We get it. You can’t attend every industry conference that offers content that benefits your organization. However, Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit™ 2025, is a must-attend event. commercetools felt the industry needed an event that speaks directly to commerce leaders, so last year we launched one. Elevate places a razor-sharp focus on commerce strategies and technologies driving success for organizations across every business model and market vertical. While the agenda won’t be released until January, we already have a big-picture overview of the big topics. Of course, with today’s fast-moving digital landscape, things might change. Like composable commerce, we’re flexible and ready to adapt as needed!
The overarching theme for Elevate 2025 is unified commerce. While the term has been thrown around for a few years, it became an official industry buzzword in 2024. In fact, “Conquering Unified Commerce” was one of six themes at the newly launched Shoptalk Fall event in Chicago. Often used interchangeably with omnichannel and composable commerce, unified commerce specifically relates to consolidating all your business and customer data from disparate touchpoints and channels onto a single backend. Composable commerce enables businesses to accomplish this and the outcome is the ability to deliver omnichannel experiences to customers on the frontend.
In reality, businesses can unify some data, such as loyalty points, but not all of it. At Elevate, we’re planning to do a deep dive into what true unified commerce looks like and the technologies required to deliver it. We’ll have top brands take the stage to explain how commercetools is making it easy to unify and leverage data, thus enabling them to tap into the benefits it delivers.
Multiple Elevate 2024 attendees told us that having the opportunity to learn from other commercetools’ customers and understand where they are on the composable journey was invaluable. You can expect to see even more customers on the 2025 agenda. Thus far, we’ve confirmed speakers from Kraft Heinz, Five Below, Pet Valu, The Very Group, Screwfix and Liverpool.
The benefit of this event is hearing from all of those leaders from different regions and their journeys — what to do, what not to do and lessons learned. It’s gotten us thinking out of the well.
Tech lead, B2B ECommerce, Medline Industries (Elevate 2024 attendee)
Michael Scholz, Vice President of Product and Customer Marketing at commercetools and the lead on developing the agenda, said that he's focusing on crafting sessions that truly help business leaders solve problems. While simply promoting composable commerce technology and presenting customer success stories would be easy, it doesn’t translate into value for attendees. “No one wakes up in the morning and says I want to buy a composable platform. They say, “I’m frustrated. I have challenges that need to be fixed."
With this in mind, he’s created breakout tracks dedicated to the key topics at top of mind with business leaders right now — enhancing customer experience, driving business growth and understanding organizational design. There will also be a track solely focused on commerce best practices. The goal is to ensure attendees can collect multiple tangible use cases to take back to their teams and organizations that can inspire innovation and incent change.
It doesn't matter what industry you're in or what business model you have, at the end of the day, you want to create unified commerce experiences. You want to create amazing customer experiences. At Elevate, you’re going to gain intel and insights to help you figure out how to do it.
VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT AND CUSTOMER MARKETING, COMMERCETOOLS
We’ve also confirmed two incredible keynote speakers for Elevate 2025. Anders Sörman-Nilsson is a futurist and the founder of Thinque, a think tank dedicated to providing data-driven insights for global brands. What he’ll present on stage is still a mystery, but with global brands including Microsoft, Apple and LEGO continually engaging his expertise and seeking out his innovative ideas, there’s no doubt his perspectives will be impactful. As Michael pointed out, “He’s a visionary. He’s working on some groundbreaking AI capabilities that are pretty exciting. It’s going to be interesting to see the direction he decides to take.”
Heather Hershey, the Research Director for IDC Worldwide Digital Commerce practice, will again share her expertise and enthusiasm for digital commerce and the evolving global landscape for the second time. Her 2024 presentation dove deep into what she felt were the five biggest commerce trends, and put a strong focus on how AI currently fits into the digital commerce equation and her predictions for the future. She hinted that she hopes to share the results of new research, offering tangible examples and practical advice to reinforce the findings. According to Michael, “It won’t be the normal fluffy stuff; it will be meaningful, real insights on the future of commerce.”
Elevate your thinking, expand your possibilities
It’s difficult for business leaders to find time to explore what other brands are doing, the latest technology innovations and the next big trends. However, you can’t continually deliver exceptional customer experiences that generate revenue and drive growth without expanding your knowledge and understanding of what commerce looks like today. The thought leaders who speak at Elevate live, breathe and speak the language of commerce and, more importantly, are willing to share their expertise, experience and insights for the greater good.
Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit™ 2025 is set for May 20-22, 2025 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Tickets to attend on sale now. Reserve your spot on the Elevate website.
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.