Porzellanland Schmitt GmbH – A Family Business Shaped by Early Digital Entrepreneurship
My involvement with Porzellanland began long before my academic career. As a highschool student, I accompanied my parents when they started a porcelain trading business. The seed for the business was planted in a simple everyday situation: my grandmother needed a single replacement cup from a discontinued porcelain series. My mother complained that sellers only offered complete sets. I spontaneously suggested, “Then buy the whole set, gift the parts you need, and sell the rest with profit.” That idea became the initial spark for what later grew into a full busieness.
Very early, I became responsible for the technical backbone of the business. I set up the first online shop using osCommerce, including server installation, configuration, and the complete infrastructure needed for a functioning e-commerce platform. The limitations of osCommerce, combined with the flexibility of its open source structure and documentation, motivated me to build a fully custom shop system as part of my Abitur project. This system ran successfully for several years and formed the operational foundation of the business during its early growth.
During my master’s studies, I migrated the shop to Magento Open Source and developed custom modules, including region-based shipping calculations and a LaTeX based PDF invoice generator. Later, the business transitioned to Shopify, where the shop continued to evolve without my direct involvement.
Beyond the technical aspects, I also contributed to shaping the brand identity. The name Porzellanland, the domain, and the original logo were all created in collaboration with me. Over the years, the company became one of the largest specialized dealers for discontinued branded porcelain, shipping internationally and serving a niche market with high reliability.
Today, the business is in its final chapter and planned to be dissolved at the end of the year 2025. Yet Porzellanland remains an important part of my personal and entrepreneurial story, a place where I learned early how technology, design, and business can work together, long before I entered the academic world.
Links & Resources
- Porzellanland Website:
https://porzellanland.de