Revenue tripled, fulfillment halved: How Kinga Mathe grew out of process chaos with Xentral after the dirndl boom

When the "Alissa by Kinga Mathe" collection took off in 2019, the Tegernsee shop turned into a fulfillment warehouse. Two team members packed orders around the clock, the old system sent wrong signals to Shopify, and the return rate spiked to 70%, without any returns actually arriving at the warehouse. With Xentral and partner BDG Solutions, Kinga Mathe restructured its processes in 30 days, halved fulfillment effort, and tripled revenue between 2023 and 2024, without hiring additional staff.

How a dirndl launch pushed the old processes to their breaking point 

Kinga Mathe designs traditional Bavarian dress out of Tegernsee in Upper Bavaria and supplies B2C and B2B customers across southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The designer's dirndls have made the cover of Vogue. Alongside three stores in Munich, Kitzbühel, and a pop-up in Stuttgart, sales run through the Shopify shop. Uniforms for hospitality and hotels round out the business.

For a handful of orders per week, a mix of Excel spreadsheets and manual picking got the job done. That changed overnight in 2019. The "Alissa by Kinga Mathe" collection hit a nerve, and the team had to keep producing during the sale itself. The Tegernsee shop became a fulfillment warehouse. Two team members packed orders around the clock. When the first errors started creeping in, it was clear: no more scaling without an ERP system.

Why did phantom returns knock the first ERP choice out of the running? 

The software introduced in 2021 helped with accounting, but not with the rest of the business. Quotes went out manually, barcodes were missing, tracking numbers had to be typed into Shopify by hand. Every order ended up printed and filed. A single packing operation took 20 minutes. At 100 orders a day, that wasn't sustainable.

The second problem was more expensive: the software didn't correctly report cancelled Shopify orders back to the warehouse. The return rate shot up to 70%, without any returns actually arriving at the warehouse. Items showed as available in the shop when they had long been sold out. Revenue was leaking, and nobody could see where.

What must an ERP system deliver for fashion labels? 

Fashion labels have different requirements from their ERP system than pure retail operations. Three points are non-negotiable:

• Reliable Shopify integration: Stock levels have to sync in both directions, with cancellations and returns reported back to the warehouse without gaps.
• Variant handling: Collections with sizes, colors, and styles per item need clean structuring, otherwise every new season destabilizes the data.
• Seamless B2C-B2B mix: Online shop, store checkouts, and uniform orders run in parallel but need a shared inventory view.

Xentral covers those needs with order management, item management, CRM, and fulfillment in one system. The team had its own criteria too: reliable Shopify integration, clean data flow between shop, warehouse, and accounting, and a cloud-based solution with automatic backups and remote access.

How did BDG Solutions migrate Kinga Mathe to Xentral in 30 days? 

The Xentral recommendation came from digital agency BDG Solutions, which had already built the webshop and several integrations for Kinga Mathe. After a test in December 2022, the decision came in early 2023. With B2B season starting in March, that left roughly 30 days to go live.

BDG Solutions ran a structured onboarding without disrupting day-to-day operations. The first orders went out right on schedule for the season. Later, a custom POS module was added, syncing checkout data from Shopify with Xentral and stock levels. For the new Kitzbühel store, tax-compliant integration took seven days.

For longer-term topics, the team turns to the Xentral community. That's where Alexandra found the fix for the error-prone returns process: return scanners from Xentral customer Bauer Produktkennzeichnung. The error rate in the returns process has been zero since.

How does Kinga Mathe ship 1,000 B2B packages a month without errors? 

July through September is peak season. The team ships up to 1,000 B2B packages a month. At the fulfillment scanning station, Xentral shows what needs to be scanned. If everything matches, the shipping process kicks off with automatically calculated package volume and matching DHL labels. Invoices and tracking numbers go out to recipients automatically, and the order is marked as shipped in Shopify.

For B2B and uniform orders, the team separates regular collections and custom production through warehouses and projects. Custom Xentral reports structure the orders and feed them into production lists. Alexandra's team can see at any time which items are available, reserved, or in production.

B2C orders are less complex, but they push the logistics side. When a slow mover from one of the stores suddenly gets online demand, Xentral pulls it back into the main warehouse and the online shop. Customers unsure about fit and wanting to order two sizes can see which store has both sizes for a fitting. For the higher-end dirndls, in-person consultation at the store is a popular service.

Where does Xentral save the most in day-to-day operations? 

Xentral is now the system almost the entire team works in every day. Customers often call directly. Thanks to the central order overview, anyone on the team can help without transferring the call internally.

The concrete savings sit in three places:

• Fulfillment: An order is now handled in 10 minutes instead of 30. 150 orders get done by three people in a day, instead of two people in a week.
• Accounting: Correct matching of Shopify payments cuts effort by 20%.
• Paper costs: €2,000 a month gone. Another €500 saved because the Shopify Connector replaces the shipping service provider that used to sit in between.

New collections launch every six months with around 120 items and variants. The team maintains product data in a CSV and imports it into Xentral with one click. Manual entry in Shopify is gone, and collections can be prepared months in advance.

What is Kinga Mathe planning next with Xentral? 

For 2025, the roadmap includes connecting production and the DATEV integration, with BDG Solutions supporting both. In 2026, the team is going international. Xentral and BDG Solutions form the technical backbone for the next growth phase.

Takeaway 

The Kinga Mathe story shows what happens when a fashion label without an ERP backbone hits a growth spike: errors, phantom returns, lost revenue. With Xentral and BDG Solutions, the team restructured its processes in 30 days, halved fulfillment effort, cut accounting effort by 20%, and tripled revenue between 2023 and 2024, without adding headcount. For fashion labels running a combination of online shop, multiple stores, and B2B uniform business, Xentral is the difference between "we somehow get through peak season" and "we keep growing in a structured way, internationally too."