Ecosystem Expanded - Commerce Layer

Headless commerce doesn't have to be hard. This is a core belief at Commerce Layer, Storyblok’s Technology Partner focused exclusively on delivering the best commerce engine to any brand to help enable any business strategy. Commerce Layer is an API-first commerce engine that makes it easy to go headless. Brands can start fast with their production-ready micro frontends and then scale globally with their full suite of APIs, webhooks, and dev tools. With Commerce Layer, companies can sell through any digital channel and expand into multiple markets with ease.

Commerce Layer’s core features deliver flexibility to their customers’ architecture, and enable them to support any business type, set up any local payment gateways, manage market-specific promotions, support complex shipping and inventory strategies, and sell in local currency without any currency conversion. By focusing on the transactional layer and the separation of content and commerce data, Commerce Layer empowers developers to build more scalable websites and marketing departments to create beautiful shopping experiences. Let’s take a deeper dive into who Commerce Layer are, our partnership, and, most importantly, the integration of our products.

Section titled The multiple layers of beauty and success The multiple layers of beauty and success

Commerce Layer’s founders started the company in 2017 after years of developing eCommerce solutions for one of the largest global fashion brands in the world. Their experiences as developers led them to the belief that there had to be a better way to build eCommerce. They started at the foundational layer by building a truly open API, stripping out any opinions on how the experience should be built, and placing the power into the hands of developers and brands to build what they want and how they want. Here are some of the features of Commerce Layer that help them be so successful:

Flexibility — Wherever your eCommerce business takes you, Commerce Layer can support it.

• “Unopinionated” API — from an SKU to a market, bend it to your use case. (Case study — SumUp)

Speed to market — Go to market faster than the competition.

• Build a POC in hours with their MFEs. The unopinionated API allows people to build right away. (Case study — Chillys launch to 30+ markets in under 6 months)

Simplicity — Headless Commerce doesn’t have to be hard.

• They make it easy with documentation, dev tools, MFEs, open-source repos, microstores, etc.

Extensibility — Extend the API by integrating the technologies you need to use.

• Leverage “external” resources like payment gateways, tax calculators, etc. (Case study — How to turn Twitter into a payment gateway)

Customer Service — High touch, white-glove service.

• Dedicated slack channel, SLAs, 99.99% uptime

At the core of Commerce Layer’s mission and focus on building the world’s best commerce engine is a team of individuals who are committed to their customer’s success. They have real-world experience building eCommerce experiences and bring that to every customer relationship. Their brand identity focus on commerce shines through when their customers succeed and are happy. Now, let's take a look at the kind of problems Commerce Layer can solve for your business.

If you think that current market solutions are complex, outdated, and don’t solve a brand’s problems, the Commerce Layer team are former eCommerce developers who have built a solution to solve any technical challenge. As a developer-first company, they know how important it is to extend any software with custom logic. That’s why they have a hybrid offering of a fully-managed cloud service combined with open-source developer tools making Commerce Layer a unique solution in terms of security, flexibility, and control.

If the promise of going headless seems good but hard to enact, Commerce Layer can help. They have developed a set of ready-to-use micro frontends (price tags, shopping cart, checkout, my account, etc.) that allow brands to prototype quickly without compromising flexibility. Brands can choose to utilize no-code hosted solutions or fork and customize their open-source repositories to fit any use case.

If your business is struggling to scale to other markets, Commerce Layer’s flexible data model can help. Their data model is designed around the concept of a Market, which is a container for any combination of business rules that can be tied to a geographical region, customer group, sales channel, or any kind of business segmentation you may need.

If your brand struggles to support a creative vision, Commerce Layer’s focus on commerce can help. They have developed the most powerful and flexible transactional engine, leaving content and catalog management to more specialized tools like a CMS or PIM. With a clean separation of commerce and content, which can be achieved with the combination of only two agile tech solutions, developers can build more scalable websites and marketing departments can design beautiful shopping experiences.

Lastly, if you think that composable/headless solutions are too expensive, making the total cost of ownership unworkable, you’d be happy to know that Commerce Layer are cost-efficient. Their focus on a transactional engine allows them to provide a pricing model that doesn’t penalize your business for its success. They’ll never ask for a revenue share or impose massive up-front costs to justify services you’ll never use. Commerce Layer is scalable by design, so small teams can start and grow into global brands for a fraction of the cost.

Section titled Partnering with Storyblok Partnering with Storyblok

Both Storyblok and Commerce Layer believe in the JAMStack principles. We both partner closely with composable partners who focus on building the components that make up the tech stack that powers great digital experiences. Hence, the birth of a beautiful partnership.

Section titled Powering eCommerce experiences with the Storyblok & Commerce Layer Integration Powering eCommerce experiences with the Storyblok & Commerce Layer Integration

Storyblok and Commerce Layer are extremely extensible and flexible with the help of our APIs. This, in turn, has made it possible for the development of the Storyblok & Commerce Layer Integration that shows potential customers just how easy it is to work with both platforms together.

The Storyblok & Commerce Layer Integration makes it easy for businesses to power their entire eCommerce experience while dramatically reducing the total cost of ownership. By focusing on a best-of-need solution powered by Commerce Layer and Storyblok instead of a monolithic solution, organizations can leverage a best-of-breed architecture at a much lower cost. If you are interested in learning more about the Storyblok & Commerce Layer Integration, refer to this guide. Learn about the purpose of the integration, as well as how set it up and use it.

Section titled Key takeaways Key takeaways

We are happy and proud to have Commerce Layer be part of our Technology Ecosystem. Together, we can help organizations grow and scale faster, cheaper, and safer. Powering your entire eCommerce experience has never been easier and more convenient. Reach out to the teams at Commerce Layer and Storyblok if you are interested in learning more about our extension and joint work.