John Lewis partners with commercetools for best-in-class modern commerce

Iconic British retailer further invests in its digital capabilities as customers shift to shopping online

LONDON (UK), November 10, 2020 – commercetools today announced that the John Lewis Partnership, which owns and operates two of Britain’s best loved retail brands – John Lewis and Waitrose – has selected its technology to provide a next-generation key commerce component to support and deliver its e-commerce capabilities for johnlewis.com.

In the six months from 26 January to 25 July 2020, John Lewis has seen impressive online growth of 73%.  As part of the re-platforming of johnlewis.com which included moving its basket and checkout capability, John Lewis was looking for a flexible e-commerce solution which would allow the retailer to further accelerate its commitment to providing a leading online shopping experience.  

The retailer chose commercetools because it offered John Lewis the scalability and reliability it needed to move towards an ambitious goal of migrating off its legacy eCommerce-based platform, and onto a flexible API-first, microservices-led cloud service. In addition, commercetools’ platform gives John Lewis freedom to customize digital customer experience journeys when shopping in-store, online, using mobile apps or any other channel.    

As this will be a critical technology partnership, it was particularly important that commercetools was a strong vendor supported by a well-defined commerce technology roadmap in line with John Lewis’ own vision to launch and scale digital propositions faster and help to deliver more omnichannel experiences for its customers.  

John Lewis is supercharging its investment in online to adapt to changes in consumer behaviour. Our partnership with commercetools forms part of this.

Mike Sackman

Chief Information Officer, John Lewis Partnership

Brands rely on their ability to engage customers and meet needs that are constantly changing online and offline. For John Lewis, scalability and flexibility was very much the brief, and we are very proud to be a strategic provider for such an iconic brand. A modern commerce solution based on composable architecture, API-first and the cloud, delivers capabilities which allow our customers to meet peak demand, support omnichannel, adapt quickly to the market and realise value early and often.

Dirk Hoerig

CEO and Co-Founder, commercetools

About the John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership owns and operates two of Britain’s best-loved retail brands – John Lewis and Waitrose. Started as a radical idea nearly a century ago, the Partnership is the largest employee-owned business in the UK and amongst the largest in the world, with over 78,000 employees who are all Partners in the business. For all intents and purposes, the Partnership is a social enterprise; the profits made are reinvested into the business – for customers and Partners. John Lewis operates 42 shops plus one outlet across the UK as well as  johnlewis.com. Waitrose has 335 shops in England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, including 61 convenience branches, and another 27 shops at Welcome Break locations. Waitrose exports products to more than 50 countries worldwide and has 12 shops which operate under licence in the UAE. The retailer’s omnichannel business includes the online grocery service, waitrose.com, as well as specialist online shops including waitrosecellar.com for wine and waitroseflorist.com for plants and flowers. 

Learn more at  johnlewis.com.

Image John Lewis & Partners