A Commerce Leader's View: Beyond the Data on Composable Adoption

Last week, Brimit published research analyzing 300 Dutch companies to understand composable tech stack adoption. The data revealed:

To understand what these numbers mean in practice, we asked Natalia Jablonka, former Head of E-commerce, O'Neill, to respond. With 15+ years building modern commerce operations, Natalia shares her perspective on what drives these shifts, where traditional platforms break down, and how mid-market teams approach composable adoption when speed matters most.

Natalia Jablonka Former Head of E-commerce, O'Neill — 15+ years in e-commerce

Natalia: What really resonates is that composable is increasingly being driven by growth-stage companies that need speed, flexibility, and the ability to evolve quickly.

I started my career in e-commerce in 2007, when many companies were still operating on monolithic platforms, so I've seen this evolution firsthand over the past years. The article's statement that "these aren't nice-to-haves anymore, but survival requirements" strongly resonates. Customer expectations, speed-to-market, omnichannel complexity, and personalization requirements have fundamentally changed what commerce platforms need to support today.

In my experience, especially in fashion and DTC, teams are under constant pressure to launch faster, personalize more effectively, and connect experiences across channels. That naturally pushes companies toward more modular ecosystems over time.

One thing that surprised me in the research was seeing how dominant Magento is in the Dutch market, with Shopify Plus in second place. Based on what I see across my network and in the broader mid-market/DTC landscape, Shopify has seen strong momentum recently, particularly because brands value agility, ease of deployment, ecosystem flexibility, and speed to market.

I've personally experienced both approaches in practice—from full "big bang" architecture transformations driven by a strong conviction around the long-term advantages of composable to much more gradual evolutions where companies introduced modular capabilities step by step. In many cases, organizations start by adding components such as a headless CMS, AI-driven search, personalization, or a CDP, then progressively move toward a more composable ecosystem over time.

Natalia: Usually, it happens when the existing platform starts to limit the pace of the business.

Commerce leaders today are dealing with:

• increasing customer expectations
• more channels
• international expansion
• a growing demand for personalization and experimentation
• limited internal resources
• and a stronger need for flexibility and control over their ecosystem

At some point, teams start asking whether the current setup is still enabling growth—or whether it's becoming a bottleneck.

Composable becomes attractive when companies need:

• faster release cycles
• more flexibility in selecting tools
• easier integrations
• greater control over the customer experience and technology roadmap
• and the ability to scale capabilities independently

Budget considerations also play an important role, particularly in the mid-market segment. Some legacy or highly customized monolithic platforms can become expensive to maintain and evolve, while newer ecosystems often offer greater flexibility and scalability relative to investment levels.

Technology, customer expectations, and digital behavior are evolving incredibly quickly today—especially with the acceleration of AI and the emergence of new discovery journeys. Many companies want the flexibility to adapt faster to these developments without being constrained by rigid legacy systems or long platform release cycles.

That said, most companies first try to optimize and extend their existing platform before committing to a larger architectural shift.

Natalia: The breaking point is usually when business complexity grows faster than the platform can realistically support.

I've seen this happen especially around:

• multi-market expansion
• personalization initiatives
• omnichannel integration
• or when marketing and e-commerce teams become too dependent on lengthy development cycles

In some cases, even relatively straightforward market needs—such as implementing preferred local payment methods or adapting customer journeys for specific regions—can become surprisingly complex and slow within more rigid platform environments. That's often when organizations start realizing that the platform is limiting agility rather than enabling growth.

At that stage, teams often start working around the platform rather than with it, creating inefficiencies and slowing innovation across the business.

That's typically the moment when companies start seriously evaluating more flexible and modular approaches.