Case Study

13 years and 1,800 products. Customers had to know the part number before they could even ask.

How a German motorsport parts manufacturer stopped paying for his own website – after 20 years of agency dependency.

Client: Niederhof Kohlefasertechnik Location: Tutzing, Bavaria, Germany Year: 2026
Niederhof racing car on track – Porsche with carbon lightweight components by Niederhof Kohlefasertechnik
1,800
Products cataloged and self-managed
+10.6%
Revenue potential through price calibration
5 min
First self-update in 13 years
The Numbers

What the data shows

1,800
Products cataloged
3,198
Variations managed
+10.6%
Revenue potential (~€246K/year)
9
Custom GA4 tracking events

Who is Niederhof?

Niederhof Kohlefasertechnik has been building handcrafted carbon and fiberglass lightweight components for Porsche since 1973. Trunk lids, hoods, fenders, and polycarbonate windshields – every single part made by hand, out of a family business in Tutzing on Lake Starnberg in Bavaria, built for actual race conditions.

Manfred Niederhof races his own parts. In 2025 he won the championship in the Tourenwagen Golden Ära series. In 2025, he won the championship in the Tourenwagen Golden Ära series – that’s in the race results, not the brochure.

1,800 products with 3,198 variants. Individual prices between €500 and €5,000. Customers worldwide: Porsche enthusiasts, racing teams, restorers, collectors.

Company Profile
Founded 1973 – over 50 years of experience
Location Tutzing on Lake Starnberg, Bavaria
Specialization Carbon, fiberglass, polycarbonate windshields (Lexan)
Vehicles Porsche (911 ST to 997), BMW M3, Corvette, Ford GT 40
Racing Champion 2025, Tourenwagen Golden Ära
Catalog 1,800 products, 3,198 variants
The Hidden Champion Effect

World-class quality, over 50 years of experience, a championship-winning racing program. But online, practically invisible. Products between €500 and €5,000 – and the old website communicated none of that. Interested buyers in the US, UK, and Japan simply could not find the company.

“Every part that leaves here has been on the track first. We don’t build anything we wouldn’t race ourselves.”

– Manfred Niederhof, Founder and Racing Driver

The Full Diagnosis

The old website was a relic from the early 2000s. What started as technical debt became a business risk.

No CMS
Every change required FTP access and a text editor. No content update without the developer.
Unusable on mobile
No viewport meta tag, fixed pixel widths, no breakpoints. Anyone searching on a phone had no chance.
No inquiry system
“Send us an email with the article number” was the only option. No cart, no form, no tracking.
Zero data
No analytics installed. No way to know which products were viewed, which pages visited, or where visitors came from.
Cryptic URLs
/content/301.php instead of /products/trunk-lid-porsche-911. Not indexable, not memorable, not shareable.
Design catastrophe
Neon green and bright yellow. Green color filters on product photos. For parts that cost €2,450.
Not a single CTA
Nowhere on the entire website did it say what a visitor should do next. People arrived. And left.
SEO total loss
Same title on every page. 40+ meta keywords. No canonicals, no Open Graph. Google ignored the site.
Screenshot of the old Niederhof homepage with neon green and yellow design
Screenshot of the old Niederhof product page with cryptic URLs and missing product photos

Before vs. After

The existing structure was the problem itself. What was needed was a complete rebuild from scratch.

Dimension Before After
Design Arbitrary: yellow + neon green Coherent: Racing Green as brand color
Mobile Completely unusable on smartphones Fully responsive with off-canvas navigation
Navigation Vertical sidebar, 11 items Horizontal sticky header, 7 items
Product search None Full-text with fuzzy matching and Levenshtein distance
Inquiry process Manual email with article numbers Cart-based inquiry system with CTA per variant
CMS No CMS (static PHP) Kirby CMS (flat-file, no database)
Analytics None GA4 with 9 custom events
SEO Same title on every page, no Open Graph Page-specific, canonical, hreflang
Languages German only DE active, EN prepared
Homepage Before
Old Niederhof homepage with yellow-green color scheme and no CTAs
Homepage After
New Niederhof homepage with Racing Green branding and prominent CTA
Mobile After
New Niederhof website on smartphone with off-canvas navigation

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How it was built

Every technical decision followed a concrete business requirement – not a design trend and not a technical standard for its own sake. Here are the 6 most important ones.

Decision 1
Why Kirby CMS
Kirby runs on flat-file, meaning no database and no forced software updates, which means Niederhof can manage his own website without an IT department in the background. 5 minutes after handover, he updated it himself for the first time in 13 years.
Decision 2
Vehicle-specific filters
30+ Porsche models as filter categories. From the 911 ST to the 997, plus BMW M3, Corvette, Ford GT 40. A racing team looking for parts for a 964 RSR doesn’t scroll through 1,800 products.
Decision 3
Cart instead of email
Before: write down article numbers, compose an email, hope. Now: cart-based inquiry system with a CTA per variant. Lower barrier to entry, structured inquiries instead of unformatted emails.
Decision 4
Price calibration: +10.6%
Spot checks at FVD, Design911, and Stoddard showed Niederhof was pricing below market on many products. The calibration yields a revenue potential of approx. €246,783 per year without compromising competitiveness.
Decision 5
Fuzzy search with Levenshtein
Porsche part numbers and German technical terms get mistyped. The search uses Levenshtein distance for typo tolerance and Soundex for phonetic similarity. “Trnk lid” finds “Trunk lid.”
Decision 6
301 redirects for all URLs
Every old URL (/content/301.php) now redirects via 301 to the new, readable address. Existing Google rankings are preserved. Existing customers don’t land on a 404 page.

Business Impact

Here are the business outcomes that can actually be measured – none of which have anything to do with “a better user experience.”

Before: Zero online inquiries
Structured inquiry system with cart
Customers can now send a structured quote request directly on the website – with article number, variant, and quantity included.
Before: “Send an email with the article number”
Product inquiry cart with price display
Shop-style flow without purchase pressure. Customers see indicative prices directly on the product – so they know what to expect before they ask.
Before: No data, no visibility
GA4 with 9 custom events
Real data for the first time: which products get viewed, where visitors come from, what search terms they use.
Before: Prices below market rate
+€246,783/year revenue potential
Price calibration based on FVD, Design911, and Stoddard. +10.6% potential – calculated potential, not proven additional revenue.
Before: Completely unusable on smartphones
Fully responsive, mobile score 9/10
Off-canvas navigation, touch-optimized filters, WebP images. Anyone searching on a phone can now actually find what they need.
Before: 13 years of agency dependency
First self-update 5 minutes after handover
Niederhof updated his own website. For the first time in 13 years. No call, no agency, no invoice.
Transparency: The €246,783 is calculated revenue potential based on market-rate price calibration – not proven additional revenue. The calculation is based on spot checks at FVD, Design911, and Stoddard.

“Every part that leaves here has been on the track first. Not in the lab. Not in simulation. On the track.”

– Manfred Niederhof, Founder and Racing Driver

Why this result was never in doubt

The rebuild was not structured around the product catalog. It was structured around the buyer journey. That is the difference.

A procurement manager looking for carbon parts for a Porsche 964 RSR has a specific problem and limited time. When they find what they need on the website in under 30 seconds – with price, variant, and 1 click to inquire – the conversion happens on its own.

The old website forced that procurement manager to navigate through 20+ subpages, write down article numbers by hand, and compose an email. The result was predictable. They didn’t do it. They ordered from a competitor.

Vehicle filters, fuzzy search, cart-based inquiry, price display – those are not features. That is the buyer journey, written in code.

Nils Enders-Brenner, Hidden Design Champion
Next Step

Many B2B product catalogs have been running for years and still never do the 1 thing they’re actually there for.

Turning a visitor into an inquiry – that’s the lever. I’ll show you where it sits in your catalog in 30 minutes. I’ll show you the 3 biggest levers in 30 minutes. €297 – or free if I can’t find 3 improvements.

Reviewed personally by Nils · Response within 1–2 business days

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