for our ERP, before that, we were on an older Navision setup that really needed replacing. Boomi as middleware — Boomi connects all of our systems and ensures the right information flows to the right place at the right time. So, product data, customer information and stock levels all flow from the ERP into Shopify.
Then Shopify handles order placement and those orders flow back through Boomi into the ERP again.
Ryan: So the ERP remains the operational core?
Denise: Exactly. Shopify is really a flexible extension of our ERP system.
Scaling internationally
Ryan: BOSKA operates internationally. How has the new setup changed global operations?
Denise: Last year, we transitioned our DTC business to Shopify Markets and launched multiple regional markets, including Germany, France, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and the rest of the world.
This year, the focus is on bringing our B2B operations fully into that Markets structure as well. That will allow us to localize currency, pricing and customer experiences, while still operating from one centralized infrastructure.
The biggest win
Ryan: Looking back, what’s been the biggest impact of the transformation?
Denise: Honestly, happier people.
The back office team no longer spends all day answering phones and manually processing orders. They can actually focus on sales and helping customers instead of administrative work. That’s probably the biggest operational win for us. But also scalability.
Last year, BOSKA acquired another company with four additional brands, and we were able to integrate them into our existing B2B infrastructure within just a few months. That would have been much harder with our previous setup.
Reflections on modern B2B commerce
Ryan: What do you think businesses misunderstand most about “modern B2B”?
Denise: I think people sometimes over-engineer solutions too quickly. You don’t need to custom-build everything immediately. First understand:
- What your business actually needs
- What the platform already offers
- Which customer journeys matter most
Then build carefully from there. Custom solutions can absolutely help, but only if they remain maintainable long term.
What’s next for BOSKA B2B?
Ryan: What does the next phase look like for BOSKA’s B2B strategy?
Denise: The focus now is on creating a single unified B2B platform globally. Right now, we still operate separate B2B environments for the US and the rest of the world. We want to consolidate that into one international setup powered by Shopify Markets. And beyond that, it’s really about creating a clearer long-term B2B vision: Where do we want to be in one year? Three years? What experiences do we want to create for customers?
That strategic direction is really the next phase for us.
BOSKA’s approach to modernising B2B commerce is a reminder that B2B buyers are still just people. They use apps, shop online every day, and expect things to work simply and efficiently, but many B2B commerce setups haven’t kept up with those expectations. Together with Domaine, they moved from a custom setup to a more practical, self-service model built around how B2B customers actually buy — creating a better buying experience, and freeing up their team for growth.
To learn more about BOSKA and explore their products, visit BOSKA’s website. To learn about the work we did with Denise and the team at BOSKA, visit the case study.
