Case Study

HOBOT: An Official Brand Store That Fills Itself from the Distributor's Catalogue

How we built hobotstore.com for Zazopoulos SA, the official HOBOT distributor in Greece, so products, prices, stock, specs, categories and photos arrive automatically from the main zazopoulossa.gr catalogue, in Greek and English.

Industry Consumer Tech: Window and Floor Cleaning Robots
Services Brand E-commerce, Catalogue Sync, Theme Design
Platform Tec-Eshop (Laravel) + Brand Sync module

The Brief

One Distributor, Several Brand Stores

Zazopoulos SA distributes HOBOT in Greece alongside other brands, and wanted an official online store for each brand, with its own look and its own domain. Their whole range already lives on zazopoulossa.gr, the B2B platform we built for them.

Keep the Catalogue in One Place

Every product needs Greek and English text, specs, photos, a price, stock and a place in the category tree. Typing all of that again for every brand store would mean several copies of the same catalogue slowly drifting apart.

It Has to Feel Like the Brand

HOBOT sells window robots with ultrasonic spray and floor robots that wash themselves. The store had to look like a tech brand site, with big product imagery and a page explaining the technology, not like a generic catalogue.

How the Store Gets Its Products

We wrote a Brand Sync module for our Laravel shop platform. Each brand store has its own secure feed from the main Zazopoulos catalogue, and the main site decides which products that feed carries. So hobotstore.com only ever receives the HOBOT range, and Zazopoulos keeps maintaining every product once, in one place.

From zazopoulossa.gr to hobotstore.com

1
The Whole Product, in Two Languages

Name, descriptions, specs, SKU, barcode, weight, dimensions, tax rate, price, sale price with its start and end dates, stock and quantity, brand and tags, all in Greek and English. Categories are matched to the main site, so the menu follows the distributor's category tree.

2
Only What Changed

Every product carries a fingerprint of its data. If nothing has changed since the last run, the product is skipped, so a full check of the range is quick and the database isn't rewritten for nothing.

3
Photos From the Cheapest Source First

A photo that is already in the media library is matched by file name and reused. New photos come from the distributor's image CDN, or from the API for images that are not on the CDN, and the media library builds the thumbnail sizes.

4
Each Brand on Its Own Schedule

The scheduler checks every minute, and each brand feed runs at its own interval, anything from every 30 minutes to once a week, set from the admin panel. Only one run per feed can happen at a time, and the feed retries on its own if the main site is busy or a connection drops.

Automatic, but the Team Stays in Charge

Leave Any Product Out

The admin panel lists every product the feed offers. Untick one and the sync will never create or touch it on this store, without changing anything on the main site.

A Bad Feed Can't Empty the Shop

When a product disappears from the feed, the store can hide it automatically. It is set to pending, not deleted, so the page and its history come back if the product returns, and one run can never hide more than half the catalogue.

Cleaner Product Photos

An optional step turns white-background packshots into transparent WebP images, so products sit cleanly on the store's dark brand panels. It only touches photos whose edges are almost entirely white, and leaves lifestyle shots alone.

The Build in Numbers

2
Languages synced for every product
18
Content blocks in the shared brand theme
30m
Fastest sync interval a brand feed can run at
50%
Most of the catalogue one run can hide

One Theme, Many Brands

HOBOT runs on a shared brand theme we designed for the Zazopoulos brand stores. Nothing brand-specific lives in the code: each store sets its own colours, logo, texts, menus and home page from the admin panel, so a new brand store is mostly design work, not development.

  • Technology Storytelling: showcase blocks for pages like Technology, where HOBOT explains its ultrasonic spray.
  • Greek and English: Greek at the root, English under /en, both filled from the feed.
  • Card or Bank Deposit: cards through the Nexi e-Commerce platform, or a deposit to the distributor's bank accounts.
  • Delivery Priced Properly: worked out at checkout from the postcode and the weight, including volumetric weight.

Technology Stack

Laravel 10 Tec-Eshop Brand Sync module REST API Laravel Scheduler Image CDN Cardlink (Nexi) MySQL

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Tec Dynamics build for HOBOT?

hobotstore.com, the official HOBOT store for Greece, run by distributor Zazopoulos SA. It runs on our Laravel-based Tec-Eshop platform with a shared brand theme, and takes its products, prices, stock, specs, categories and photos automatically from the main zazopoulossa.gr catalogue, in Greek and English.

How does the HOBOT store get its products?

Through our Brand Sync module. Each brand store has its own secure feed from the main Zazopoulos catalogue. Only products that changed are updated, photos come from a local copy, the image CDN or the API, and each feed runs on its own schedule, from every 30 minutes to once a week.

Can the HOBOT team change or leave out products?

Yes. Staff can untick any product so the sync never creates or changes it on the store. Products that leave the feed are hidden, not deleted, and one run can never hide more than half the catalogue, so a faulty feed cannot empty the shop.

Running Several Brands From One Catalogue?

We build brand stores that feed from your main catalogue or ERP, so you maintain each product once. Tell us how your range is managed today and we'll tell you what can be automated.

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