The leader in multi-site composable storefronts for top-tier brands delivered in six months

The

leader

in

multi-site

Composable

Storefronts

for

top-tier

brands

delivered in

six

months

Why Salesforce Commerce Cloud Needed a Fresh Start & What Is SFRA

If you’re still hearing SFRA tossed around in boardrooms, vendor pitches, and engineering meetings (and you’re not entirely sure what it means) you’re not alone. There’s a lot of chatter, some misplaced nostalgia for last decade’s technology, and very little that’s jargon-free or actually useful. This is a super brief attempt to clear some of that up.

The Basics: What Is SFRA?

SFRA stands for "Storefront Reference Architecture." (Personally I thought it was Salesforce Reference Architecture, but I guess it can be both). It’s Salesforce’s modern template for building e-commerce sites. In practice, it’s the foundation their Commerce Cloud expects you to use if you want speed, maintainability, and (frankly) access to the latest features fed to you from the Commerce Cloud product team. Where previous generations gave you a “starter kit” built for desktop shopping and slow update cycles, SFRA is in theory designed from the ground up to tackle modern site problems in a modern way. But modernity is the problem. What was modern in 2018 quickly becomes outdated by 2025.  For context on the pace of change - Tiktok was only launched into the US in 2017. In web terms 2018 is forever ago.

Why SFRA Exists

You have to have a sense of the history of Demandware to really answer this question. Demandware’s winning idea was that you could put ecommerce into the cloud and customers would still use it. But the founding technology of Demandware was Intershop which itself was formed in 1992.  That is literally the pre-history of ecommerce and a tribute to Stefan Schaumbach that the whole thing basically still worked..

So what had changed in 2018? Customers had been shopping on their phones for the past five years or so. Brands had become more demanding of the pace of change. They wanted to do more to stay ahead. Having a mobile website was table stakes now. So SFCC needed an architecture that was more flexible than SiteGen, and more mobile friendly.  SiteGenesis, the old architecture, just wasn’t built for teams who want to tweak a cart one week, redesign the homepage the next, and roll out Apple Pay without crossing their fingers every time they push code. Too many tied-together scripts, too much legacy debris.

SFRA was Salesforce’s answer to both the technical and commercial headaches. They looked at two major pain points; a need for real mobile performance, and a requirement for modularity. Then, they rewrote the blueprint. It was still what we now call monolithic but it was a leap forward in the way information moved around SFCC and got to the user.

How SFRA Works in the Real World

This isn’t just a change in code style. SFRA brought:

• Components you can actually pick apart and rebuild, rather than cycling through a house of cards with every update.
  
• Tools and structures familiar to modern developers. (You’re using Bootstrap (hooray for 2018), modern JavaScript (hooray again), a sensible view layer.)
  
• Page layouts and features that are built around standard requirements for what customers do on mobile, tablet, and desktop without the team needing to hack at breakpoints.
  
• Quick connectors for payments, search, reviews, and analytics, saving your team months of vendor mediation and double-work.
  
• Templated, but not cookie-cutter. You don’t have to look like a Salesforce demo unless you want to.
  

What It Changed for Digital Teams

Deploying any change used to mean crossing your fingers and hoping three other things didn’t break. With SFRA, you’re dealing with modules: change the cart, and the homepage doesn’t fall over. Want to swap a payment provider? You don’t have to undo half the checkout flow.

Most teams believed they would see faster build times, easier onboarding for new engineers, and a long-term drop in maintenance costs. It’s not zero-maintenance, it never is, but you're not weighed down by years of tech debt with every new sprint. It didn’t always quite work out as neatly as that. And the giant SIs charged a lot of money for not a whole lot of actual work to get there. But hey, it’s progress.

The Big Picture: SFRA was good, but too expensive

If you’re an e-commerce leader today and your site hasn’t at least moved to SFRA, that last point was probably key. Like many advances in Salesforce land it was weighed down by the greed of big system integrators who saw an opportunity to get replatform money for upgrade workloads. 

So, often because of the time projects took and the cost of getting help, up to 50% of SFCC customers did not upgrade. (There are no official numbers but anecdotally that’s not far off.)

Should I go SFRA or composable storefront today?

Nobody wins by sticking with tech whose best years are behind it. Speed is measurable. Cost of ownership is never going down on old stacks. Customer expectations get higher each season, not lower. In its day SFRA gave you a modern toolset for an environment where agility mattered more than keeping the lights on. But it’s 2018 technology. It works today - there are some great highly performant SFRA sites out there - but doesn’t offer any forward looking benefits at all. It won’t help you develop skills in managing your data, it won;t help you move faster on content, it won’t help you escape the cadence of Salesforce on product updates. It’s better than SiteGenesis. But that was 2018’s problem, not 2025’s. And truthfully, building SFRA in 2025 is just wastefully expensive. Though the absolute cost has come down a lot in the past few years, you will be upgrading to composable in 2027 so you are just throwing money down the drain.. 

But doesn’t composable storefront require SFRA?

No. SFRA is an entire reference architecture. But SFCC has had solid APIs available to it forever. If you are on SiteGen today you can build some of the elements of SFRA architecture into your SFCC backend - hooks and custom endpoints, even controllers - that mean you can drive your composable site without a huge back-end re-architecture in the short term. In fact one of the arguments for composable is the opportunity it gives teams to upgrade the back-end themselves over time in a controlled way and improve the way they have constructed Salesforce with much lower risk to the production site. And the time to do that - now they aren’t dealing with merchant requests and technical spinning plates all day long.

SFRA was Salesforce’s commitment to building e-commerce sites that could survive and thrive in 2018 and to its credit it was the best choice for an upgrade through 2022 if you could afford it. But its time has come and gone. And a composable storefront allows you to skip comfortably past SFRA right to a modern (for now!) stack. Salesforce is investing heaviest now in composable SFCC. The price of a build is six figures rather than seven. And it sets up SiteGen customers to take advantage of AI innovations as they emerge from Salesforce and beyond. 

Modern SFCC customers have to move faster than SFRA and templated architectures will allow them. In 2026 you will be glad you took the plunge and skipped past SFRA to composable storefront. 

If you need the gritty details, Let’s Talk.

SFCC in 2025: Enterprise Stability Meets Composable Flexibility

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) has evolved from its Demandware roots into a modern enterprise platform capable of powering fully composable, headless storefronts. Today, leading brands pair SFCC’s robust backend with modern front-end frameworks like Next.js and Vercel and headless CMS platforms such as Contentstack or Amplience to unlock faster performance, better developer agility, and richer customer experiences.

64Labs is the global leader in composable SFCC builds, delivering projects for enterprise retailers such as Horizon Hobby, Moncler, Sweaty Betty, and Duluth Trading all with measurable performance and revenue gains.

A Quick History of SFCC

Salesforce acquired Demandware in 2016, gaining one of the most mature cloud-native commerce platforms on the market. At a time when competitors still relied on on-prem or heavily customised systems, Demandware offered scalability without infrastructure headaches.

While its CMS and search were limited in those early years, its stability, global readiness, and proven operational model made it the Porsche of eCommerce platforms - engineered for performance, enduring in design, and able to stay relevant as the world caught up.

What Salesforce Commerce Cloud Is Today

At its core, SFCC remains a stable, scalable SaaS commerce engine. It handles:

• Product catalog and pricing logic
• Promotions and inventory management
• Complex checkout workflows
• Multi-brand and multi-region orchestration

The real shift in recent years? SFCC now fits seamlessly into composable architectures, enabling brands to swap in best-of-breed tools while retaining a bulletproof commerce core.

From SiteGenesis to SFRA to Composable

• SiteGenesis – Legacy server-rendered architecture, fast for its time but inflexible and hard to maintain.
• SFRA (Storefront Reference Architecture) – Introduced modularity, responsive design, and cleaner code for the monolithic era.
• Composable Storefront – Built on modern JavaScript tooling with PWA Kit, SCAPI, and API-first integration, allowing front-ends on React or Next.js to be deployed on platforms like Vercel.

This evolution lets enterprise teams:

• Improve site performance dramatically
• Control their own front-end release cycles
• Integrate modern tools like Algolia for search or headless CMS for content

Why Composable SFCC Works for Enterprise Brands

Salesforce Commerce Cloud shines when:

• Running multi-brand portfolios with shared components
• Managing global pricing, tax, and inventory logic
• Integrating with complex ERP, CRM, and marketing stacks
• Passing stringent enterprise security and compliance requirements

When paired with a composable approach, SFCC gives brands backend stability and frontend freedom - the best of both worlds.

The Limits and How to Overcome Them

SFCC’s native CMS and search still lag behind best-in-class options. That’s why most of our composable builds integrate platforms like Amplience or Contentstack for content, and tools like Algolia for search.
Pricing can be a sticking point, but in 2025, negotiation flexibility is far greater - especially if you have the right partner guiding your roadmap.

Final Thoughts

Salesforce Commerce Cloud has come a long way since the Demandware days. It’s no longer just a managed backend for templated storefronts. It’s evolving into a flexible foundation for composable architectures, with room to plug in modern tools and scale globally.

For teams who need stability but don’t want to sacrifice flexibility, SFCC remains one of the few options that can support both. But to unlock its full potential, the architecture around it - including frontend, CMS, and integrations - needs to reflect modern composable thinking. And to get that, you need a partner that really lives this stuff. 64labs is far and away the leader in composable on SFCC. If you aren't being asked to bring us into conversations about your composable roadmap in some form someone isn't doing their job.

Thinking about building a composable storefront on Salesforce Commerce Cloud? We’ve helped some of the biggest names do it right. Let’s talk.

The Big Question Everyone Asks

If you're leading digital at a large retailer or a multi-brand group, this has probably come up already: "How fast do we get a return on a composable build?"

Fair question. Composable projects do require upfront investment. They need time, budget, and executive attention. But the payoff isn’t just in the tech you launch. It's in the legacy systems and workflows you leave behind.

The value shows up when your teams stop waiting for dev queues, start shipping faster, and no longer rely on expensive workarounds to do basic things.

A composable storefront doesn't just pay off the build. It clears the debt that’s been building inside your stack for years.

Where the ROI Actually Comes From

Most people frame ROI too narrowly. They ask if composable saves money compared to what they’re already doing. And if it makes money if all they do is change the front-end framework. It does both. But the better question is whether it clears the friction that keeps your teams from doing their best work.

Here’s where the real value tends to land:‍

Faster time to market
‍Marketing and merch teams push campaigns, content, and experiments without waiting for staging, QA, or a dev sprint to open up.‍

More autonomy across teams
‍No more Jira tickets for basic content updates. A well-structured CMS lets non-technical teams work directly inside the experience. This autonomy stretches right through to some elements of structure like menus.‍

Less tech debt
When you replace rigid templates and legacy CMSs with modular systems, maintenance gets lighter and upgrades stop being emergencies.‍

Better customer experience
‍Faster front-ends and personalized flows drive stronger engagement (+20-40%) and better conversion (~+20% on mobile). That has real revenue impact.‍

No wasted license spend
‍Composable means using the tools you actually need. You’re not paying for a suite full of features no one uses. This somewhat relies on your ability to negotiate good deals from new vendors and better deals from your platform. But composable opens this door and all of these guys want your business a great deal.

What Actually Drives ROI

Not every composable build hits its targets. The architecture helps, but the outcome depends on the process.‍

Don't start at the starting line
‍Many accelerators other SIs brag about are just reskinned versions of the composable storefront sample storefront from Salesforce. They are essentially worthless. The 64labs accelerator is an integrated set of code, process, and embedded expertise where key decisions have been made based on experience, where full-feature integrations have been pre-built with the vendor overseeing, where there is a way to getting the site done quickly that we stand behind in our contracts. With 64labs you start a 100m race 40m from the finish.‍

Pick the right partners
‍Composable tools only deliver if they play well together. That’s why we work directly with partners like Contentstack, Amplience, Algolia, Vercel, Adyen and Dynamic Yield to build fast and smooth. But your key partner is your engineering partner. There are some other good partners out there. But no one has the experience and focus on composable of 64labs.

‍Enable internal teams
‍We don’t just ship the site. We do a handover right. Your team gets documentation, training, and structured onboarding. They have helped build parts of the site. They retain access to our top people post-launch even without a contract. If they can manage the platform without us, we’ve done it right. If you want us to stick around and keep the momentum of the build going - and there can be a strong case for that for some retailers upgrading in other areas of the enterprise stack (ERP, OMS, WMS) whose team cannot own the architecture right away - 64labs can hold the fort and improve the weaponry while that work gets done.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Legacy platforms come with hidden costs. Every delayed release, every workaround, every missed campaign window adds up.

If your team is stuck supporting brittle code, locked into slow cycles, or limited in personalization, the price isn’t just technical. It’s operational debt. And it compounds every quarter. And AI is not going to slow that baby down.

Composable cuts that cycle. It unlocks execution speed and lets your teams push ideas out into the world instead of waiting for backlog relief.

Final Thought

If your business has complexity—multiple brands, regions, or fast-moving teams - composable is not optional. It's the structure that lets digital teams actually run.

And if you're on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the backend is already strong. Composable is how you level up the front-end to match.

Done right, it doesn’t just pay for itself. It gives your team the flexibility they’ve been asking for and the momentum your business needs.

Let’s Talk. Want to see what ROI from composable could look like for your storefront? Contact us here.