Case study: Textile Center
A buyer opens a product page, waits, and waits some more. After a few seconds she closes the tab and orders the same fabric from a competitor. In 2024, this was the risk Textile Center faced every day. Product pages of the Dutch wholesaler, which supplies the DIY sewing and clothing industry across Europe, took almost a minute to fully load. The cause was hidden deep in the system, and the fix turned out to be surprisingly simple. This is the story of how we, an Odoo team from Slovakia more than 1,000 km away, found it, and how we keep their Odoo running fast today.
About Textile Center
A Dutch fabric specialist with customers all over Europe
Textile Center B.V. is a B2B wholesaler of fashion fabrics and haberdashery based in the Netherlands. From jersey and French terry to linen, fleece and denim, plus zippers, lace and sewing accessories, it keeps more than 25,000 items in stock, all OEKO-TEX certified.
Its business customers come from nearly 40 countries, with Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium as the largest markets. They browse and order through a webshop available in nine languages. For a business like this, the webshop is not a side channel. It is the shop floor.
Client | Textile Center B.V., the Netherlands |
Industry | Wholesale of fabrics and haberdashery |
Customers | B2B buyers in nearly 40 countries |
Assortment | Worldwide shipping; webshop in 9 languages |
Our role | Performance optimization, support and maintenance, upgrade planning |
Challenges
The problem nobody could see
When Textile Center first contacted us in spring 2024, the request sounded simple: the webshop was slow. But in B2B eCommerce, slow is expensive. Business buyers order often and compare suppliers quickly, and the competition is only one click away. Every extra second of waiting was a reason for a customer to leave the page, and with the busy season approaching, the stakes were only getting higher.
We soon found out that speed was only the visible part of the story. The system had grown over several years with many custom modifications, built around a business that does not fit standard software easily. Fabrics are sold per meter, but stored in rolls whose real length differs from roll to roll. Every new requirement had been solved with another customization, and every Odoo update carried a risk that something would break.
Textile Center needed more than a quick fix. They needed a partner who would understand the whole system and take responsibility for it.
1
Slow product pages
Every variant image loaded at once, which slowed the webshop down.
2
Server overload risk
More visitors at the same time could overload the server.
3
Complex fabric processes
Fabrics are sold per meter but stocked in rolls of
varying length.
4
Hard to maintain code
Heavy customizations made every Odoo update a risk.
Solution
Detective work: measure first, then fix
We did not want to guess. We copied the database into a safe, anonymized test environment on our own servers and recreated the problem step by step. We measured how product pages behaved on fast, average and slow internet connections, and then ran load tests that simulated many shoppers visiting the webshop at the same time.
The culprit surprised everyone. Every time a customer opened a product, the webshop quietly downloaded all images of all colour variants, in three different sizes, whether the customer wanted to see them or not. For a fabric with dozens of colours, that meant well over a hundred images per visit. The server was busy sending pictures nobody had asked for.
The fix was elegant: load only what the customer actually needs. The webshop now preloads just medium sized images, so switching between colours stays instant, and fetches the large detailed images only on demand.
We did not stop there. Over the following months we:
- Tested whether a new Odoo version would help. We benchmarked the same product in two Odoo versions. The difference was negligible, so we advised Textile Center not to spend money on an upgrade that would not pay off.
- Mapped the business processes. In a series of online workshops with the Dutch team, we went through accounting, inventory and manufacturing, eCommerce, service and helpdesk, sales and purchasing.
- Reviewed the code. We analysed every custom module, so we know exactly what runs in the system and can support it with confidence.
- Prepared an upgrade roadmap. Together we planned the path to the latest Odoo version, including which customizations can be replaced by standard Odoo features.
Benefits
The result: a webshop that keeps up
The numbers speak for themselves. According to Textile Center, webpage loading times dropped by 80%. Product pages now respond instantly, and the amount of data sent to each visitor fell to a fraction of what it used to be.
- Faster shopping. Customers browse colours and variants without waiting, even on slower connections, so they have no reason to look elsewhere.
- Room to grow. In our load tests, the webshop stayed stable with around six times more simultaneous shoppers than on an average day, on the same server capacity.
- Money saved. Thanks to our benchmark, Textile Center skipped an upgrade that would have brought no real benefit.
- A clear plan. Instead of reacting to problems, Textile Center now has a roadmap for the years ahead and a partner who knows its system inside out.
Beyond the fix: how we look after Odoo for our clients
Speeding up a webshop is one thing. Keeping an ERP system fast, secure and up to date for years is another. This is what we offer to Textile Center and to every company that wants a long term Odoo partner.
Hosting built for Odoo
We run Odoo on our own 26HOUSE Cloud, in a data centre in Prague. In our load tests, Textile Center’s webshop ran stably on our infrastructure with the same capacity it uses today.
- Your updates, your schedule. You decide when Odoo is updated. Every update is tested on a staging environment first, so customizations and integrations do not break overnight.
- Performance tuning of workers, scheduled jobs and server load, on shared or dedicated servers that grow with your business.
- Advanced networking such as a custom firewall, VPN tunnels and dedicated IP addresses.
Support you can count on
Our clients get a dedicated support specialist and a team that knows their system, not an anonymous ticket queue.
- Guaranteed response times under a service level agreement, starting at 6 hours for urgent incidents.
- Three ways to reach us: our helpdesk portal, email, or phone for business critical issues.
- Support in English, Czech and Slovak, with plans up to 24/7 coverage.
- Cleaner code over time. Whenever we touch existing customizations, we tidy them up and add automated tests, so the system gets more stable with every change.
Upgrades without surprises
Staying on an old Odoo version gets more expensive every year, but a careless upgrade can be even more costly. That is why we always start with the question: will this upgrade pay off?
- Analysis first. We benchmark the new version and review every customization, as we did for Textile Center.
- Back to standard. Many customizations can be replaced by features that newer Odoo versions offer out of the box, which makes the next upgrade cheaper.
- Safe migration. We upgrade on a test copy, let your users test it, train your team and only then switch production.
For Textile Center, we have prepared the roadmap to Odoo 19, so the company can move to the newest version with fewer customizations and lower running costs.
In their own words
"The services provided by 26HOUSE have significantly improved the performance of our Odoo ERP system, especially our webshop. After optimizing our backend processes and the database, webpage loading times were reduced by 80%, providing a smoother user experience for our customers. Moreover, we appreciated the fast response times and efficient support from 26HOUSE, as they promptly addressed our requests. The load testing and performance measurements conducted by 26HOUSE enabled us to continually improve our welshop and ensure stability.
We highly recommend 26HOUSE as a reliable partner for your Odoo ERP system! "