50% Less Warehouse Space, 99%+ Pick Accuracy: How Skyspell Scales with Xentral
How Swiss trading card retailer Skyspell overhauled its warehouse and order flow with Xentral, and now runs 200,000 items across three sales channels with a five-person team.
Orders piling up, shelves overflowing, a founder sorting every single card by hand: Lukas Schweizer and his trading card business, Skyspell, outgrew their old warehouse — literally. With Xentral and Swiss partner digiwrk, Skyspell rebuilt its warehouse logic, order processing, and every Swiss-specific requirement around postal service, customs, and taxes.
Before Xentral, everything at Skyspell ran through Shopify. Packing slips were typed by hand, and the warehouse was sorted by feel. That worked as long as Lukas ran the warehouse alone. Once the business grew — with two separate Shopify stores for B2B and B2C and plans to hire staff — the system hit its limits. On top of that came Swiss-specific requirements that trip up many providers built for the EU: postal integration, customs, currency, and tax handling.
Xentral automates order processing for all three shops from one central database. In the warehouse, the team works mobile with handheld scanners. Postal, customs, and tax rules run out of the box. Swiss partner digiwrk guided the rollout and brought the local details with it.
Skyspell now uses about 50% less warehouse space than a classic category-based layout. Pick accuracy sits above 99%. New hires are ready to work the handhelds after 15 minutes. B2B invoices go out automatically as soon as the packing slip is created. Five people now manage 200,000 items across three channels.
Skyspell has a luxury problem: too many cards, not enough structure
Lukas Schweizer founded Skyspell four years ago as a sole proprietorship, selling Pokémon cards through Cardmarket. Business was good enough that it became Venditura AG, with Skyspell as the brand. Today, Skyspell is a five-person company managing 200,000 items, and it recently added a second line of business: minerals, fossils, and crystals.
Growth turned the old warehouse into a problem. Skyspell stocked up for the winter season, and at some point there was simply no room left at the old site. The building had hit its limits: the roof was too low for the loading ramp. When 15 pallets arrived at once, Lukas's team had to unload them by hand. The new facility has what the old one didn't: proper gates, ramps, and lifting platforms.
„This growth wouldn't have been possible without Xentral. We would have needed one more person to spend the entire day dealing exclusively with delivery slips and warehouse shelves.“
Lukas Schweizer, Founder & CEO, Venditura AG
Why Xentral won
Lukas approached the selection process methodically, drawing on OMR Reviews and his own list of criteria. Five points were non-negotiable:
Multichannel: Connect new channels without building a custom integration every time
Built-in warehouse management: No separate WMS on the side
B2B/B2C pricing strategies: Two pricing logics in the same system, running side by side
Reporting: Monthly sales data available at a glance, with quarterly forecasting
Built for Switzerland: Direct postal integration, correct VAT handling, CHF
That last point ended up deciding it. Software that treats the Swiss market as an afterthought costs time and nerves — Lukas had learned that the hard way before.
„We have everything we need. We're directly connected to Swiss Post, the tax requirements are accounted for, and even mundane details like the currency are taken care of.“
Lukas Schweizer, Founder & CEO, Venditura AG
A partner on the ground
Samuel Basler from digiwrk joined the project just before the contract was signed. Digiwrk is a Swiss Xentral partner that also supports other Xentral customers in Switzerland. For Lukas, that was exactly the trust anchor he needed: someone local, for whom cross-border traffic, VAT, and postal integration are everyday business, not an edge case.
„It's really valuable to have someone on the ground who understands the little issues we face here in Switzerland. The fact that Xentral has a local network has given us the confidence that we don't need any workarounds.“
Lukas Schweizer, Founder & CEO, Venditura AG
Samuel led the rollout from May through go-live in August. Step by step, they worked through Xentral's features, with little custom development needed. Postal integration, tax rules, and CHF handling all ran out of the box.
„As a local partner, we understand the little quirks of Switzerland. That builds exactly the kind of trust needed to successfully see the onboarding process through to the finish line.“
Samuel Basler, Founder & CEO, digiwrk
Three months to go-live, in the middle of growth
The business kept running normally throughout the three-month rollout. Skyspell didn't have to rebuild anything, just configure what it needed. The one real construction site: Xentral Connect was still new at the time, so not all shop data could go live as fast as planned. "Xentral Connect was brand new back then. But in the end, it worked out," Samuel says.
A day at Skyspell: from order to package
Today, orders from all three shops flow into Xentral automatically. Every morning, the system generates pick lists for the handheld scanners in the warehouse. Staff scan the items, bring them to the packing table, slap on the label — done.
In B2B, invoices go out automatically as soon as the packing slip is created. No manual step in between.
„In the warehouse, the MDE is a great solution. Our new employees pick it up quickly. It only takes 15 minutes to show someone how to navigate the aisles. That’s perfect for peak times when we need extra staff on short notice.“
Lukas Schweizer, Founder & CEO, Venditura AG
50% less space, 99%+ pick accuracy
The biggest lever was rethinking the warehouse. Shelves used to be sorted by category. Then Lukas ran the numbers: a pure category-based warehouse would need about 50% more space at today's item count, because categories never grow evenly. When one fills up, you have to rearrange, while the shelf next to it stays half-empty.
With Xentral and handheld picking, it works the other way around. Items go on the next open shelf, the system remembers the spot, and the handheld guides staff straight there. Skyspell skips the sorting and rearranging, which shows up directly in pick accuracy: it's above 99%. Only in one not-yet-fully-integrated marketplace overflow area does the team still work partly by hand.
Three sales channels, one system
Skyspell buys collections from private sellers. Sellers choose between three options: payout, store credit with a bonus, or consignment.
With consignment, Skyspell takes the items, sells them, and pays out only after the sale. That model only works with a broad inventory. Most cards are already set up as individual items in Xentral. When a new collection comes in, it just gets matched to existing items.
In parallel, three Shopify stores run through Xentral Connect: B2B, B2C, and a live-commerce shop for a streamer. On top of that, Cardmarket for trading cards and Ricardo for overstock.
More growth ahead
Skyspell sells across Europe today, with a clear focus on Switzerland. One goal for the next three years: a second warehouse in the EU to simplify customs and make Europe-wide events easier. More marketplaces are also on the list. Galaxus and eBay are under discussion, eBay especially since collectibles sell well internationally.
„We feel confident that the system we've built will scale with our growth. It continues to evolve in line with industry standards. The Flow Editor has been added, AI features are on the way, and we don't have to think about switching again.“
Lukas Schweizer, Founder & CEO, Venditura AG
Bottom line: a system that grows with you, even in Switzerland
Skyspell is now a five-person team running 200,000 items across three channels with Xentral. Swiss Post, tax rules, and currency all run out of the box — no special workaround needed. The other difference-maker is digiwrk: a local partner who knows the local quirks.