From 60 to 10 hours a week: How Schöner Kosmetik broke out of spreadsheet chaos after more than 90 years

Raphael Kraus runs Schöner Kosmetik in the third generation. When the Munich-based cosmetics manufacturer switched to Xentral in 2021, the company was already more than 90 years old and still running a growing share of its processes on Excel and DATEV. Logistics, returns, invoices: with every new customer, the overview got harder to keep. Today, operations run in one system, time spent in logistics has dropped by 83 percent, and the team has room again for the actual work: product development.

From a Munich salon to a third-generation cosmetics manufacturer 

Ella Schöner founded her own cosmetics line in downtown Munich in 1929. The reason was practical: she couldn't find products on the market that met her standards, so she made her own. More than 90 years later, the third generation runs the family business, now under CEO Raphael Kraus.

What started as a salon has become a cosmetics manufacturer with its own lab. Schöner produces its products in-house, working with regional suppliers and short supply chains. Alongside its own brand, the team also offers contract manufacturing for other cosmetics brands. That makes Schöner one of the oldest owner-operated cosmetics manufacturers in Germany.

Why do Excel and DATEV stop working at 12 employees? 

Excel and DATEV do the job as long as order volume stays manageable. Once the business grows, so does the rework. At Schöner Kosmetik, it showed up first in shipping, returns, and invoicing. The team lost visibility because every piece of information lived in a different spreadsheet.

On top of that, cosmetics comes with its own rules. Hygiene standards, formula management, and the traceability of production batches don't sit cleanly in Excel. Mistakes cost time, and in the worst case, they cost the release of an entire batch. That kind of ceiling gets more expensive with every new contract manufacturing customer.

What does an ERP system need to do for a cosmetics manufacturer? 

Cosmetics manufacturers have different requirements from their ERP system than pure retail operations. Three of them are non-negotiable:

• Batch traceability: Every batch has to be traceable end to end, from raw material to shipped product.
• Formula management: Formulas, intermediate products, and finished goods belong in one system, with clean versioning and sign-offs.
• Hygiene and compliance: Testing protocols and documentation need to sit where production actually works, not in a side folder.

Xentral covers those needs with order management, item management, and warehouse in one system. A direct line to Xentral co-founder Benedikt Sauter tipped the scales at Schöner. The other factors that mattered: intuitive day-to-day use, fair pricing, and a feature set that stays workable for a 12-person team.

How does Schöner Kosmetik get 50 weekly hours back with one system? 

Since going live in 2021, purchasing, calculation, sales, item management, and warehouse all run in Xentral. Communication between production, shipping, and accounting happens inside the system, not through email forwards or parallel spreadsheets.

Raphael Kraus, CEO, sums up the numbers:

50 weekly hours that used to go into rework now go into product development and customer care. For a 12-person team, that's more than a full-time role's worth of capacity gained every week.

The Xentral features Schöner Kosmetik uses every day 

• Purchasing & procurement
• Calculation
• Order management
• Item management
• Warehouse

Accounting stays in DATEV, connected through the DATEV integration. That way the tax advisor keeps working in the tool they know, while operations run in Xentral.

What is Schöner Kosmetik planning next with Xentral? 

The next stage is formula management. Schöner wants to bring that process into Xentral too, so formula development and production planning sit in the same system as day-to-day operations.

At the same time, the team is expanding its production hall and scaling contract manufacturing for other brands. Both moves need an ERP that grows with the business and keeps the extra effort per order small instead of piling it on.

Takeaway 

The Schöner Kosmetik story shows that ERP digitization isn't a startup topic. A family business with more than 90 years of history, one that had been running on Excel and DATEV for decades, got 50 weekly hours back with the right system, grew its order volume by a quarter, and built the foundation to expand both its own production and its contract manufacturing. For traditional manufacturers with strict industry requirements like batch traceability and hygiene standards, Xentral is the difference between "we're barely keeping up" and "we're growing from a stable base."