"We need a system that allows us to climb out of the engine room and sit in the lookout." With this image, Ulf Lungwitz, Managing Director of Lungwitz GmbH, describes his team's goal: to spend less time maintaining product data and more time for customers.
In conversation with Jens Holze, CEO of bloopark, Ulf Lungwitz and Sarah Lubitz (Planning & Large Kitchen Technology) discuss how the joint Odoo project came about, what has already changed, and where the journey is heading. Important in advance: The project is not yet completed. This is a project story from an ongoing initiative.
About Gastroline24
Lungwitz GmbH is a small family business. Its focus is on the planning and installation of large kitchens throughout the country. From this product catalogue, the online shop gastroline24.de has emerged, where the products are sold individually.
The challenge: an endless product data loop
Manufacturers typically update their product data quarterly. For Gastroline24, this meant: Every three months, new data arrived that had to be processed again. "Hardly were the data finished, it started all over again," says Ulf Lungwitz.
The scale makes the problem clear:
- around 45,000 products in the online shop,
- every three months about 5,000 new products are added,
- only Excel and manual work were available as tools.
Sarah Lubitz describes the effort in everyday life: Just processing a single supplier took at least a week. This was compounded by manual steps such as defining variants to streamline the shop without losing products. Ulf Lungwitz's conclusion: The effort in these processes was "simply no longer economical".
The crux: Shopware 6 and lack of automation
When Shopware 5 was no longer developed, the switch to Shopware 6 was initially the logical step for Gastroline24. However, it turned out to be very labor-intensive and complicated. Shopware 6 relied on an API-first approach and essentially had no proper order processing in the background.
The more the team tested the system and tried to adapt it to their own workflows, the clearer the problems became. Even simple processes did not work: automations that were supposed to kick in upon receiving an order did not function. For a small team that relies on such automations, this was untenable. Gastroline24 looked around again and came across Odoo and bloopark.
Why Odoo and why bloopark?
What was sought was a system that can be largely automated and consolidates all business processes: from Customer Relationship Management to order processing and inventory ordering to the online shop, which has become an important sales channel for the company.
Ulf Lungwitz had already encountered Odoo while searching for a way out of SAP. A test installation surprised him with its results and functionality.
For the implementation, one point was particularly important to the team: a local partner from Magdeburg with the appropriate expertise. The requirements are complex and, according to Gastroline24, could hardly be implemented from a distance. This is how the collaboration with bloopark came about.
What has already changed
With the switch to Odoo, the previous interfaces and systems could be replaced. Gradually, the team discovered further advantages that it now uses in everyday life. Above all: automations that work.
The vision: AI and agentic systems for product data
Ulf Lungwitz clearly articulates the goal. The small team should populate the online shop more effectively and with high-quality product data, focusing on marketing and customers, not on the mechanics of data preparation.
„We no longer want any manual effort. We want to define the quality, be able to try it out and make adjustments.”
— Ulf Lungwitz, Managing Director of Lungwitz GmbH
He sees the foundation for this in the new tools of artificial intelligence and agentic systems. bloopark supports Gastroline24 in the development of this system, as a way to further develop and scale.
The current status: from the PIM system to AI-supported preparation
Sarah Lubitz describes the development step by step:
- The start: It all began as a kind of PIM system, similar to what the team already knew.
- Getting more out of it: Gastroline24 wanted to become smarter, also with regard to SEO and GEO.
- The first major step: Transforming the often incomplete or partially unstructured product data from manufacturers and bringing it cleanly into Odoo.
- Fine-tuning with prompts: With the help of various prompts, the team has identified which work steps it no longer wants to carry out manually: those that are time-consuming, error-prone, or insufficient in content.
It is not only about efficiency, but also about better content. Technical data alone rarely engages customers emotionally. Sarah Lubitz puts it succinctly:
“In the end, no one cares how big a fork is, when it’s really about how well it fits in the hand.”
— Sarah Lubitz, Planning & Large Kitchen Technology, Lungwitz GmbH
These points are being gradually implemented and further refined. Their interim conclusion: “Already, the result is more satisfactory than what we had before. And it can only go further up.” Ulf Lungwitz adds the goal: to improve quality and significantly increase output.
Outlook: Odoo plus Product OS
Jens Holze summarises the status:
- Lungwitz GmbH is fully committed to Odoo. All processes around the online shop will now be implemented in Odoo.
- Additionally, there is an agentic PIM system, the so-called Product OS.
The goal is to automate as many processes as possible, utilise agentic solutions, improve quality, and completely automate product import, which currently takes about a week per manufacturer. The time and resources freed up should be used to scale the business.
The project is still in development. Gastroline24 and bloopark plan to meet again in the foreseeable future to look at further details and developments.
Conclusion
The project story of Gastroline24 shows how a small trading team frees itself from manual product data loops. With Odoo as the central platform, it has laid the foundation and successfully put the first automations into operation. With AI-supported product data preparation, it is taking the next step. The first stage is complete, but the journey is not over yet.
The whole conversation in the video:
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