ExtraLux didn’t want a better webshop. They wanted to stop reacting to urgent orders altogether. Creatim helped them build something most distributors haven’t: a platform where stock sits at the customer’s site, gets restocked on a schedule, and is billed by what’s actually used. Built on Sylius. Live for years. Featured by Sylius as a flagship case study.
of B2B orders placed digitally
Usually, we only think about office supplies when we run out of them. Customers expect them always to be on hand and get frustrated when they’re not — even if they forgot to order them.
On the other side of the transaction, distributors deal with the constant pressure of urgent orders,unpredictable delivery schedules, and an inflated cost of customer service. ExtraLux — one of Slovenia’s largest B2B office-supply distributors — was determined to break that pattern.
The company’s new business model would put an optimized inventory directly at customer sites, replenish it on a schedule, and charge only for what was actually used. For the idea to work in practice, ExtraLux needed a tailored e-commerce system — internally branded Birolux — that could combine a traditional B2B store with a consigned-inventory layer in one maintainable platform. They asked Creatim to design and build it.
Creatim first mapped every user flow needed for ExtraLux customers to manage their personalized lists of office supplies.
The pivotal element became a web application that lets customers report their monthly consumption — which then drives automatic invoicing. The interface had to be simple enough that adoption wouldn’t be the project’s biggest risk. The same system alerts an ExtraLux representative when it’s time to restock.
In parallel, the development team built the technical foundation on Sylius — the open-source platform purpose-built for non-template B2B commerce models. The result combines two systems into one platform:
The platform automates the B2B selling process end-to-end — from order to contract management — and gives both supplier and customer a single, accurate view of consumption.
The platform has fundamentally changed how ExtraLux runs its business. Three numbers tell the story:
“One of our customers is a major clothing retailer with 180 locations across Slovenia and Croatia. Each location is now a separate cost center, but orders for all of them are managed centrally by a single person in Slovenia. Before digitalization, that simply would not have been possible.”
Gregor Bogataj, ExtraLux
The benefits extend beyond efficiency. With more orders flowing through the platform, ExtraLux’s sales team gained back time — and in many cases used it to grow revenue, sometimes significantly.
That freed-up capacity also gave ExtraLux room to broaden its offer beyond traditional office supplies into adjacent programs: cleaning and hygiene supplies, marketing and promotional products, and gift programs.This matters strategically: traditional office-supply revenue is declining industry-wide as businesses digitize.The platform didn’t just optimize what ExtraLux was doing — it gave the company the operational headroom to evolve its business model.
The solution is managed and hosted by Creatim, which keeps ExtraLux’s total cost of ownership under control while letting the company’s sales force focus on what software can’t do.
The ExtraLux platform is featured on Sylius’s own website as a flagship “Industrial & Commercial” case study, published in English, French, and German. Creatim is a Sylius Professional Solution Partner — one of a small group of certified agencies trusted to build production-grade Sylius platforms for European clients.
If your business depends on putting the right product in front of the right customer at the right moment — and you suspect there’s a smarter way to do it than the one you have today — let’s talk. Creatim has been engineering B2B commerce platforms for European distributors and wholesalers for 25 years.
When off-the-shelf solutions don’t cut it, Creatim can help. Let’s turn your challenges into a competitive advantage!
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