See’s Candies Modernizes Ecommerce with Composable SFCC Storefront

See’s Candies: Legendary Brand, Classic Problem

You know the brand, you probably know the box. See’s Candies is chocolate royalty. Founded in 1921, still run out of California, still oozing the same black-and-white nostalgia that somehow triggers everyone’s inner six-year-old the moment they see it. Warren Buffett calls See’s the “prototype of a dream business”. Show me another legacy confectioner with more than 200 shops, a seat at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting table, and a product with cult status.

But “classic” only gets you so far on the web. The digital world keeps moving, and the longer you run your business on an old e-comm foundation, the more you feel it. SiteGenesis was a powerhouse in 2014 but a potential burden in 2024. The See’s team had experts and grit, but reality was setting in: new features were getting harder, speed and innovation were falling behind, and SFRA looked like yesterday’s upgrade by the time they considered it. Nobody wants to pour money into tech that's already gliding into technology history.

What See’s Wanted

See’s didn’t just want a new shipping label slapped on the same box. They came to 64labs with three non-negotiables:

• Modernize the full e-commerce experience.
• Achieve real, measurable site performance gains.
• Build a flexible system to speed up innovation, not slow it down with vendor dependencies.

In plain English: stop playing defense and start building for whatever’s coming next.

The 64labs Playbook: Composable Storefront Done Right

Here’s where we tore up the old script. Forget incremental upgrades and sticking plasters on brittle architecture. 64labs delivered a ground-up composable SFCC storefront, with Amplience front and center as the first-ever headless CMS in the See’s stack. Multi-site, no extra partners tagging along, and all about future-proofing, not just fixing.

• Timeline: Six months from kick-off to site go-live. No “phase two” delays, no endless sign-offs.
• Integration: Amplience as the content engine, fully decoupled, giving content teams more power and site managers the flexibility every digital leader wants.
• Transition: No retraining disaster, no operational hiccups. See’s own team kept the keys. The platform was designed so they’d build on it, not constantly call us to patch holes.

As any seasoned tech leader will tell you, there’s no such thing as instant magic with a major platform shift. The early days after launch were a gradual climb, not a spike, but by month three, performance stats came right in line with what we expect from composable builds: bounce rates settling down by about 20%, conversions ticking up on mobile by about the same amount, and stability returning for peak traffic surges.

Why This Project Actually Mattered

Here’s the part nobody says out loud: digital transformation is as much about team empowerment as it is about shiny new tech. See’s leapfrogged the incremental, skipped the “safe” path that would have kept legacy quirks clinging on, and jumped into an architecture meant to help them adapt quickly. They got full ownership, no added complexity, and the freedom to build at their own pace.

Most importantly, See’s didn’t have to become a new company overnight. There wasn’t a giant consulting army or a risky vendor swap. It was their internal team plus 64labs, in a partnership that extended beyond “launch” to a real, ongoing roadmap for modernizing the rest of the digital ecosystem. That’s composable done the right way.

The Bottom Line

Your legacy doesn’t have to slow you down. See’s Candies looked at the same crossroads every heritage brand faces and decided to skip a generation instead of waiting to play catch-up. They built something future-proof - so now, they can move at a speed that matches the brand’s ambition.

That is what a composable strategy should look like. Not just shiny tech for a press release. A platform you own, a team that’s empowered, and a path cleared for whatever is next.