Composable Commerce is Changing the eCommerce Game: A Conversation with Harry Chemko

Harry Chemko, our co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, recently sat down with Digital Commerce 360 to chat all things Composable Commerce, an approach that enables marketing, merchandizing, and sales teams to bring their brand's unique digital vision to life by launching and continuously optimizing digital commerce experiences that leverage multiple best-of-breed vendors composed together into a complete, business-ready solution. The below interview is an excerpt from the 2021 eCommerce Platforms for B2B and B2C report. Get access to the full report.

DC360: Why is composable commerce important to ecommerce businesses?

Harry: Composable commerce empowers ecommerce businesses to control their digital destinies, differentiate from the competition and drive revenue. It’s business-centric, has a modular architecture and an open ecosystem. Due to the modular nature, brands can rapidly build, deploy and continuously optimize their ecommerce site. Gone are the days of lengthy, complicated and expensive customizations.

DC360: What challenges does composable commerce help companies address?

Harry: Many brands cannot create innovative ecommerce experiences or adhere to brand guidelines, without a huge price tag and a lot of development time. But with composable commerce, they can innovate fast—without added costs due to modular architecture and open ecosystem.

DC360: What role has the pandemic played in accelerating the importance of composable commerce?

Harry: The pandemic has played a huge role in accelerating the importance of composable commerce. It was a prime example of how fast the business needs can change, and the technology needs to keep pace. A specific example was the need for companies to spin up buy-online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) quickly. With composable commerce, this was simple and fast, resulting in a new revenue channel during an auspicious time for many companies.

DC360: What steps should ecommerce businesses take to implement composable commerce strategies?

Harry: Businesses need to start by evaluating whether Composable Commerce is the right approach for them. They should ask themselves several questions: Does my business operate in a rapidly changing or competitive market? Does making changes to my ecommerce platform take months and cause lots of headaches? Do I have a complex business that operates in many geographies or have many sub-brands? If yes, it’s time to create a plan to replatform to a composable commerce approach.

Elastic Path helps companies embrace composable commerce through its Composable Commerce Hub, which provides an open exchange of business solutions powered by an ecosystem of digital commerce providers. Regardless of a brands technical expertise, the Composable Commerce Hub enables any company to quickly and easily compose, launch, and continuously optimize unique, revenue-driving digital commerce experiences. Several precomposed solutions and accelerators are available on the Composable Commerce Hub that make getting started simple and fast. And because it’s headless, these solutions allow a quick start for companies to get up and running fast while still enabling them to easily customize later.

DC360: Why is it important for companies to adopt composable commerce sooner than later?

Harry: Composable commerce is a new approach that is game changing for companies. They no longer need to compromise between innovative but risky do-it-yourself commerce solutions or safe but cookie-cutter traditional SaaS ecommerce platforms. Composable commerce empowers companies with the control they need to create Innovative revenue-driving experiences at the scale and speed of their business.