# Workshop 0: Steering Pre-read (28 Oct)

:::info
**Shareable with BLACKROLL and project partners.** Prepared by 22Bits on 2026-10-26 for the steering session on Wed 28 Oct, afternoon, 60 minutes. In the room: Sen, Kristy, Martin Loer, Philipp and Marc (22Bits). Robert Kruschke can't join and sent his view on S2 by email. Whoever cannot join signs off S1, S2 and S8 in writing by Fri 30 Oct. Part of [Project: B2B Migration](https://wiki.22bits.de/doc/project-b2b-migration-fVcY2IIWti).

:::

The workshops from 2 November build on what is decided here: scope and waves, where the Pros go, which markets come next, and the direction for content and design. This page has the options and our proposal for each decision; the full background is in [B2B Decisions and Workshop Plan](https://wiki.22bits.de/doc/b2b-decisions-and-workshop-plan-b29gSFrr9D). Reading time about 10 minutes.

**How we decide.** There is no intro round, so please read this page before the session. Each topic starts with our proposal, and we only discuss it if someone objects. Decisions that don't need the whole group are settled by email (see the last section).

## Already settled

No discussion needed, but everything below builds on it.

* **A new B2B store** in the Shopify Plus organization with a Liquid theme, not headless (PL1, kickoff 2026-10-19).
* **Prices live only in Shopify** for now, managed per catalog in the Shopify admin and by CSV. Price management in the ERP becomes part of the integration with the new ERP later (P2, B2B weekly 2026-10-26).
* **Guiding principle:** the budget is tight, so out-of-the-box Shopify features and platform standards come first, and solutions that need a lot of development are not affordable (Kristy, 2026-10-26).
* **Contacts:** Kristy is the project sponsor. Sen leads the project internally at BLACKROLL. Teoman Lam is the main ERP contact. Thomas Mullis (CH) and Patrick Stegemann (Benelux) are the country contacts.

## The decisions on Wednesday

| ID  | Question | Our proposal | Decides |
|-----|----------|--------------|---------|
| S1  | What is in scope for January? | CH wave first, as close to the end of January as possible, with the existing flows connected as they are. Pro DE and Pro BNL after that | Sen; sign-off Martin Loer, Alec Duffield, Robert Kruschke |
| S3, S4 | In which order do the shops move, and when must we avoid a sale window? | CH, Pro DE, Pro BNL. The B2B sales calendar sets the CH go/no-go date | Sen, B2B sales |
| S2  | Pros and trainers: B2B store or D2C? | B2B store, every Pro as a one-person company. The Pro community comes later through the B2C membership program | Sen, Kristy; Robert Kruschke agrees (email, 28 Oct) |
| S8  | Which markets come next? | Name the markets for the next one to two years, even roughly, and decide whether France is part of a wave | Sen; sign-off as S1 |
| T1  | Where is content managed? | In Shopify, not in Craft | Kristy  |
| T2  | Which design direction? | A ready-to-use Shopify theme with Brand 2.0 tokens and typography first. D2C components later, as separate sections that editors place in the theme editor. Which theme is chosen in the spike | Kristy, Sen |
| S5  | Who owns what? | In the session: the Finance owner for payments and a deputy for Sen. The other owners by email | Kristy, Sen |

S6 (QA engineer) and S7 (separate workstreams) are settled by email with Kristy and Sen, not in the session.

## Agenda (60 minutes)

| Time | Topic |
|------|-------|
| 25 min | S1 scope, S3 wave order, S4 sales calendar |
| 5 min | S2 Pros and trainers: Robert agrees by email, confirm |
| 10 min | S8 markets and France |
| 15 min | T1 content and T2 design direction: confirm or object |
| 5 min | Finance owner, deputy for Sen, next steps |

Robert sent his view on S2 by email (see S2), so S2 is shorter and the time goes to S1 and T2.

## S1, S3, S4: What is in scope for January, and in which order?

**Why now.** Kristy asked for a wave approach in the first week of November, and every workshop after this one needs to know what wave 1 contains.

**What we know.** On the working assumptions of today, only the CH wave lands close to the end of January. The full scope takes until about the end of May 2027, mainly because the gateway work at Xaidat for the Pro DE store is not scoped yet and has to follow the workshops.

| Milestone | Provisional date |
|-----------|------------------|
| CH store migration | Week of 8 Feb 2027, best case 1 Feb |
| Legacy CH store and legacy CMS off | Early March 2027 |
| Pro DE store migration | Early April 2027, after Easter |
| Pro BNL store migration | End of April 2027 |
| All legacy shops off, final handover to DEPT | End of May 2027  |

**Options.**

| Option | What it means |
|--------|---------------|
| A. CH first, the other two shops after January | CH replaces the Swiss workaround by about the end of January; Pro DE and Pro BNL follow in spring |
| B. All three shops by the end of January | Not realistic with today's open decisions and Xaidat's delivery time |
| C. Option A, with the existing flows connected as they are | Sen's idea: Pipedrive, MyFactory and Xaidat stay as they are for wave 1 and are improved later. Less to build before January, and it fits the guiding principle |

**Our proposal.** A together with C. In addition, these items from the requirements list stay out of this phase: the affiliate program (B2B2C), co-branding, reseller product feeds through Channable and AI newsletters. EDI runs as a separate key result. Sen marks the rest of the requirements list as wave 1, later or out.

**Wave order (S3).** CH, Pro DE, Pro BNL. Swapping Pro DE and Pro BNL moves their two go-live dates, but hardly the end date.

**What we need from you.**

* The B2B sales calendar for the next months, so the CH go-live does not land in a sale window (S4, Martin Loer)
* Agreement on what moves after January
* An open point for Kristy: who delivers waves 2 and 3 after 31 January, and when DEPT takes over which part

## S2: Pros and trainers, B2B store or D2C?

**Why now.** It decides which customers we migrate and how the company model looks, and the spike tests it in the week of 2 November.

**What we know.** The Pro DE store has about 6,800 partners in Robert's groups (physios, trainers, gyms), not all of them active. The CH store is mostly physios. They buy for their own practice, not to resell.

| Option | What it means |
|--------|---------------|
| A. B2B store, every Pro as a one-person company | One platform for all business customers, native Shopify B2B features. Inactive accounts can stay behind (decided in workshop 3b) |
| B. A verified customer segment on the D2C store | Pros buy on blackroll.com with better conditions. Needs a verification of medical licences and work on the D2C side; this is Robert's long-term idea of a Pro community |

**Our proposal.** A for this phase. The Pro community comes later through the B2C membership program and does not block the B2B store. Sen expects less need for it if the B2B store looks good and carries content.

**Robert's view (email, 28 Oct).** He agrees with A. The Pro community belongs in the B2C membership program as an "Exclusive Elite Membership", which Priya Kohli is considering as one of its next steps, so it is not part of this project. What matters for this phase is that the Pros (physios, trainers, gyms and so on) can order in the new B2B store.

**What we need from you.** Confirmation from Sen and Kristy. Robert's written sign-off on S1 and S8 by Fri 30 Oct.

## S8: Which markets come next?

**Why now.** The store's base currency can't be changed later without re-entering all price lists, and the next markets decide the currency, the payment providers and the languages. These are set up before the stores are created in November.

**What we know.** Today the B2B shops serve CH, DE, AT and Benelux. Sen also named France. At the kickoff Kristy mentioned Spain, Poland, the UK and the US as possible expansion markets.

**Current markets, draft launch targets.** To adjust in the session.

```mermaidjs
timeline
    title B2B store launches for the current markets (draft)
    section T3
        November: Planning
        December
        January: New B2b Live (ch migrated)
    section T1
        February
        March: Pro DE migrated
        April: Pro BNL migrated
        May: UK Market Launch
    section T2
        June: US Market Launch
```

**Our proposal.** Name the markets for the next one to two years, even roughly, with a rough order. Decide whether France joins one of the waves or stays as it is today.

**What we need from you.** The list of markets, and an answer on France: is it a B2B market today, and in which shop do French customers order?

## T1 and T2: Content and design direction

**T1, content.** A Liquid store can't show content from Craft CMS; that needs a headless shop, which was ruled out. So content is managed in Shopify, and brand content stays on blackroll.com. D2C content that should appear in the B2B store has to be added in Shopify as well. We need a clear yes from Kristy, because it changes the estimate.

**T2, design.** No designer is assigned so far.

How a Liquid theme works: the building blocks are sections and blocks. Each one is a piece of theme code with a list of settings (text, image, product, colour and so on). Editors add, order and fill them per page in the Shopify theme editor, which is the content management for the store. Editors can only use components that exist in the theme code; a new kind of component is a small development task.

| Option | Effort to build | Maintenance after January | Designer needed |
|--------|-----------------|---------------------------|-----------------|
| 1\. A ready to use Shopify theme as the base, with Brand 2.0 tokens and typography (colours, fonts, spacing, logo) | Low             | Low: most changes sit in the theme settings and separate sections. New theme versions are taken over only where needed (see "Theme updates" below) | No              |
| 2\. Adapt selected D2C design elements and content into the Liquid theme | Medium, every component is rebuilt in Liquid | High: each component exists twice (Vue for D2C, Liquid for B2B), so every D2C design change is made twice (Maybe acceptable) | Yes, for the selection |
| 3\. A new B2B theme from scratch | High            | High: every line of theme code is BLACKROLL's to maintain, and there are no theme updates from Shopify | Yes             |

**Our proposal.** Option 1 for January, and selected D2C components (option 2) after January as improvements. Brand 2.0 comes in through the theme settings and one custom stylesheet. Every D2C component added later is a separate section or block that editors use in the theme editor like the theme's own, and changes to the theme's own code stay as small as possible. It keeps the CH date and fits the guiding principle.

**Theme updates.** Our Shopify lead (Rron) expects that we have to change the theme's own code anyway, for the B2B requirements and our own logic. So taking over a new theme version is the exception, not the routine. In his view this costs little: the checkout and Shopify's APIs don't depend on the theme version, and design-only sections don't need updates. New storefront features that Shopify ships through a theme update are taken over by hand where we need them.

Today we only decide this direction, not the theme itself. We compare candidate themes in the spike in the week of 2 November and bring the choice to workshop 4 on 12 November.

**What to be aware of.** The theme editor is a page builder, not a full CMS like Craft: there are no approval workflows, a page holds at most 25 sections, and content that repeats across pages (for example trainings) has to be set up as structured content in Shopify. For an ordering store with little content that is enough. Pages with a lot of D2C-style content are where it gets expensive (T1). With tokens and theme settings the store gets the Brand 2.0 colours, fonts and logo, but it will not look like blackroll.com until D2C components are added after January. Which components, and whether a designer is needed for them, follows in workshop 4 on 12 November.

## S5, S6, S7: Owners and team setup

**In the session.** We only name the two owners that are needed first.

| Owner | Needed for | Needed by |
|-------|------------|-----------|
| Finance owner for payments | Store currency, CembraPay, payment terms (workshop 2) | Wed 4 Nov |
| A deputy for Sen | Confirming decisions while Sen is out of office (13 to 23 Nov) | Thu 12 Nov |

**By email.** 22Bits sends these to Kristy and Sen this week.

| Decision | Needed by |
|----------|-----------|
| S6: Does the project team need a QA engineer? Kristy's decision. Our view: not needed on today's assumptions, because the work is mostly Shopify configuration and a standard theme. We look at it again if the scope grows | Fri 30 Oct |
| S7: Store setup and front-end work as separate workstreams. Our proposal: yes | Fri 30 Oct |
| Content owner per market, for content and translations | Workshop 4, Thu 12 Nov |

**DEPT receiver for the handover.** Not needed in November. DEPT assigns the person in December, and the handover plan goes to whoever is assigned then. The plan and the runbooks are written for someone who was in none of the workshops.

## After the session

* 22Bits writes the outcome into [B2B Decisions and Workshop Plan](https://wiki.22bits.de/doc/b2b-decisions-and-workshop-plan-b29gSFrr9D) within two days and sends it to each decider for confirmation.
* Whoever is not in the room signs off S1, S2 and S8 by email by Fri 30 Oct.
* S6 and S7 are answered by email by Fri 30 Oct, the other owners by the dates above.
* Next workshops: ERP and data ownership (Mon 2 Nov), platform (Tue 3 Nov), payments and checkout (Wed 4 Nov), signup (Mon 9 Nov), customers and pricing (Tue 10 Nov), theme and content (Thu 12 Nov).

---

**Documents**

- [Workshop 0: Steering Pre-read (28 Oct)](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/workshop-0-steering-pre-read-28-oct-JhVrYRXijD)
- [B2B Customer Groups](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/b2b-customer-groups-gEqCKsjdkf)
- [B2B Decisions and Workshop Plan](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/b2b-decisions-and-workshop-plan-b29gSFrr9D)
- [B2B Scope Matrix](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/b2b-scope-matrix-ZZotcIoK84)
- [B2B ERP, Pricing and Architecture](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/b2b-erp-pricing-and-architecture-3q14unmr2V)
- [B2B Content and Design in a Liquid Store](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/b2b-content-and-design-in-a-liquid-store-SOHXeET9QJ)
- [B2B Risks and Dependencies](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/b2b-risks-and-dependencies-rlQ4rP4ukg)
- [Epic Questions](https://wiki.22bits.de/s/6cf1c07b-6734-40db-a1e8-8542d7f0474c/doc/epic-questions-AOKIT9yuYL)