Unified Commerce Brief: Why Enterprise Brands Must Move Beyond Legacy Commerce Platforms

How Colgate-Palmolive, Hearst, and Decathlon Abandoned Legacy Monolithic Ecommerce Platforms to Succeed with VTEX, Commerce Built for Ambition and Growth.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Picture this: a global retailer, manufacturer, or distributor spend weeks trying to launch a basic personalized web experience, losing critical revenue—all because they’re stuck on a monolithic legacy ecommerce platform.

Monolithic platforms are like living in your parents’ basement: functional but restrictive. Want to fix something or make improvements? You have no true independence—it’s all connected, and one tweak risks unraveling the whole setup. Here’s what monoliths can’t do:

✖ Integrate all your operations—front-end, back-end, inventory, customer service—seamlessly. Nope.
✖ Scale specific areas independently to fuel growth. Hard no.
✖ Roll out new features without disrupting the entire system. Absolutely not.

Enter API-driven architecture: commerce for grownups, designed for flexibility, scalability, and seamless integration. Unlike your parents’ basement, API-driven commerce offers the freedom to customize and scale on your own terms. It’s your space—you can adjust what you need without having to consider how it might disrupt everything else. This is where real ownership begins.

As digital and physical experiences continue to merge, companies embracing unified commerce with microservices are redefining efficiency, agility, innovation, business growth and customer connection.

In this update, we’ll showcase leading brands that have moved from a legacy ecommerce platform to a unified commerce platform to transform their digital experience and unlock new possibilities.

Colgate-Palmolive

The global leader in oral, skin and pet care, continues its expansion with VTEX. Following the successful B2B implementations of PCA Skin Professional and Colgate Oral Professional in the US, Colgate has now extended its digital strategy to international markets, recently launching Oral Professional in Switzerland, its first European B2B site on VTEX.

Colgate's headless global architecture powered by VTEX enabled a seamless rollout, demonstrating the platform's adaptability and scalability across diverse markets and business models. We are thrilled to support Colgate's continued expansion in the US and Europe, underscoring their commitment to digital commerce innovation.

Decathlon

A global leader in sporting goods retail with over 1,700 stores across 64 countries, leveraged VTEX’s Sales App in Brazil to enhance its omnichannel strategy and create a seamless shopping experience across both physical and digital stores. By integrating their sales channels, Decathlon allows customers to purchase items not in local stock by accessing a unified inventory across all stores.

The VTEX Sales App enabled personalized customer interactions, real-time stock visibility, and flexible checkout, ensuring a faster, more agile shopping experience. This innovation has helped Decathlon maintain its commitment to delivering high-quality, customer-centric service, driving operational efficiency and increasing conversion rates through a fully unified commerce platform.

Hearst

One of the largest global diversified information and media companies, has leveraged VTEX’s extensive native capabilities, multi-site architecture, and VTEX IO developer cloud to successfully integrate with the prestige beauty retailer, Sephora, becoming part of Hearst’s expanding digital marketplace.

Now available across leading lifestyle publications like Women’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Men’s Health, and Prevention, Hearst's integration with Sephora marks a new era transforming the buying experience for consumer media businesses. Readers can now seamlessly purchase products that are mentioned or featured in published content from their favorite national magazine and websites, making every touchpoint a sales opportunity. Women’s Health, a trusted publication contributing to the well-being of women everywhere, has expanded its reach by instantly enabling readers to become customers.

Now, with just a click, over 8,500 products from Sephora’s diverse assortment are available, offering customization and rewards through its popular Beauty Insider loyalty program. We are excited to accompany Hearst in this journey that marks a major advancement for the media industry, delivering a seamless experience with shoppable interfaces for effortless product discovery and purchase.

Each of these enterprise brands illustrates how a modular, unified commerce platform that unlocks microservices and composable offerings, enables enterprise brands to innovate, engage customers, and drive success at scale.

Ready to migrate your digital commerce platform? Choose one built for ambition.

As an enterprise, you need a platform that doesn’t just follow trends—it challenges the norm. A foundation designed for businesses that thrive on challenges, make smart decisions, and pursue meaningful growth. When evaluating your digital or unified commerce platform, keep these in mind:

✔ The platform grasps the complexities of modern commerce.
✔ Whether optimizing manufacturing, navigating distribution, or enabling seamless omnichannel retail, it fuels your growth.
✔ A unified, modular architecture simplifies complexity—converging B2B and B2C into a single system that scales effortlessly.
✔ It’s more than technology—it’s about fueling growth and delivering measurable success.
✔ A foundation for businesses that lead, innovate, and deliver on their own terms.

Legacy monolithic platforms can’t provide agility or tailored solutions without expensive, disruptive overhauls. For companies like Colgate-Palmolive, Hearst, Decathlon, Samsung, H-Mart, Whirlpool and many more, VTEX stands as the clear choice. VTEX combines flexibility with modularity, enabling seamless scaling for modern commerce. Click here to learn more.

• In the past three years (2022-2024), migrations from legacy platforms to VTEX grew more than five times compared to the previous three-year period (2019-2021).
• VTEX (NYSE: VTEX), recognized as a Challenger in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce.
• 98% of VTEX customers are willing to recommend the platform, as mentioned in the 2024 Gartner® Voice of the Customer for Digital Commerce.

About VTEX:

VTEX (NYSE: VTEX) is the composable and complete commerce platform that delivers more efficiency and less maintenance to organizations seeking to make smarter IT investments and modernize their tech stack. Through our pragmatic composability approach, we empower brands, distributors, and retailers with unparalleled flexibility and comprehensive solutions, enabling them to invest solely in what provides a clear business advantage and boosts profitability. VTEX is trusted by 2,600 global B2C and B2B customers, including Carrefour, Colgate, Motorola, Sony, Stanley Black & Decker, and Whirlpool, having 3,500 active online stores across 43 countries (as of FY ended on December 31, 2023). For more information, visit www.vtex.com.