Ranked 1st for Composable Commerce Use Case in the 2023 Gartner® Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce.
From pioneering a revolutionary "headless" approach to commerce that enabled brands to embrace mobile to launching a truly composable solution to ensure they can continue to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape, commercetools continues its mission to power the evolution of commerce innovation by giving companies all the components required to build and run outstanding shopping experiences.
About 13 years ago, Dirk Hoerig and his business partner Denis Werner made the bold decision to redirect the business model of their web development agency. Frustrated by the limitations they continually faced trying to build eCommerce sites on traditional platforms, they decided to focus on building what would become the first API-first, cloud-native eCommerce SaaS solution.
Dirk’s vision was to create a platform that offered powerful functionality and flexibility and allowed developers to program in any language. — and in his mind, the only feasible way to do it was by decoupling the backend from the frontend. The partners set up an office in Berlin, hired a small team of developers and engineers, and within a year launched commercetools, introducing its “headless” commerce platform at the Exceed 2013 Conference.
At the time, no one in the industry had even heard of the term headless — it would take years for the disruptive new approach to building a commerce stack to gain acceptance. Today, however, as Gartner® acknowledges in its 2023 Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce report, “Being 100% API-enabled or “headless” ready is now table stakes, however, the challenge for these platforms is to provide the right toolsets and front-end frameworks to accelerate experience-led implementations.”
Commercetools has embraced this challenge, continually fine-tuning the toolsets we offer, providing resources and documentation to support implementations and integrating commercetools Frontend in 2021.
This level of innovation — some would call it disruption — is core to our DNA. We’re constantly exploring emerging technologies and introducing innovative new products. Back in 2016, we coined the term MACH®, spearheading the adoption of MACH® architecture as the foundation for organizations seeking to gain the flexibility, scalability and performance needed to continually adapt their commerce experience to meet the ever-evolving expectations of customers without risk. We’re also one of the founding members of The MACH Alliance, the not-for-profit, vendor-neutral organization that advocates for open and best-of-breed enterprise technology ecosystems.
Today, commercetools’ product portfolio includes Composable Commerce for B2C, Composable Commerce for B2B, Frontend, Checkout and commercetools for China — each one powered by MACH and designed to support brands seeking true composability.
As a relatively new concept, many business leaders are still vetting the power of composable commerce. However, in its report, Gartner finds that “Innovation is growing at a rapid pace in the digital commerce ecosystem. Several platforms have moved into a modular approach and are moving steadily toward a composable architecture.” In addition, Gartner predicts that “By 2025, organizations offering a unified commerce experience by frictionlessly moving customers through journeys will see at least a 20% uplift in total revenue.”
As we firmly believe composability will drive the future of commerce, we feel transitioning to composable commerce is critical for any organization looking to achieve this potential revenue growth.
With its cloud-native, component-based, tech-agnostic solution, commercetools is uniquely able to deliver the infinite scale, unlimited flexibility and performance organizations need to innovate, adapt and grow. By enabling you to integrate different components from best-of-breed vendors without risk, you can create these unified experiences that meet your exact vision, delighting your customers while meeting your business needs.
We were delighted to find ourselves placed highest in the Composable Commerce Use Case in the Gartner report which is designed to help organizations seeking to shift to a modular, API-first approach to digital commerce experience design. The report shares recommendations to determine which vendors are the best match for their vision. We feel the acknowledgment reinforces that our co-founders Dirk and Denis made the right decision by ignoring the naysayers and taking a leap of faith. As Dirk remembers it, “We just kept thinking…if eCommerce happens everywhere, you can't use a system built to provide eCommerce in just one place.”
To explore all 5 Use Cases and read the complete report, download your complimentary copy of the 2023 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce today.
Anita J. Temple is the Corporate Journalist at commercetools. She was a fashion editor at Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and W Magazine before launching a career as a freelance writer and creative producer. She has written content and worked on a wide range of marketing projects for companies including Dreamworks, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Verizon, and Adidas.