B2B Transformation: How Henkel Iberia Digitalized a Traditional Sales Model with VTEX and Indola

Henkel’s presence in Spain and Portugal spans over 60 years and manages two major business units. Within the consumer brands business, Indola stands out as a “value-for-money” professional brand.

• A Century of Innovation: Founded in 1929 in the Netherlands, Indola began as a manufacturer of hairdressing tools (curling irons and dryers) before evolving into a leader in professional hair care, styling, and color.
• Strategic Growth: After being acquired by Henkel in 2004, Indola leveraged Henkel’s global infrastructure to reach an even wider international audience while maintaining its appeal to independent stylists and salons.

The primary hurdle for Henkel Iberia was the manual B2B sales model. Operating through an indirect network meant relying entirely on distributors and partners to reach the end customer.

• Resource Intensity: Every interaction, order, and follow-up required manual coordination. This made the process not only time-consuming but also challenging to scale across other countries.
• The Necessity of Digitalization: To remain competitive, it became essential to digitalize the existing indirect model. Henkel needed a solution that could streamline orders and provide better support to distributors while strictly maintaining the traditional indirect sales structure.

One of the most delicate aspects of the project was convincing traditional, relationship-based distributors to join a digital marketplace as third-party sellers. One of the key considerations of the project was demonstrating the value of a digital marketplace to established distributors, highlighting how it could complement their existing client relationships and provide an efficient platform for their third-party sales.

The fear was clear: Would a platform replace the direct connection to the salons?

The Henkel approach focused on empowerment over replacement:

“We reassured our distributors that they remain the owners of their customer relationships. The VTEX marketplace is a tool that enhances their workflow, allowing them to plan commercial routes more effectively and focus on growth rather than administrative tasks.”

By providing distributors with greater efficiency and optimized workflows, Henkel turned digitalization into a value-add for the partner, rather than a threat.

Building a multi-distributor B2B marketplace is inherently complex. Each distributor needed to operate as an independent store, with orders and access restricted by specific geographical parameters.

Technical Hurdles

• Fine-Grained Segmentation: The architecture required orders to be limited by postal codes, ensuring that the right distributor served the right salon.
• Customized Features: Each seller required unique features and specific store logic, which pushed the boundaries of standard platform capabilities.

The VTEX IO Advantage

Despite these complexities, the team successfully delivered the project by leveraging the specific strengths of VTEX IO:

• Modular Architecture: Allowed for parallel development and rapid iteration.
• App-Based Customizations: Enabled the team to build tailored seller experiences and “postal-code-aware” logic.
• Fast Deployment: Critical for meeting an aggressive development cycle that saw major milestones reached in just 4 months.

The shop.indola marketplace introduced several innovations that enhanced efficiency while maintaining the human element of distributor relationships:

Independent Seller Stores

Each distributor operates within its own dedicated environment, maintaining control over customer relationships and commercial strategies.

Postal-Code-Based Segmentation

Orders and interactions are automatically routed according to geographic coverage, ensuring accurate distributor allocation and optimized commercial planning.

Customizable Seller Workflows

Distributors can manage promotions, product assortments, and stock independently, enabling tailored commercial execution.

The digital marketplace significantly improved the customer ordering experience while introducing operational transparency across the ecosystem.

Henkel manages more than 330 SKUs within the platform. While customer-facing processes have been streamlined, internal operations still involve substantial manual challenges related to:

• Order validation
• Seller-specific promotions
• Cluster activations
• Multilingual content management

These insights have highlighted opportunities for future automation and continuous optimization.

A key achievement of the project has been demonstrating that digital transformation can enhance, rather than replace, relationship-driven B2B commerce.

Through close collaboration, Henkel and VTEX successfully introduced a new model while maintaining distributor trust and engagement. Distributors gained efficiency and growth opportunities in the digital ecosystem

The project stands as an example of how enterprise technology and traditional distribution networks can evolve together.

With the Iberia model now proven, Henkel is looking toward the future. The success of this multi-distributor marketplace serves as a blueprint for other Henkel brands and broader European markets.

The digital journey for Indola and Henkel has only just begun.