commercetools has introduced Foundry. This new solution allows B2C retailers to deploy their products online significantly faster. The company is building on expertise gained from working with clients such as Woolworths, River Island and Bang & Olufsen.
The emphasis in commercetools’s announcement is on time-to-market speed. The new Foundry is a “quick-to-launch, pre-composed” solution that retailers don’t have to tinker with much themselves. Specific projects require targeted applications, requiring flexibility from commercetools software. That’s why Foundry is “composable,” and therefore customizable as needed without having to be built from the ground up.
Agility is needed
Experts note that retailers need to be more technically agile to remain competitive. That includes scalability and rapid deployment of new products. commercetools cites the example of Cimpress, which managed to get two large projects with face masks live during Covid-19 within five weeks. They did so with commercetools’ solution.
Evidently, then, the existing offerings were already fast, but now Foundry accelerates them even further. CEO Dirk Hoerig thinks true “composable commerce” is necessary for retailers today. “With commercetools Foundry, businesses can realise the benefits of our composable commerce even faster, easily unlocking opportunities for an increased competitive advantage.”
Faster deployment with many options
The 30 percent time gain is evidenced by commercetools’ own data. Some projects are said to be possible within eight weeks (although the previously mentioned example of Cimpress surpasses that, so perhaps there’s even more speed to be gained).
Foundry consists of a number of components considered best-of-breed within e-commerce. In addition, customers can use Blueprint for BC2 Retail, which asists in all kinds of aspects of retail projects. Best Practice Guides Focused points customers to the right approach, while AI assistance gets engineering teams onboarded faster and lets them get answers to commercetools-related questions. This functionality can also provide a demo example based on a specific case. For example, it cites generating an API client and adding products to the shopping cart.
Also, Store Launchpads is a turnkey store with frontend components, integrations with other solutions and backend capabilities. Building an e-commerce store with commercetools can be done through this tool, or it can simply be used as a how-to guide. This again shows that it takes into account different purposes within the retail world.
With Expert Services, Foundry users get access to a range of what the company lists as curated solutions that can connect the expertise of commercetools with brand experts within a company.
Foundry is now available to B2C customers and will become available to the B2B market in the coming months.
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