Why the winners in commerce services won’t sell architecture — they’ll sell clarity.
Earlier this month, the Tercera team attended ShopTalk to get a pulse on what’s happening in retail and commerce technology. Across dozens of conversations with service providers, software vendors and investment bankers one theme stood out loud and clear: everyone is chasing simplicity and quick ROI.
The promise of ease-of-use and fast results have always been appealing to tech buyers. But in today’s commerce space, it’s non-negotiable. A mix of tariffs and AI mania have created a level of uncertainty and volatility that vendors and customers are scrambling to navigate, and during times of chaos, buyers look for certainty and stability. They hoard budgets, protect teams and slow roll major modernization efforts until they are absolutely necessary.
It’s why partners and vendors are seeing large programs like commerce, order and warehouse management replatforms slow to a trickle, while narrower initiatives like content management, AI search and product discovery get prioritized. They’re simpler, faster to deploy, and easier to prove ROI.
The Lure of Shopify
Every few years, a new platform rises on the promise of making commerce easy: ATG, Hybris, Magento, Demandware. Today, it’s Shopify’s moment in the sun.
The company’s trajectory over the last few years has been impressive to watch. In the last five years, the total merchandise value (GMV) sold through Shopify has grown nearly 380%! In 2022, Shopify’s stock may have been on a downward spiral, but by 2025 they were a part of nearly every conversation we had at Shoptalk.
We spoke with many Salesforce and Adobe partners diversifying into Shopify. With the thousands of partners already in the Shopify ecosystem, this isn’t an easy one to break into, but word on the street is that Shopify is now in enough buyer conversations to make it worth the investment.
Shopify is winning in today’s market because it hides the complexity. It’s fast to deploy, intuitive, and feels safe. In a down market, that’s priceless. Not just for the small and medium-size businesses where Shopify has traditionally dominated, but also for enterprise buyers.
While enterprise customers are still a small portion of Shopify’s customer base, the company has been making slow but steady inroads into larger and larger customers with its Shopify Plus and headless offerings that decouple the front-end presentation layer with the back-end infrastructure.
Composable returns not as hype, but as a necessity
Meanwhile, composable vendors are finding it hard to compete with Shopify’s lure of simplicity and fast ROI.
Two years ago, composable commerce was at the peak of the hype cycle, selling on the promise of a future proof architecture and infinite customization. Today some of the luster of composable has worn away. A handful of failed implementations — often led by underqualified integrators or DIY efforts — have left some buyers wary.
But while the buzz may have faded— we’d argue composable is moving into the slope of enlightenment, where real value starts to emerge. Those customers who have made the move, sing the praises of composable, and many of the principles behind MACH (microservices, API-first, cloud-native, headless) have become the norm for how modern web applications are developed.
While buyers crave simplicity, enterprise complexity and the underlying need for flexibility and optionality still exists. Especially with enterprise buyers who live in a world of complexity — regulatory hurdles, global operations and bespoke workflows — and for those that want to take full advantage of the AI-native applications coming to market.
Monolithic platforms might promise to serve these needs, but composable architectures are often better equipped to deliver. It’s why composable, even without the buzz, is quietly becoming the enterprise default. It’s also why so many of the large platform providers, even the monoliths like Salesforce and Shopify, have started offering headless / composable options.
If you want to service B2B customers, regulated industries, or support advanced enterprise workflows, composability is the key.
The opportunity for commerce service providers
Here’s the bottom line: simple always wins – until it doesn’t.
Shopify will continue to shine in certain user cases and we believe has a very bright future ahead. But commerce is complex. It’s messy. Simple solutions eventually hit a limit, and when it does, the cycle is predictable: platforms start lean, gain adoption, add features to address edge cases — and eventually, complexity creeps back in.
It’s why composable is so powerful as a concept. Every architecture gets messy at a certain scale.
This is where services firms can shine — not just as builders of tech stacks, but as trusted brokers who can navigate the noise, deliver clarity and lead with results. It’s why the best service partners today lead with:
- Proven case studies that illustrate results and what to expect
- Opinionated stacks with pre-vetted technology combinations
- Trusted ISV ecosystems that the partner can easily navigate
- Pre-built integration and accelerators to speed results
What buyers really want isn’t a perfect stack. They want a recommendation, not a decision tree. They want progress, not paralysis. The faster the better.
Whether monolith or composable under the hood, the services partner that makes everything feel simple — that hides the seams and reduces the noise — is the one that earns trust and repeat business
It’s the partner that brings clarity in a complicated world that will win the long game.
