Accelerating Composable Commerce: La Perla’s Story

As eCommerce continues to grow and change at an unprecedented rate, companies are looking for ways to expand their digital presence globally. With the rise of composable technology, businesses are now able to achieve this at a much faster pace, with greater flexibility and customization.

In a recent panel discussion, Lee Longhurst, the Head of eCommerce Development at a leading lingerie and beauty company, La Perla, shared his experience of using composable technology to power their eCommerce expansion. The company currently operates in 16 countries, with 16 different storefronts, and has successfully utilized both headless and out-of-the-box storefront solutions.

La Perla’s eCommerce journey began with the company utilizing an out-of-the-box solution from BigCommerce for their lingerie division, which allowed them to quickly launch an eCommerce store with minimal development work. However, they recognized that they needed greater flexibility and customization options, particularly for their international expansion plans.

Lee explained that the company’s ultimate goal was to move towards a MACH architecture (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) for all of their eCommerce solutions. However, they also recognized that a complete overhaul of their existing infrastructure was not feasible in the short term.

As a result, La Perla decided to take a modular approach to their eCommerce expansion, utilizing composable technology to gradually piece together different solutions and create a more cohesive and streamlined system. They began by injecting components, such as search and merchandising, into their BigCommerce storefront to enhance its functionality.

For their beauty division, which had a smaller product set, La Perla opted for a fully headless solution on the BigCommerce platform, using Contentstack as their CMS and Netlify for hosting. This allowed them to have greater control over the user experience and to create a more customized storefront.

Lee emphasized that the decision to use a headless solution was driven by the specific needs of the beauty division, which had a smaller and more self-contained product set. For the lingerie division, which had a much larger catalog and more complex data requirements, the out-of-the-box solution was more suitable.

One of the key takeaways from La Perla’s experience was the importance of taking a gradual and agile approach to eCommerce expansion. Rather than waiting for the perfect time, they identified the areas that needed improvement and implemented small, incremental changes to gradually improve the overall system. Lee noted that it is a common misconception that composable technology is only for large, complex projects with significant budgets. However, by taking a modular approach, even smaller businesses can benefit from the flexibility and customization options that composable technology provides.

In conclusion, the use of composable technology has enabled the lingerie and beauty company to expand La Perla’s eCommerce presence globally with greater flexibility and customization options. By taking a gradual and agile approach, the company has been able to create a more cohesive and streamlined system that can adapt to changing business needs. As eCommerce continues to evolve, composable technology will undoubtedly play an increasingly important role in enabling businesses to stay ahead of the curve.

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