Why Germany's largest adult entertainment vendor turned to SAP to reinvigorate its brand

Germany's Beate Uhse says it needed a new approach to appeal to modern customers in the adult entertainment market

Many industries are forced to transform as modern tastes and sentiment change, and the market for erotic toys is no exception. Beate Uhse, the largest and oldest company in the German sex industry, decided to treat its acquisition by Robus Capital last year as an opportunity to renew its focus in line with modern customer values and forms of shopping.

Former Luftwaffe pilot Beate Rotermund-Uhse founded Beate Uhse in 1946, and the company opened its first store in 1962. It followed its initial locations with a chain of shops targeting women in 2004. At the time it was the world's largest company in the adult entertainment sector, but sales began to fall shortly after and the company declared bankruptcy in 2017.

Robus acquired the firm in 2018 under a new subsidiary (‘be you GmbH'), and the combination of bankruptcy and acquisition has prompted Beate Uhse to re-examine its digital strategy.

"[We] realised that our market is developing and people no longer see the erotic market as sleazy, male-orientated or restrictive, but web platforms need to develop in line with this," CEO Craig Wheeler told Computing.

"[Our CRM is] an old in-house [SAP] Hybris platform, and we reviewed every platform available on the market to identify the best, most robust, most comprehensive and most flexible…to develop in an agile way to deliver to the needs of not only our creative imagination, but customer demands in an evolving world. We knew we wanted to add a raft of functionality, features and personalisation beyond current retailers in our industry or in fact industries; we exist in a unique and very personal space, where nobody has the same unique desires or preferences."

When Beate Uhse made its bankruptcy announcement, "many suppliers initially abandoned the business," said Wheeler, but fellow German firm SAP was committed to helping the company dig itself out.

Having considered "every other available web platform," Beate Uhse chose SAP to help reinvigorate its digital workflows in late 2018. The company built a new web platform using SAP Customer Experience, including SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Customer Data Cloud (as well as a few other confidential modules), and its online presence now reaches more than 30 countries.

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