Merz b. Schwanen: Heritage Clothing Brand Revived
Merz b. Schwanen is a family-run heritage clothing brand born in the Swabian Alps of Germany in 1911. Originally a workwear manufacturer, the brand fell into dormancy during the textile industry's mass shift overseas. But in 2010, a chance encounter at a Berlin flea market – the discovery of an original Merz b. Schwanen Henley shirt – led to the revival of the brand by Peter and Gitta Plotnicki.
With a focus on craftsmanship, the reborn Merz b. Schwanen tracked down and restored original loopwheeler knitting machines from the early 1900s, many of which were rusting away in storage. This painstaking restoration formed the basis of a new vision: one rooted in quality, organic materials and timeless design.
Today, Merz b. Schwanen operate stores in Berlin and New York, and have a thriving eCommerce and wholesale presence. Their recent growth was further amplified when millions saw the brand's classic white 215 T-shirt worn by Jeremy Allen White in the hit TV show The Bear.
Using Shopify, Merz b. Schwanen have seen:
- A new POS system set up in just 10 days
- 95% error reduction on clothing loan forms and 15 minutes saved per request
- 85% customer email capture rate as part of the checkout process
Challenge: Rapidly migrating from a costly platform
As Merz b. Schwanen expanded from a niche heritage brand into a full-scale retail and wholesale operation, their previous commerce system began to buckle under the pressure.
As Lennard Plotnicki, Retail & Commercial Manager, explains, basic functions like inventory updates, refunds or POS configuration required time consuming admin or even dedicated developer support. "Our legacy system essentially needed two full-time people dedicated to managing it. Every feature we wanted changing required a developer, so it was a huge bottleneck," he says.
With a single external developer juggling tickets and an in-house IT lead overwhelmed with requests, operations were often delayed while costs skyrocketed. Retail operations suffered, too, with the system failing during a peak moment, costing them thousands of dollars over two days.
The old system also lacked mobile capabilities and required manual workarounds for returns and exchanges. Even in their newly-opened New York store, the team couldn't process returns easily or offer customer receipts, leading to confusion and awkward checkout experiences.
Most concerning of all, the tech stack turned the business inward: instead of focusing on creativity, craftsmanship, or customer experience, the team spent time fixing tools that were supposed to empower them.
We want to be creating and selling clothing. But before moving to Shopify, at times it felt more like we were an IT/logistics company, spending all of our time working around the old system.
Powerful POS, seamlessly setup in days
With the New York store operating as a separate entity, in 2024 Lennard saw an opportunity to pilot Shopify, starting with Shopify POS – and do it in time for the Black Friday peak. Despite a short time frame, Lennard was able to implement the new solution in just ten days and he set it all up remotely from London.
All of this was possible thanks to Shopify's intuitive setup and UI and clear guides. "I had zero formal Shopify training – I just used the Help Centre, a few apps and my laptop," Lennard adds.
Lennard uploaded product data, configured Shopify POS, ordered hardware and even tested payments using tap to pay on his iPhone so that he was confident everything worked smoothly ahead of the launch. The store team in New York unboxed the hardware, followed intuitive plug-and-play setup instructions and were live within days. The contrast to their legacy system – they had previously needed to fly in their in-house IT and Operations Manager just to get things running on the system – was stark.
Shopify POS enabled more than just smoother checkouts. The team also integrated Shopify Flow to automate follow up emails to encourage reviews and added custom tiles to the POS interface. One of these was used to manage stock notifications for customers that want an update on when items will be available – particularly helpful for the in-demand 215 T-Shirt that featured on The Bear.
It sounds crazy, but with our old POS system we weren't even able to do a proper return or exchange while providing receipts. Now, we can easily offer store credit or gift cards to encourage people to spend again.
To manage loans, for example to a movie's costume department, the team also created bespoke tags and conditional discounts – all without any development work. The data automatically syncs into a Google Sheet for seamless tracking. "Previously we had a clunky process that meant going to the very back end of our ERP system, creating inventory transfers and then having a paper document signed – it was a lot of steps," says Lennard.
The Results: Streamlined admin and improved experiences
Since setting up Shopify, performance has remained flawless during peaks and the team has been able to streamline workflows across the board. Weekly reporting is fully automated and integrated with Report Pundit, saving at least an hour of admin each week. Meanwhile, loan requests take 15 minutes less each with errors reduced by 95% – which adds up to significant time savings for the team.
Email capture rates have also skyrocketed to 85% of in-store transactions, laying the foundation for fully-fledged customer profiles. This approach is helping them capitalise on the surging demand driven by The Bear – building new customers into brand loyalists through personalisation and segmentation.
Looking ahead, Merz b. Schwanen plans to integrate Klaviyo to further bolster marketing efforts. Where previously the team would have to pay for custom APIs for any form of extensibility, now new tools can be integrated in a couple of clicks. "Anything we want to do, there's already a Shopify integration," Lennard adds.
It's not only software that's flexible – with Shopify POS, Lennard and the team can easily sell in new locations, like pop-ups. Starting with a partnership with a local NYC pizza place, they're planning to experiment with more of these in the months ahead.
Before we had to fly our IT specialist in from Germany to set up the POS. With Shopify, we can just bring our hardware, or even just our phone, and start selling,
Next step: Full ecommerce migration
The success in New York was just phase one of Merz b. Schwanen's journey with Shopify. Given the strong results, the team are now rapidly rolling out Shopify across their business.
In Berlin, their eCommerce Manager and IT & Operations Manager are implementing a full migration to Shopify for the brand's D2C ecommerce operations, enlisting the trusted support of a Shopify specialist partner. The migration will include integrations with shipping platforms and tools like Klaviyo, with the new platform scheduled to go live in May 2025.
Without worrying about tech being a bottleneck, the brand will also be launching new stores and pop-ups alongside exploring opportunities with loyalty programmes, seamless returns, product bundles, automated marketing and much more.
Most importantly of all, with Shopify simplifying their technology stack, Merz b. Schwanen can dedicate more time to their passion – creating timeless, sustainable and authentic pieces made with deep respect to the brand's heritage.
With Shopify, we have a system that actually supports what we want to do in our operations and which can easily adjust to our needs – rather than the other way around. We're excited to see what other new opportunities it opens up for us.