What Is Veloconnect and How Does It Work?
Veloconnect is the XML-based API standard used mainly across German-speaking Europe’s bicycle retail for exchanging stock, order, invoice and product data directly between retailer and supplier IT systems.
What Is Veloconnect?
Veloconnect is a neutral, XML-based standard for digital data exchange in the bicycle industry. It connects retailers and manufacturers through a shared system-to-system “language” for orders, stock levels, invoices and BIDEX or DST data.
It was developed in 2006 and has since been implemented across 120 suppliers and multiple ERP and POS systems.
Since 2025, Veloconnect has been coordinated by DiBike (Digitize Bike Business Group), a joint initiative of VSF (Verbund Service und Fahrrad, the German specialist retailer association) and ZIV (Zweirad-Industrie-Verband, the German bicycle industry association). Both associations are shareholders in DiBike, and further development happens openly through two committees: the Brand & Supplier Board (manufacturers, suppliers, distributors) and the Veloconnect Committee (ERP/system providers and technical experts).
Veloconnect is not a company or a paid product — its open industry infrastructure, governed by the trade associations rather than a single vendor.
What Problem Does Veloconnect Solve?
Before Veloconnect, checking whether a supplier had a part in stock and ordering it meant phoning them or sending an email. Invoices and delivery notes arrived on paper or as PDFs that had to be keyed into the retailer’s ERP by hand. Every supplier relationship meant its own one-off manual process.
Veloconnect replaces this with a standardised interface: once a retailer’s ERP and a supplier’s system both speak Veloconnect, stock checks, orders, order confirmations, delivery notes and invoices can flow automatically between the two.
How Does Veloconnect Work?
Veloconnect is organised into modules, each covering a different part of the trading relationship. Brands and ERP providers implement the modules relevant to them; VC 1.1 is the baseline, and everything else builds on top of it.
The specification itself is openly documented, published as XSD schemas on GitHub, with Bruno/Postman collections of example requests.
| Module | What it covers |
|---|---|
|
VC 1.1 – Core (Profile / Order) |
Baseline B2B functions: master data (description, GTIN/EAN, order number, prices), availability queries, and orders with immediate price and quantity comparison
|
|
VC 1.3 – Receipt |
Digital order confirmations, delivery notes and invoices, including serial numbers and e-invoicing formats (ZUGFeRD, XInvoice) |
|
VC 1.4 – Stock (B2B/B2C) |
Retailer stock levels transmitted to manufacturers, marketplaces or webshops — the basis for “available near you” style displays and automated stock reconciliation |
|
VC 1.5 – Catalogue |
Structured, extended product data: attributes, variant structures, media. Can be supplied directly by manufacturers or via external data services such as BIDEX or DST |
|
VC 1.6 – Sale (B2B / B2X) |
Optional transmission of sales data from retailers back to suppliers or neutral market-data recipients (e.g. ZIV MDS) — item ID, quantity sold, sale date, plus optional price, postcode, and BIDEX product group fields |
How Is Veloconnect Implemented?
Every company can implement Veloconnect themselves, as it is an open source standard. Alternatively, an implementation partner can be chosen to build the Veloconnect server and API.
Who Uses Veloconnect?
Veloconnect’s reach spans the full commercial chain in DACH cycling retail and increasingly beyond:
Brands and suppliers: Over 120 companies expose a Veloconnect interface, including Trek (also Bontrager, Electra, Diamant), Specialized, Cube, Giant, Scott, Orbea, Cannondale, Riese & Müller, KTM, Merida-Centurion, the Accell brands (Ghost, Lapierre), the Winora Group (Winora, Haibike, Batavus), Gazelle, ABUS, SKS, Magura, Maxxis, Vaude and Thule, among many others.
ERP and POS providers: e-vendo, Tridata, CYCLY, Citrus-Lime, Combase, Ascend, Velodata and Veloport, plus newer entrants like Xentral and Odoo.
Retailers: Any dealer running one of the above systems can query stock, place orders and receive invoices from any connected supplier without manual re-entry.
E-commerce platforms: Shopware, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and PrestaShop can connect via middleware.
Veloconnect vs. BIDEX vs. DST vs. Bike Matrix: What's the Difference?
Veloconnect is the transport protocol. It defines how data moves — the machine-to-machine XML plumbing for orders, invoices, stock and catalogue data — across the entire trading relationship between brands and retailers.
BIDEX is a data classification and attribute standard. It defines what product data looks like — fields, categories, geometry, media references — primarily for the specialist retail channel. BIDEX-formatted product data is commonly delivered through Veloconnect’s VC 1.5 Catalogue module. Read more about BIDEX.
DST is an equivalent of combining a BIDEX-style data schema and Veloconnect-style distribution into a single non-profit platform — it standardizes both what the data looks like and how it moves, specifically for the Netherlands and Belgium. Read more about DST.
Bike Matrix operates at a different layer entirely: it’s a compatibility engine that tells online shoppers whether a specific part fits their bike. It doesn’t move transactional data between ERPs — it consumes manufacturer product data to power retailer-facing filters. Read more about Bike Matrix.
In practice, many brands run all of them side by side: Veloconnect handles the order-to-invoice cycle and carries BIDEX- or DST-formatted catalogue data to retailer ERPs, while Bike Matrix separately powers fitment filtering on retailer websites.
Common Questions About Veloconnect
Is Veloconnect free?
The specification is open and freely documented — there’s no licensing fee from DiBike to read or implement it. Your actual cost is implementation: a fee to get access to the test environment, and either developer time to build against the XSD schemas, or a fee to an integration partner to connect your systems.
Does Veloconnect replace a PIM or PLM system?
No. Veloconnect moves data between systems; it doesn’t create, structure or govern that data. You still need a source system where product master data, pricing, availability rules and catalogue content are maintained and kept accurate before they’re pushed out over Veloconnect.
Is Veloconnect only relevant in Germany?
It originated in Germany and remains strongest across DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), but international brands — Specialized, Trek, Cannondale and Santa Cruz among them — run Veloconnect interfaces for their European retail networks, and adoption continues to expand.
Veloconnect and PIM Systems: Where Does Data Management Fit?
Veloconnect is distribution infrastructure — it’s the pipe, not the source. The VC 1.5 Catalogue module, for instance, expects structured attributes, variant data and media references to already exist somewhere; Veloconnect just carries them to the retailer’s ERP or webshop.
For a brand with a handful of SKUs, feeding that pipe manually might be manageable. For a brand managing hundreds of articles across model years — with the same data also needing to reach BIDEX, DST, Bike Matrix and your own website — manual maintenance turns into a full-time reconciliation job, and inconsistencies between channels are almost guaranteed.
This is typically the role of a PIM/PLM system: a single place where product data is created and governed, with exports mapped to the format each downstream channel requires — including the VC 1.5 Catalogue structure. Purpose-built cycling PIM platforms, such as NOCA, are built with this mapping in mind.
Master your product data with the NOCA portal
Ensure everyone uses the same, consistent, and up-to-date product data across your organisation and the data is synchronised across marketing and sales channels – like Veloconnect – to create less manual work and more revenue.
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