In the high-volume world of online retail, the stakes are high when it comes to ensuring seamless logistics. One misplaced parcel or a delayed delivery can tarnish a brand’s reputation and burden operations with costly claims and frustrated customers. For Thomann GmbH, a high-volume online music retailer, solving this challenge has been central to supporting its rapid growth and high customer satisfaction.
Since fall 2024, Thomann has significantly optimized its claims management processes with the help of claim.me, an innovative tool powered by Seven Senders. The results: streamlined processes, improved data transparency, and a scalable system that keeps up with increasing shipment volumes.
Thomann, a family business founded in 1954 and headquartered in Treppendorf, Germany, has grown into a global powerhouse in musical equipment retail. In 2024 alone, the company recorded around €1.5 billion sales and shipped products to more than 160 countries.
Behind this success lies a robust logistics infrastructure - and increasingly, innovative digital solutions that tackle operational friction. “We currently have a shipment volume of 6.8 million parcels, and the trend is rising,” says Daniel Lauerer, Lead Transport Manager at Thomann. “To avoid increasing the claim processing effort with the number of orders, we needed an improved overview and structured processes.”
That’s where claim.me came in.
Thomann’s relationship with Seven Senders began in 2018, when the company sought help navigating DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) shipping for Switzerland and the UK - two key but logistically complex markets. Since then, parcel volume in these countries has surged, with Switzerland seeing 3.5x sales growth in 2018 and the UK up 25% between 2020 and 2024.
Beyond DDP, claim.me powered by Seven Senders now supports Thomann in one of the most operationally challenging areas of e-commerce: claims.
The problem was clear. Each carrier had its unique claim processes, portals, and requirements. For a business operating at Thomann’s scale, this fragmentation was unsustainable. “We wanted to get rid of different processes at the various carriers,” Lauerer explains.
In November 2024, Thomann began piloting claim.me for DHL shipments in Germany. Within months, the solution was fully integrated across its operations, consolidating all claims management into a single, standardized interface.
With claim.me, Thomann’s logistics team no longer has to navigate a maze of carrier-specific forms, portals, and email templates. Everything - from claim submission to status tracking and appeals—is handled in one unified system.
“We can answer queries from carriers via the portal, view the status of claims at any time, and, if necessary, lodge an objection directly,” says Lauerer. “We now only work from a single system. The parcel service provider continues to pay out approved claims directly to us.”
This simplification has had a measurable impact. With between 15,000 and 20,000 claims expected annually, automation and centralized data have significantly reduced manual work and training needs - while increasing the team’s ability to respond quickly and intelligently.
For many retailers, claims are a reactive function - something to manage only when something goes wrong. Thomann, however, is flipping the script.
“Claims management is an important lever for improving things, both in terms of process efficiency and data transparency,” says Lauerer. Rather than firefighting issues, claim.me enables the Thomann team to detect patterns, optimize workflows, and ultimately prevent future problems.
And there’s real money at stake. According to claim.me’s analysis, 3 in every 1,000 parcels cause issues, and 50% of those are eligible for reimbursement.. At scale, these numbers matter: for every 1 million parcels, up to €150,000 in refunds could be recovered. The financial upside is substantial for a company shipping nearly 7 million parcels a year.
As Thomann continues to grow, scaling operations intelligently becomes crucial, especially in areas like claims, where growth traditionally correlates with increased headcount and complexity.
“It’s not acceptable that with more and more parcels we tend to have more and more systems and employees dealing with claims,” says Lauerer. “Automation helps to simplify things. Colleagues in this area can use their time to focus on specific cases and investigate anomalies.”
The user feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Claim.me has freed up the team to focus on strategic improvement rather than operational overhead by simplifying communication with carriers and reducing reliance on spreadsheets or siloed systems.
The success of claim.me at Thomann underscores a broader shift in retail logistics—from fragmented, manual systems to connected, intelligent platforms that create value beyond delivery.
With plans to expand the use of claim.me to more markets and carriers, Thomann is laying the groundwork for a future in which claim management isn’t just about resolving issues—it’s about learning from them. “We not only want to process individual claims efficiently but also learn more from the data and continuously improve,” says Lauerer.
It’s a mindset that aligns perfectly with claim.me’s vision: to simplify international shipping through digital innovation and customer-centric service.
For Thomann, the message is clear: better claims management isn’t just about logistics. It’s about delivering a better customer experience, building operational resilience, and creating space for sustainable growth.
About Thomann GmbH
Thomann is the world’s largest online retailer of musical instruments and accessories. Founded in 1954 in Germany, the company ships to over 160 countries and offers everything from beginner instruments to professional stage equipment. www.thomann.de
About claim.me, powered by Seven Senders
10 years of claiming. 10 million + euros refunded. An internal software turned into great customer success. We first built this software to gain efficiency in the internal claiming process as our customer support was drowning in workload from many customers on one side and many carriers and languages, and different processes on the other side. After having used the software for claiming internally, we decided to open up that amazing software to our clients and all shops around Europe. It makes claiming as easy as it should be - with just a few clicks!
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