DIY and home improvement retailer Hornbach deploys Solace technology

European home improvement retailer Hornbach Baumarkt has gone live with Solace’s real-time, event driven integration platform as it looks to deliver a faster, more seamless shopping experience, both online and in-store.

With over 170 stores across Europe, Hornbach faced the challenge of managing a wide spectrum of distributed systems, keeping inventory accurate and quickly rolling out new services to meet shifting consumer demands. Its legacy PoS system had served its purpose well but lacked the flexibility to provide the advanced insights and speed of change it needed to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving market.

Working with Solace, it has deployed multiple event brokers in a poly cloud environment and its physical store locations.  This event mesh serves to standardise event driven architectures within a highly distributed business application landscape, unifying system integration and providing a secure, scalable, and robust mesh to enable close-to-real-time retail.

Together with new cloud-based systems, the event mesh ensures critical data events like price updates, product information, and sales data are instantly shared where and when needed, powering smarter and faster in-store and customer experiences such as the Hornbach omnichannel offering and the customer app. 

“Solace has been a strategic partner in helping us modernise our technology landscape with a true poly cloud capable Enterprise Event Mesh to meet the real-time demands of today’s retail environment. By moving to an event driven architecture, we’ve gained the flexibility and speed we need to connect systems across all our stores and digital channels,” says Carsten Müller, Vice-President, Enterprise Architecture at Hornbach. 

“This platform is enabling us to access data faster, reduce time to market and continue our commitment to driving innovation at scale.”

“We’re proud to support Hornbach in transforming their operations with real-time, event driven integration. The speed and scale of this roll-out is impressive and serves as a great example of how a modern integration infrastructure can fuel innovation in retail,” says Vincent Rontani, SVP, Europe at Solace.

2025 RTIH INNOVATION AWARDS

Omnichannel retail will be a key focus area at the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards.

The awards. which are now open for entries, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

Our 2024 hall of fame entrants were revealed during an event which took place at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London on 21st November, and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by comedian Lucy Porter.

In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “The event is now into its sixth year and what a journey it has been. The awards started life as an online only affair during the Covid outbreak, before launching as a small scale in real life event and growing year on year to the point where we’re now selling out this fine, historic venue.”

He added: “Congratulations to all of our finalists. Many submissions did not make it through to the final stage, and getting to this point is no mean feat. Checkout-free stores, automated supply chains, immersive experiences, on-demand delivery, next generation loyalty offerings, inclusive retail, green technology. We’ve got all the cool stuff covered this evening.”

“But just importantly we’ve got lots of great examples of companies taking innovative tech and making it usable in everyday operations - resulting in more efficiency and profitability in all areas.”

Congratulations to our 2024 winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Lucy Porter, and all those who attended November's gathering. 

For further information on the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards, please fill in the below form and we will get back to you asap.