How Does Composable Help Marketers and Merchants

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.

Monolithic commerce platforms still dominate the legacy install base. But composable architecture is quietly and quickly becoming the default for brands that want to move fast, personalize better, and scale smart. Here’s why.

Two Paths. One Direction That Matters.

At some point, every digital team hits the same wall: is your commerce platform pushing you forward, or is it quietly holding you back?

Monolithic platforms are familiar. Everything in one place. One contract, one vendor, one roadmap to follow. That made sense when stability was the goal. But the game has changed.

Composable commerce is built for movement. It splits the stack into parts—CMS, search, checkout, personalization—and connects them through APIs. So each part of your business can evolve on its own terms.

This isn’t a backend engineering preference. It’s a strategic foundation for shipping faster, experimenting more, and building digital experiences that keep up with the customer.

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Why Composable is Pulling Ahead

Modern brands move on short timelines. Product drops, geo-expansion, A/B tests, loyalty programs, AI-driven content—none of that fits neatly inside the old dev cycle.

Monolithic platforms slow things down. One small update means full regression testing. Teams queue up behind each other. Deadlines slip. Innovation fades.

Composable fixes that. You want to try a new CMS? Plug it in. Want to update the frontend? Do it without touching the checkout. Want to test two search vendors? Go for it.

Decoupled systems let every team move at their own pace. No more waiting for a single system to catch up.

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Tradeoffs Worth Knowing

There are still situations where a monolith makes sense. Simpler teams, tighter budgets, fewer moving parts. If your business needs one site and one language, all-in-one can be fine.

But once you scale, that simplicity becomes a constraint. You’ll find yourself spending more time working around the platform than improving your experience.

Composable takes more planning upfront. You need to pick tools, define APIs, structure your stack. But once it’s in place, you’re in control. Not locked to a vendor’s roadmap. Not bottlenecked by a bundled release schedule.

What It Looks Like Day to Day

Say your team wants to relaunch the site, overhaul search, add personalization, and expand to three new countries. And marketing still needs to push campaigns live weekly.

In a monolithic setup, that’s a six-month program with a lot of dependencies and delays.

In a composable world, content updates go through the CMS, personalization gets tested in isolation, and the frontend evolves alongside the rollout. Each stream moves independently. That means fewer collisions and more shipping.

The Wrap

Monolithic platforms had their moment. And for some teams, they’re still good enough. But if your brand is growing, diversifying, or trying to accelerate, composable is probably the better fit.

It gives your teams control. It frees you from outdated timelines. And it lets your tech stack evolve with the business, not behind it.

Let’s Talk. If you’re wondering what composable could unlock for your business, We’d be happy to show you.