Annemarie Börlind: A New Shopping Experience in the AWS Cloud
Annemarie Börlind
“What I can’t eat, I won’t put on my skin.” With this commitment to quality, Annemarie Lindner was a pioneer of natural cosmetics. In 1959, she founded Börlind GmbH in Calw in the Black Forest together with her husband Walter Lindner and Hermann Börner. The company name is a combination of the founders’ surnames, Börner and Lindner.
The first brand, Annemarie Börlind Natural Skin Care, was later joined by Dado Sens in 1987, a line developed specifically for sensitive skin. When it came to the purity of raw materials, the founder made no compromises. For example, the water used in the cosmetics comes from two of the company’s own deep springs.
The company also develops groundbreaking ingredients, such as an extract from stem cells of the Black Forest rose. Börlind remains family-owned to this day, with the third generation taking over in 2020.
The challenge at one glance
Scalability:
Performance:
Technical Setup:
High Administrative Effort:
Meeting High Performance Demands
Double-digit growth rates are a dream for many in e-commerce — for the natural cosmetics pioneer Annemarie Börlind, they are reality. In just five years, the Black Forest-based company increased its online share of total revenue from €60 million to an impressive 25 percent.
But this rapid success pushed the existing infrastructure to its limits. The combination of Magento and a traditional European cloud provider could no longer keep up with the growing performance demands. Administrative effort became a burden: “The entire setup wasn’t right, and we were constantly busy troubleshooting,” explains IT Director Tobias Stahl.
To reach its growth target of 50 percent online revenue, Börlind brought in the experts from PCG. Together, they optimized the online shop in the AWS Cloud. PCG not only handled the technical realignment but has also ensured smooth operations ever since through continuous monitoring. This allows the Börlind team to focus on what really matters: premium natural cosmetics.
Solutions at a Glance
Cloud-Based Shop Architecture:
Sustainable Performance Improvement:
Operational Relief for the Team:
Proactive Monitoring:
Process Automation:
Clear Incident and Communication Processes:
Faster, Fewer Errors
Since the beginning of 2024, Annemarie Börlind’s online shop has been running smoothly and without disruptions. Customers enjoy fast loading times and a highly convenient shopping experience. Meanwhile, the Börlind team no longer has to deal with errors and can focus on what really matters: optimizing the shopping experience and promoting special offers.
The difference? The shop now runs on Shopware in the AWS Cloud — scalable, flexible, and highly available. “The Börlind team couldn’t have done this alone,” emphasizes Tobias Stahl.
The company was looking for a partner to support them in this challenging project. They chose an IT consultancy that helped develop the migration concept and built the shop on AWS. However, the initial shop configuration left much to be desired, and performance issues persisted. The partner also couldn’t take on operational responsibility due to a lack of AWS expertise.
The Börlind team wanted relief in ongoing operations as well. They needed a third party: PCG. “PCG is a Swabian mid-sized company, just like us, and the chemistry was right from the start.”
Migration in Record Time
PCG completed the work in just eight weeks, from contract signing to final delivery. During this phase, PCG assumed full operational responsibility for the AWS environment — handling everything from backups and patching to monitoring via Datadog. In addition, PCG worked together with the partner to optimize the Shopware installation, resulting in a noticeable performance boost. “The PCG team asked the right questions from the very beginning and came up with excellent solution ideas,” praises Tobias Stahl.
Several PCG business units were involved in the project. “No matter who we approached at PCG, the contacts were always competent, and our experiences were consistently positive,” adds Stahl. For example, the Development Unit automated processes that were previously handled manually in the ERP system with external marketplaces like Amazon, Douglas Online, or Alibaba. This automation eliminated a large portion of the previous manual work, and alerts in the monitoring system occurred far less frequently.
If an alert does occur, it is intercepted by PCG and handled according to a clearly defined escalation plan, which specifies who is informed via which Teams channel in each scenario. “This requires not just the right technology but, above all, the right people — and we found those at PCG,” says Stahl. “The collaboration has been outstanding.”
The PCG team asked the right questions from the very beginning and came up with excellent solution ideas.
Customer Service with AI
After one project comes the next. More initiatives — again with PCG’s support — are already in the pipeline, reveals IT Manager Tobias Stahl. While Börlind isn’t pursuing a cloud-only strategy, it’s clear that more functions will be shifted to the AWS Cloud in the future, especially newly developed ones. Leading the way: artificial intelligence.
The company is already using an internal chatbot that analyzes large volumes of data, generates FAQs, and retrieves tracking information from the logistics system. For external use, aimed at improving customer relationships, the team has also built an AI-based prototype. This tool generates appropriate responses to customer email inquiries, referencing relevant FAQ entries. The relief this brings to the customer support team is clearly noticeable.
When it comes to AI solutions, Stahl’s team also relies on PCG. “Our goal with strategic projects like this is to build the expertise within our own team,” he says. For PCG, that’s a given. They work in a spirit of partnership and equality, avoiding the kind of “secret knowledge” dependencies that some other consultancies create.
Through a dedicated training series on AWS and Datadog, PCG experts regularly share new developments and best practices from the AWS ecosystem. These sessions currently take place every two weeks and are set to be expanded with additional Data & AI workshops.
A Relaxed Start to the Holiday Season
The new shop has already passed its first big test. Black Friday in November 2024 and the holiday shopping season went off without a hitch. There were no performance issues, and the customer shopping experience has noticeably improved, says Tobias Stahl. And the best part? “My team members are heading into the Christmas holidays much more relaxed.”
Services Used
Amazon Web Services
AWS Migration
AWS Managed Services
AWS Data & AI
About PCG
Public Cloud Group (PCG) supports companies in their digital transformation through the use of public cloud solutions.
With a product portfolio designed to accompany organizations of all sizes in their cloud journey and competence that is a synonym for highly qualified staff that clients and partners like to work with, PCG is positioned as a reliable and trustworthy partner for the hyperscalers, relevant and with repeatedly validated competence and credibility.
We have the highest partnership status with the three relevant hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft. As experienced providers, we advise our customers independently with cloud implementation, application development, and managed services.
