2023 has ended, so it’s time to sum up! It was an intense but fruitful year for us. We released new projects and started working on new ones. We participated in prestigious events, and new, experienced people joined our team, strengthening it even more.
Furthermore, we would like to thank the entire BitBag team – without you, it would not have been possible! We would also like to thank our customers and partners for their trust; thanks to you, we can create really great things!
New releases and updates
This year, in addition to the development of our own products, such as OpenMarketplace, we also focused on the development and support of Sylius. Our “special” open-source team has been dynamically developing plugins dedicated to Sylius 1.12. In this way, we contribute to the development of this technology and enable the Sylius community to create projects that meet the highest standards.
OpenMarketplace 2.0 by BitBag
Seeing the community’s growing interest and observing the market, we decided to release an improved version of OpenMarketplace. OpenMarketplace 2.0 by BitBag, has been extended with a new architecture and many improvements.
This is certainly a big step forward in the transformation of digital commerce, but we couldn’t have done it without the valuable feedback from our community! Thank you! 👏
Reminder : OpenMarketplace by BitBag is a highly efficient and extensible solution based on the PHP programming language, Symfony framework, and Sylius platform dedicated to online stores with multiple independent sellers and virtual shopping malls with separate departments or selling channels.
What is new?
- New Modular Monolith Architecture: We’ve given our platform a facelift to mirror the sleekness of Sylius.
- Enhanced Messaging Component: Chatting between Admins and Sellers? More seamless than ever!
- Advanced Order System: Shop from multiple sellers? No problem! Our system now dishes out separate orders for each, making everything neat and tidy.
- Comprehensive Product Modules: Say hello to cool features for product listing versioning and conversion.
- Vendor Module Upgrades: Vendors, we’ve got your back with stylish profile update tools and delivery configurations.
- Core Component Revamp: It’s all about synergy. Now, we’re smoothly synced with Sylius and Symfony and neatly organized into user-friendly sub-components.
- The Override Component: No sweat in updates! We’ve got a clever trick up our sleeve by overriding Sylius code.
Why Jump onto the OpenMarketplace 2.0 Bandwagon?
In this ever-changing industry, there’s a growing demand for an elegant, scalable, and wallet-friendly eCommerce marketplace solution. OpenMarketplace 2.0 by BitBag ticks all the boxes, crafted with love and precision. Plus, who can resist the charm and freedom of open-source?
Dive in and explore OpenMarketplace 2.0 on our GitHub. If you’re vibing with our vision, a ⭐ rating from you would mean the world to us. Let’s brighten up the platform’s future together!
Join the BitBag Open Marketplace Slack community. Let’s brainstorm, chat, and share some cool stuff.
Want a tailored solution? Our team can customize OpenMarketplace just for you. Take a sneak peek at our demo and contact us.
Sylius Plugins by BitBag
As we mentioned, we focused on improving our extensions and plugins for Sylius 1.12. We have updated plugins such as:
- SyliusWishlistPlugin v4.1.1 and v4.1.2 – further improvements that will make it easier for users to manage their wish list.
- SyliusDPDPlShippingExportPlugin v2.0.0 – a new version of the plugin for better shipment management.
- SyliusProductBundlePlugin v2.3.0 – improvements that will allow for even better product presentation.
- SyliusCmsPlugin v4.0.8 – the next iteration of our comprehensive CMS solution.
This group also included
- ImportExportBundle v1.1.5
- CustomerReorderPlugin v2.0.1
- SyliusOrganizationPlugin v2.0.0
- SyliusQuickShoppingPlugin v2.0.0
- SyliusAdyenPlugin v2.0.1
- SyliusIngPlugin v2.1.0
The entire list of plugins supporting Sylius 1.12
- Sylius CMS Plugin
- Sylius ElasticSearch Plugin
- Sylius Wishlist Plugin
- Sylius ProductBundle Plugin
- Sylius B2B Plugin
- Sylius ImportExport Plugin
- Sylius CustomerReorder Plugin
- Sylius QuickShopping Plugin
- Sylius Adyen Plugin
- Sylius ShippingExport Plugin
- Sylius MailChimp Plugin
- Sylius CatalogPromotion Plugin
- Sylius Ing Plugin
- Sylius PayU Plugin
- Sylius AmazonPay Plugin
- Sylius Przelewy24 Plugin
- Sylius InPost Plugin
- Sylius Catalog Plugin
- Sylius BonusPoints Plugin
- Sylius ShippingSubscription Plugin
- Sylius Multicart Plugin
- Sylius Banner Plugin
- Sylius Blacklist Plugin
Our plugins are available at the Sylius Store and our GitHub repository
E-Book BitBag x Shopware
At the beginning of the year, we set ourselves the goal of creating an e-book that would thoroughly discuss the most important elements and technologies needed to build and expand an online store. And that’s how it happened!
The e-book “Maximize the potential of your online store: A comprehensive guide to choosing the best technologies for eCommerce” was released at the beginning of March and has since been downloaded over 500 times!
Who was it created for?
The e-book is addressed to all entrepreneurs considering creating their first online store but also to those who want to expand their current eCommerce and take it to a higher level.
What’s inside?
The e-book is divided into 2 parts:
The first one describes the elements and technologies whose use will certainly contribute to creating a profitable eCommerce business. At the end of each category, a checklist has been prepared to support the reader in making an informed choice of technology.
The second part of the e-book was entirely devoted to Shopware.
You will find detailed information on using Shopware to create an online store. We discussed:
- Product creation
- Order management
- Content creation
- Selection of plugins and much more
The e-book was created in Polish 🇵🇱 and English 🇬🇧
Want to explore the best eCommerce technologies and deep dive into Shopware? Check out our free e-book – A comprehensive guide to choosing the best technologies for eCommerce
Events
Similarly to the previous year, 2023 was full of entries and industry events that we couldn’t miss. We appeared at some events as guests, such as e-commerce Berlin, and at others as exhibitors and event sponsors.
E-commerce Poland Expo
A year ago, we attended as guests as well as exhibitors! In April, together with Shopware, we took part in the spring edition of the E-commerce Poland Expo in Warsaw.
The E-commerce Poland Expo 2023 is one of the biggest industry events, attracting many exhibitors and visitors. This time was no different!
The atmosphere of the fair favored getting to know new technologies, exchanging experiences, getting to know the needs and problems of our potential clients, and establishing new business contacts.
“Events like this bring the community together, which gives a chance to broaden the business perspective and establish contacts with potential partners and clients. Additionally, it is a good opportunity to strengthen relationships with current partners – in our case, it was an invitation from Shopware Polska to share a stand.”
Radosław Żurawski CSO
“It was a very valuable experience. We could personally talk to online store owners about their experiences with eCommerce technology and present them with potential solutions that could solve their problems.”
Jakub Leśniewski, Business Development Representative
#2 Sylius Polish Community Meetup
In May, for the second time, we had the pleasure of organizing, together with our business partner Ergonode, the spring edition of Sylius Polish Community Meetup.
The speakers were Łukasz Wójtowicz (Ergonode), Marcin Popowski and Marcin Szkop (imoje), and Maciej Kalkowski (Centuria). In their presentations, they talked about the integration of PIM and Sylius, payments for the B2B sector, and the efficiency of eCommerce websites.
Thank you to Ergonode for supporting the Meetup and our other activities. We hope that 2024 will bring you only fruitful projects and cooperation!
Traditionally, the entire event ended with networking over pizza and beer, during which conversations took place on topics related to Sylius and more.
#1 Sylius German Community Meetup
Exactly one month later, we organized the first edition of the Sylius German Community Meetup in Berlin.
“After the previous two Polish editions, we received very positive feedback from the Sylius community. It was certainly a boost of energy and motivation for us to go a step further and take this event to the foreign market, For starters, Berlin. This wasn’t the first meetup of this type in Germany, but the first one organized by BitBag.“
Mikołaj Król, CEO at BitBag
The speakers were Łukasz Chruściel(Co-founder at Commerce Weavers), Konrad Alfaro (Technical Consultant at 8lines), and Mikołaj Król (CEO at BitBag). In their presentations, they talk about the future of Sylius, Sylius infrastructure, and the development of Sylius.
PHPers Summit 2023
This was our 5th time as an exhibitor at the PHPers Summit in Poznań. This year, BitBag also became the Gold Sponsor of the event. Year by year, we are more and more happy that we can participate in the largest PHP conference in Poland. We really enjoy meeting the community and talking about creating amazing things with Sylius, Shopware, and Symfony.
Also, for the fifth time, we organized two smaller PHPers meetings in Opole and Bydgoszcz.
These are very valuable meetings, full of passion and knowledge, which integrate the developer community and allow them to exchange their experiences related to PHP.
FashionWeAre
At the end of August, we had the opportunity to participate in the FashionWeAre fair for the first time. Together with Sylius, we acted there as exhibitors.
FashionWeAre is the most important business fair for the B2B fashion industry in Poland. They are held twice a year in Łódź, in the cradle of the Polish clothing industry. The fair connects clothing brands with trade representatives and, this year, also with online store creators because, for the first time, there will be an eCommerce zone at the event.
Why BitBag and the FashionWeAre?
First of all, many of our projects are based on Sylius, which works great in the fashion industry. Thanks to the headless approach, Sylius ensures flexibility, efficiency, and ease of optimization and is perfect for the omnichannel approach, which is particularly important in the fashion industry.
Secondly, due to our experience in implementing online fashion stores, we are able to create an eCommerce platform that perfectly reflects the client’s vision and meets the company’s business needs.
#2 SyliusCon
SyliusCon closes the list of events in 2023. In November, the second edition of the conference fully dedicated to Sylius took place, and BitBag became the Gold Sponsor for the second time in a row.
The conference was a significant event for the community of programmers and entrepreneurs interested in eCommerce. Participants had the opportunity to take part in specially prepared presentations about Sylius.
The speakers included Radosław Żurawski and Przemysław Ptasiński, members of the BitBag team. The presentations concerned advanced programming techniques, modular Sylius Plus, the advantage of open-source in eCommerce, building a marketplace on Sylius, and successful projects based on this framework.
There were many networking opportunities during the conference, which allowed participants to establish new business and technical contacts.
The conference certainly contributed to strengthening the community around this technology. We left the event with new ideas and enthusiasm to use the acquired knowledge in practice.
The whole summary of SyliusCon you can find in this blog post >>>
Project go-live
As a team, we are not afraid of challenges; frankly speaking, it’s the opposite! Thanks to them, we develop our skills, gain new experience, and become better experts. One such challenge is a project for a new industry. It was the same this year – We had the opportunity to implement two projects in the lighting industry for the B2B sector. So a double challenge – even better!
The first project is ARTERA, a brand owned by one of the leading companies in the lighting industry, ALDEX sp. z o.o., which has a multi-generational tradition in the production and sale of lighting. The store’s offer is aimed at retail customers looking for modern projects but also at designers, architects, or investors who can benefit from the detailed product dimensions and 3D models.
Artera’s problem was an outdated version of Sylius 1.2, which differed significantly from current standards. This began to negatively impact the store’s performance, integration with other tools, and further development. A technological debt was created, which made further expansion of the store difficult due to problems with, among others, data serialization.
The main challenges of the project are:
- Upgrade Sylius from version 1.2 to 1.11
- Upgrade PHP from 7.4 to 8.1
- Uploading 3D product models
- Adding translations
- Individual integration with the Google ecosystem
- Automatic assignment of products
- Expansion of the search functionality
- Adjusting the platform to legal regulations
- Configuration of automatic database backup
- Configuration of nginx – preparation for increased traffic on the site.
The upgrade from Sylius 1.2 to 1.11 makes it easier and quicker to introduce new functionalities and install ready-made plugins. Automation in the admin panel has shortened the time and effort required to manage the product offer. Search engine modifications have resulted in customers receiving products better suited to their needs. The addition of translations has enabled the company to expand into foreign markets. Meanwhile, thanks to the possibility of uploading and downloading 3D product models, designers and architects are more inclined to use Artera’s store services.
What’s more, the owners of Artera were so pleased with our cooperation with us that they entrusted us with a second project. This time it was Migration from WooCommerce to Sylius. Case study Domotio >>>
It is extremely motivating for us when our clients return to us with another project.
The next project is Agro-Efekt. This is a comprehensive trade company servicing the Polish agricultural market for over 30 years. Their mission is to provide professional services through consulting, purchase of agricultural products, services, and sale of agricultural production means and new technologies.
The aim of the cooperation was to create a B2B platform offering a number of functionalities to streamline the order fulfillment process. The main assumptions were:
- Built-in custom search engine – product search less than 1s
- Import of products from the John Deere catalog
- Implementation of integration with SAP
- Wishlist implementation
- Implementing the chat functionality (available in case of returns)
- Integration with imoje payments (ING Bank Śląski),
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Integration with Polkurier
- Creating orders from CSV
- Implementation multi-inventory management system
As a result, Agro-Efekt was able to launch the B2B online store, serving over 1 million products. The store met all their requirements, and the integration with SAP enabled them to offer the best customer experience. Furthermore, by integrating the store with Google Analytics, they could understand the store’s performance better and make improvements accordingly. Now, the store is able to offer customers a wide range of products and services, as well as a convenient, secure payment system and a quick and efficient way to order parts.
From our end, we have provided all necessary components on the eCommerce side. The project is waiting for go-live, but this is related to external factors beyond our control.
ur service offer, in addition to classic eCommerce development, also includes outsourcing – i.e., the possibility of renting our developers to an external company. We have already implemented several projects using this model. One of them is Azrieli.
Azrieli.com (eCommerce part of the Azrieli Group) is the online marketplace in Israel that offers a wide selection of products in many categories, including fashion, home, garden, electronics, gifts and leisure, children and infants, pharmacy and cosmetics, sports and more.
Azrieli wanted to improve its customers’ online shopping experience and needed to enhance its current platform with some additional features and integrations. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough internal resources (developers), so they used our services and outsourced some tasks to us.
The primary challenge was creating a solution to handle the customer’s complex requirements. This included:
- Integrating various third-party tools and multiple shipping providers
- Ensuring compliance with local regulations considering promotions
- Setting up product feeds from multiple sources
- Providing a loyalty points system and AI-based recommendation system
- Ensuring customer information can be stored securely and efficiently
- Two-way integration between the marketplace management tool and Sylius
- Slack integration for customized notifications
As a part of the cooperation between Azrieli’s and BitBag’s teams (developers), we were able to implement the following:
- Third-party tools: 𝗠𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗸𝗹, 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱, 𝗡𝗶𝘅𝗮𝗹𝗲, 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗦𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗲, 𝗦𝗔𝗣 𝗖𝗗𝗖, 𝗞𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿
- Product Feeds
- Promotion cool-off mechanism
- Slack integration
- Shipping providers integration
- Loyalty points system
Awards
BitBag has been listed as one of Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies in the Financial Times FT1000: Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies 2023, coming in at #114!🎉
The FT1000 award list is a prestigious recognition of high-growth companies that have achieved remarkable growth in revenue. It is a great honor for us to be included in this list and be amongst Europe’s top companies.
Once again, we would like to thank our customers, partners, and employees for their continued support. This award results from our collective dedication and passion for developing innovative eCommerce solutions. 💙
Partnership
This year, we focused on strengthening and developing relationships with our current business partners. For another year together, we would like to thank our partners Sylius, SensioLabs, Shopware, Ergonode, Vue Storefront, Adyen, and Ibexa.
We hope that next year will be equally fruitful for all of us!
This year we launched a BitBag Affiliate Program, thanks to which you can become our partner and receive a fee for recommending our services. We described the entire process on a dedicated landing page.
BitBag Affiliate Program
Team Integrations
This year, the company integration took place once again, during which we all had the opportunity to meet. Working remotely, such moments are very valuable to us. We want each person to feel comfortable in our company and have the best possible relationship with the team.
What’s more, just like last year, we organized local Christmas dinners. The meeting took place in Wrocław, Poznań and Kraków.
Summary
In 2023, we continued the assumptions from the previous year. We have expanded our portfolio with new projects. Each BitBag’er developed and trained in its own direction, which contributed to strengthening the entire team.
We hope that in 2024, with the support of our employees, partners, and customers, we will implement further projects and create new products that will contribute to the development of Sylius and beyond.
Thank you again! See you in 2024. 👋