About Bemz — transforming IKEA furniture through design

Bemz is a design-led interiors brand specialising in premium covers for IKEA sofas and other furniture. By combining Scandinavian design, carefully selected textiles and made-to-order production, Bemz enables customers to personalise and extend the life of furniture they already own.

The brand operates internationally, selling to customers in around 30 markets, including the United States, where Bemz also has its own local company. Social media and visual inspiration play an important role in the brand experience, helping customers discover new styles, fabrics and ways to transform their homes.

For Bemz, e-commerce is more than a sales channel. It is the primary environment in which customers experience the brand, explore the collection and navigate a highly configurable product range.

The challenge: Combining global scale, design and product complexity

Bemz has a product offering that is visually inspiring for the customer but technically complex behind the scenes. A single furniture model may be available in multiple configurations, models, styles and fabric. Across the full assortment, this creates approximately 190,000 product variants that must be structured, enriched and presented in a way that feels intuitive to the customer.

At the same time, the platform must support sales across many markets, currencies and tax jurisdictions. The United States introduces additional requirements, including state-specific sales tax calculations and reporting.The challenge was therefore not simply to build an attractive storefront. Bemz needed a commerce architecture capable of managing extensive product complexity, supporting international operations and delivering a digital experience that reflects the company's high design ambitions.

Making 190,000 variants feel simple

Customers should not have to understand the complexity of the underlying product structure. They need a clear path from the IKEA furniture they own to a cover that fits their specific model, configuration and personal style. The solution was designed to guide customers through this process while maintaining a strong focus on fabrics, colours, imagery and inspiration. Product data and variant relationships are handled systematically behind the scenes in Litium's PIM, allowing the storefront to present relevant choices without overwhelming the customer. This makes it possible for Bemz to offer a highly extensive and configurable assortment while keeping the shopping journey clear, visual and accessible.

 

From social inspiration to purchase

Bemz has a strong presence on social media, where customers discover interior design ideas, colour combinations and furniture transformations. The e-commerce experience therefore needs to continue the journey that often begins in an inspirational channel. Customers arriving from social media should be able to move naturally from an image or design idea to the relevant fabric, furniture model and product configuration.

The headless storefront gives Bemz the flexibility to combine brand storytelling, editorial content and commerce functionality. This supports an experience in which inspiration and product selection work together rather than existing as separate parts of the website.

Global commerce with local tax requirements

Selling internationally requires a platform that can support centralised operations while handling important differences between markets. For sales in the United States, the solution integrates with Avalara to manage sales tax calculations across different states and jurisdictions. This allows tax logic to be handled automatically as part of the purchasing process, reducing manual administration and supporting regulatory compliance.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central acts as Bemz's central ERP system. The commerce platform and ERP are connected through an integration layer in Microsoft Azure, allowing business-critical information to move reliably between the systems. This architecture separates integration logic from the customer-facing storefront and creates a more controlled foundation for future development.

A headless commerce foundation on Litium Commerce Cloud

The solution is built on Litium Commerce Cloud, with a headless storefront based on Litium Accelerator and an integration layer hosted in Azure. The headless architecture gives Bemz greater flexibility in how the digital experience is designed and developed. The storefront can evolve independently while Litium manages central commerce capabilities, product information, content and business logic.

The Azure integration layer connects Litium with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Avalara and other business-critical services. This creates a modular architecture in which different parts of the commerce ecosystem can be developed, replaced or extended without rebuilding the entire solution.

The impact: A scalable platform for international design commerce

Bemz now has a commerce foundation designed around the specific requirements of its business: a highly configurable product range, international sales and a customer experience driven by design and inspiration.

The platform handles complex product and market logic behind the scenes and meets the customer with a clear, visually engaging shopping journey. Above all, Bemz now has an architecture that supports continued international expansion, new digital experiences and the ongoing development of its product offering.