Last week, the commercetools Partner Summit took place in Berlin, which I had the pleasure of attending. We’ll use this as a starting point to dive deeper into the topic of Composable Commerce this week. For over 15 years, Comsysto Reply has been implementing complex e-commerce solutions for clients across all industries. At the same time, we track and analyze relevant trends in our e-commerce lab to ensure we are ready for tomorrow's challenges today. We share our insights here—every Tuesday!
Although Gartner coined the term “Composable Commerce” back in 2020 (Gartner), it is more relevant than ever in 2025 as disruptive changes emerge in the industry. Presentations by industry leaders at the E-Commerce Expo Berlin also address this future, as you can read in the last issue of this newsletter. And for those who prefer listening to reading, we have a short summary for you in this podcast with Otto Krammer and Beija Nigl.
The impending market shift, triggered by trends such as marketplaces, social commerce, and, not least, the AI boom, demands a new level of business agility to meet changing customer expectations. Naturally, the technology used to build e-commerce landscapes is a crucial enabler for this.
But why are composable and headless such important features for an e-commerce system?
To clarify the terminology: Headless simply means that the backend and frontend are separately deployable units that communicate via an API. This makes it easy to swap or update either one independently. Composable applies this same concept to various parts of the domain, particularly within the backend.
Essentially, both approaches are about decoupling functionality—both within the backend and between the backend and frontend. Software architects know that decoupling is almost always an advantage. It creates additional degrees of freedom, allowing a system to adapt more easily to changing business conditions.
These fundamental principles have proven their worth in our work building custom IT systems to support mission-critical applications for over 10 years, across all industries. Almost everywhere, the focus is on the rapid adaptability of software to changing requirements—as well as continuous, cost-effective operation. Especially in the e-commerce universe, you often find custom solutions exactly where a competitive advantage is created and things need to do more than just "work."
And this is precisely where a system designed for Composable Commerce shows its true strength: in the simple combination of standard solutions on one hand and custom-built components on the other. And, of course, this also includes the ability to swap them out as needed.
Using the example of commercetools this is very easy to see: more and more aspects are covered "out-of-the-box," both in B2B and B2C. Both founder Dirk Hoerig and CTO Hajo Eichler spoke about this at the Partner Summit. The most prominent example currently is the POS solution InStore (commercetools)—even if it is not yet available in Europe. Nevertheless, online retailers value the flexibility of being able to adapt and replace individual building blocks anywhere. Not least because of the infinite backward compatibility of all APIs without breaking changes.
For those who want to be even less tied to a paid tool, there are also alternatives like Medusa, which provide similar functionality for free as open source. Naturally, we have already explored this in our e-commerce lab, for example here.
And what if my platform doesn't support that? What then?
The answer is "replatforming," which means swapping out your current commerce system. However, that is easier said than done. Most modern platforms provide an API that can be used to develop a custom storefront. This can be a great first step toward breaking free from vendor lock-in—the rigid coupling to your current system—and paving the way for a future platform migration. In principle, if you have full control over the frontend and it is built from the start to cleanly isolate vendor-specific components, you can gradually switch from one system to another without jeopardizing ongoing operations or necessarily having to adjust customer journeys you have already optimized.
Of course, you also have to ask yourself: Do I really want or need to be among the first to respond to changing customer expectations? And can the changes where the answer is potentially "Yes!" be implemented in my existing system, or will the respective provider integrate them quickly enough? In practice, this is difficult to answer in advance because the answers depend heavily on how radically the e-commerce landscape will change in the coming months.
Is composable commerce right for everyone?
The short answer: No. The effort is only justified if recombining different products—perhaps even with your own custom components—creates a competitive advantage. And even then, you should first ask yourself whether the necessary skills and resources are available—before you commit to a system consisting of many moving parts. On top of that, there are challenges in operating and monitoring a distributed system in a cloud environment, which often require specialists in this field.
Some companies have the necessary internal technical expertise to handle such transformations and the subsequent operations. A good example of this is Marc O'Polo SE, which recently switched to commercetools (Storyblok). Others rely on external support, utilizing the partner networks of the major tool providers. Both approaches are perfectly valid and lead to success, provided that both the goal and the concrete steps to achieve it are clearly defined while maintaining the necessary flexibility during replatforming. Don't forget, at the end of the day, this is all about business agility!
That’s it for today—and here is what’s coming next
Given the current innovations forecast for the e-commerce sector, a flexible e-commerce system increases your chances of keeping pace with a market in transition. Composable commerce is definitely a key to this—in general, it requires a modular architecture, cloud-based operations, and professional implementation by IT resources that are up to the task.
In upcoming issues, we will take a deeper look at further topics from our e-commerce lab and current industry events. Look forward to a diverse mix of AI, logistics, and much more.
See you next week!
Christian & the Comsysto Reply e-commerce lab