Leading Paint Manufacturer

The Challenge: Bridging the gap between physical stores and digital growth

At this leading paint manufacturer, color inspires everyone, from professional painters to homeowners transforming their spaces, through a wide portfolio of paints, enamels, wood finishes and waterproofing products. The company’s leading brand recognition and significant market share are supported by a unique business model featuring 600+ dealers and 5,200+ stores in Mexico that operate as a concessionaire network rather than a typical franchise.  

As customer habits have evolved, so have their expectations toward digital experiences. So, the company began its eCommerce journey in 2017 as an experiment to meet customer needs, choosing an all-in-one platform to take its first digital steps. However, scaling eCommerce across thousands of independently operated dealer stores revealed several challenges:

• Slow time-to-market: The rigid technology made every update slow and complex, taking weeks or months. 
• Localized pricing complexity: Each dealer competes in a distinct market, resulting in product prices that vary by location. Translating that flexibility into eCommerce meant managing millions of price records. To avoid customers seeing price discrepancies, tech teams had to process several million records well in advance, creating unnecessary busywork and stress whenever prices needed to be updated. 
• Limited marketing agility: Launching promotions or seasonal campaigns required long coordination times and heavy IT involvement.

These limitations were further exposed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, forcing brick-and-mortar dealer stores to close. Online traffic surged and new omnichannel journeys needed to be in place to serve customers without friction. 

For the company, every customer interaction, regardless of channel, should feel the same. That meant supporting experiences that enable customers, for example, to go to the store for inspiration and then buy online, and vice versa. 

To achieve this, the manufacturer needed to consolidate data across online and in-store channels to provide the omnichannel, personalized experiences customers look for, all the while enabling our internal teams with tools that make their work more efficient.

The solution: Building an enterprise-grade eCommerce foundation

To overcome the limitations of a legacy platform and create omnichannel, personalized experiences, the manufacturer recognized the need for a comprehensive digital transformation. 

Starting with a discovery and design phase, the company analyzed its customers’ journeys across digital and physical touchpoints to define the experience it wanted to deliver. In parallel, the team mapped out the technological architecture required to bring that vision to life, leading to the strategic decision to adopt MACH®-based, composable technology. 

After evaluating multiple solutions, the company ultimately chose commercetools for its flexibility and alignment with the MACH principles. The decision allowed it to move away from its monolithic system and gain the freedom to evolve quickly and efficiently.

When it was time to select a system integrator, the company sought a partner that combined technical excellence with close collaboration. Key requirements included being a certified commercetools partner, having Spanish-speaking teams in a nearby time zone and demonstrating a proven track record in agile co-creation. Valtech emerged as the strategic partner.

With the implementation partnership team complete, the company, commercetools and Valtech designed the new enterprise eCommerce platform while maintaining the existing one. The initial implementation aimed to replicate the existing customer experience available online, thereby avoiding disruption and ensuring a seamless migration. 

Once the core functionality was live, the team added new capabilities immediately after the initial rollout to further enhance the digital experience. One of these additions was the integration with the company’s loyalty program, enabling customers to earn and redeem points online for the first time. 

All in all, the rollout of the enterprise-grade eCommerce platform was executed successfully, without any service interruptions, powered by the close collaboration and co-creation between the paint manufacturer, Valtech and commercetools.

The result: Delivering seamless experiences across every channel 

Since launching the new platform with commercetools, the company has seen significant improvements in customer experience, operational efficiency and internal capabilities. Customers now enjoy a more fluid, personalized experience through the following post-rollout improvements:

• Redesigned checkout: Simpler, faster and more user-friendly, reducing friction and improving conversion.
• Favorites and personalization: Customers can mark their favorite products and colors, which are saved in their profile for easy access. This is ideal for creative projects and repeat purchases.
• Abandoned cart recovery: Automated notifications via WhatsApp or email remind customers of items left in their shopping cart, increasing the number of completed purchases.
• Integrated fulfillment: All dealer stores serve as fulfillment centers, preparing and delivering orders based on customer preferences and local prices. 
• Fast, intuitive and secure experiences: Overall system performance has improved by 150%, downtime has been reduced by 99%, and payment systems are now more secure against fraud and unauthorized access.

These elevated customer experiences have been made possible by operational efficiencies, as commerce operations that previously required massive effort now happen almost instantly. For example: 

• Price updates that once took two weeks to process across millions of records now take just 45 minutes. 
• Deployment frequency has increased tenfold, allowing changes and new features to go live in days or hours rather than weeks or months. 

The DevOps model has also matured, with fully automated pipelines, secure code validations and AI-assisted development accelerating productivity. Developers are now actively proposing business improvements, creating tangible value and fostering a culture of innovation. The combined impact of these changes has not only improved efficiency but also heightened team motivation and ownership.

Beyond the improved technical efficiencies of the business, marketing teams are also more autonomous, able to manage data, enable promotions and optimize content and search in real time — without depending on tech teams. Furthermore, the company’s marketing team can optimize content for both mobile and desktop devices and provide relevant and timely communication to customers, increasing engagement and, ultimately, conversions. 

This new landscape has enhanced collaboration with dealer stores, which now view eCommerce as complementary to their business and act as online ambassadors, rather than seeing digital as a competitor, as was the case before the migration. This shift reflects a successful alignment of physical and digital channels, highlighting the move toward a more unified commerce approach. As a result, site traffic has been growing organically in collaboration with dealer partners.

Looking forward, the company aims to continue expanding its omnichannel experience while exploring opportunities to replicate this success in other regions. The focus remains on delivering personalized, timely and inspiring experiences that connect customers with the world of color.