In the first part of our Partner Possibilities Program series, we took a deep dive into what our new partner program is all about.
Here, through interviews with our partners, we uncover how and why our partnerships were formed.
The big list: our premium partners and shared customers
Adesso: M-Way AG
Avensia: Ridestore, Nordic Nest, Dormy Golf & Fashion AB
diconium: EvoBus / Daimler, Volkswagen
Divante: EKWB
DMI: Zoro
dotSource: Precitool, TROX Systems, Verlag C.H. BECK, DATEV eG, Otto Bock HealthCare Deutschland GmbH
Enginiety
EPAM: NBCU, Dawn Foods, Tory Burch, VitalAire GmbH, Burberry Limited, Rogers Communications
HCL: Ulta Beauty, Wawa, AT&T Inc.
Kernpunkt: BEGA Gantenbrink-Leuchten KG, BICO Zweirad Marketing, CHRONEXT, Tonies / Boxine, Credemus
Lab Digital: Danone, Glen Dimplex, Kato
Mindcurv: Foodl, FRANKA EMIKA GmbH, J.Schmalz GmbH, Davea GmbH
Myplanet: Harry Rosen
Photon: Kohler, Purple, SimpliSafe, Vizio, Molekule
Valtech: BMW, Eurail, Promod, Tiffany & Co., Wavin B.V., YAMAHA
How did your company first learn about commercetools?
We became aware of commercetools through their acquisition by REWE digital in 2014. New solution providers are always exciting for us and worth evaluating. Thanks to our diverse contacts in the digital industry, it was easy for us to establish direct contact quickly and to get to know the team and the idea behind the product.
At EPAM, we became aware of commercetools in 2017 through industry events and our network. At the time, there was a lot of noise in the commerce platform ecosystem and commercetools was at the center of it.
eWave has been a commerce innovator for a decade; we keep our eye on the market and we were excited to see commercetools jump into the most recent leaders position of Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce.
As a commercetools partner from the early hours, we have been in contact with Dirk Hoerig (commercetools founder) since 2010. The commercetools’ approach of providing combinable APIs and microservice for the realization of eCommerce applications was a great fit to our strategy: Back in 2010, our focus was on complex CMS projects – based on FirstSpirit, Magnolia and Drupal, among others – which we wanted to expand by adding eCommerce functions.
What attracted you to partner with commercetools in the first place?
It is new, fresh and breaths future. Technically, we were looking for a true microservice, API, cloud-native, headless eCommerce platform and commercetools is more or less the only platform offering that. commercetools, in combination with our long and deep experience from high performing digital commerce solutions, will create huge customer value. So that combination = success!
Flexibility – you can choose the core API features you like or not like at AWS or Azure, meaning you choose the default pricing service, but you integrate (via API extensions – domain microservices) on your own.
Scalability – commercetools uses GCP and AWS, and manages all scalability transparently and efficiently to the customer. These tools use cloud-native features like serverless, queues, and data gateways (not to mention the CDN services) as well.
Customization features – you can have your own data model and extend the Merchant Center (admin panel) with your own UI features via Merchant Center Applications.
We very much liked the idea of building and democratizing an “infinitely scaling API-first platform” like the Amazons or Etsys had done before. As our architects and developers quite often had to deal with burning, not-good-enough-scaling and not-flexible-enough-to-extend monolithic platforms, we wanted to do things differently. We realized a bit later that there are also many other compelling business reasons to work with commercetools / go MACH like building a composable enterprise or keeping cost-for-new-features better under control.
When and how did your partnership begin?
Back in 2004 we became an official partner of commercetools. In reality, we were just a logo on the partner page back then. It wasn’t until DMI really invested in recommending and delivering headless applications to our clients that the partnership became more meaningful. It was around 2015 when we were enlightened to the fact that composable headless applications were the future of eCommerce. Off to the races ever since.
It quickly became clear to both sides that a joint partnership made sense. Our experience, our tech stack and our openness to new solutions were as attractive to commercetools as their potential with our customers was to us. It wasn’t for nothing that dotSource was the first partner to have certified developers worldwide and became the first business partner.
We contacted commercetools after we performed a thorough evaluation of available commerce platforms in 2017 to complement our technology offering, which clearly brought up commercetools as the winner.
How does partnering with commercetools differ from partnering with other Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)?
From the beginning it was a partnership at eye level. With a clear go-to-market strategy focused on partner business, it was easy and more or less risk-free for diconium to invest in the partnership, in the technology. Furthermore, the decision of Volkswagen, as the 100% shareholder of diconium, to use commercetools as one technology for its One Digital Platform has brought speed to the partnership from the very start.
First and foremost, the people and the vision they follow make a big difference. We experience a strong intrinsic drive to do things better every day, in a more sustainable way and with a tech mindset first. Where other ISVs overpromise on capabilities of their product, commercetools people are usually humble and tend to do the opposite.
From day one our partnership has been transparent, open and personal. It’s this ability to work with total trust in one another that has added the most value for our clients as they’ve grown and matured. We share the same culture and ambition to create real transformation for the brands we work with, and I know that we make a formidable team, no matter the challenge.
Want to know more about our commercetools Partner Possibilities Program? Get to know the program in our blog and visit our Partner Possibilities page if you’re interested in more in-depth details.