Inside the Blurb · The MarTech Matrix

Why Ecommerce Replatforming Fails — And What Unified Commerce Actually Fixes

The big picture: Most ecommerce replatforming projects fail because brands pick a new platform before they understand what a unified commerce platform actually needs to do. If you’ve been part of one of these projects, you already know the feeling — six months of your life disappear, your team can’t think about anything else, and at the end of it you’re not even sure the new platform is meaningfully better than the one you left.

Steve Deller has watched this story play out for 25 years. As CEO of Virid — an ecommerce platform and agency that has been building and running enterprise retail sites since the late 1990s — he’s seen what works, what fails, and why brands keep making the same mistakes when they replatform.

Why it matters: In this episode of Inside the Blurb, Steve breaks down unified commerce, explains why integration debt is the real enemy, and shares the questions every brand should be asking — but usually isn’t — before they sign with a new platform vendor.

What Is a Unified Commerce Platform?

The ecommerce technology landscape has evolved in predictable waves. First came the monolithic platforms — one vendor, everything bundled together. Then headless commerce, which decoupled the front end from the back end. Then composable commerce, which said: use best-of-breed tools for every function and stitch them together.

Composable sounds great in theory. The problem is the stitching.

“You end up with integration debt,” Steve explains. “You have to make sure all those pieces talk to each other, or you end up with a bunch of different parts to your solution that just aren’t working well together.”

Unified commerce is Virid’s answer to that problem. Rather than a feature set, it’s a philosophy: the platform acts as a broker — a single source of truth — that manages the data connections between all of your best-of-breed components. Loyalty platforms, fulfillment systems, tax engines, product information management tools. Instead of stitching them together yourself, Virid owns the integration layer.

The result: when you want to swap out your loyalty provider or add a new fulfillment partner, you don’t have to touch your core ecommerce database. You just replace the connector.

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Why Ecommerce Replatforming Is So Painful

The pain is real — and it’s not exaggerated. Here’s what makes replatforming so brutal:

• Your data is siloed. All your product information, order history, and customer records live inside your current platform’s database, formatted the way that platform wants it. Getting it out — and into a new system — is a complex, error-prone process.
• You have to stay live until the last second. You can’t just shut down and rebuild. You’re running a parallel operation, migrating data incrementally, and then managing the delta — everything that changed in the six months since you started the migration.
• You’re fixing the wrong problem. Steve’s blunt about this: “Figure out why you’re leaving before you start looking for what you’re moving to.” Many brands migrate because traffic is flat or conversion is poor — neither of which is a platform problem.

“It’s a very complex orchestration of events,” Steve says. “And especially if you’re shifting because of some feature or functionality that was missing in the old platform, it’s a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of potential for losing data.”

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Unified Commerce vs. Headless vs. Shopify — What’s the Difference?

The honest answer: it depends on who you are.

“Shopify is a great platform if you have a very standard direct-to-consumer implementation,” Steve says. The app ecosystem is robust, and for a brand selling one channel to one customer type, it works well.

Where it breaks down: the moment you go omnichannel. Steve uses one of Virid’s longest-standing clients — Journeys, the footwear retailer — as the example. Journeys has hundreds of brick-and-mortar stores. Customers want to buy online and pick up in-store within 10 minutes. That means the website needs real-time inventory data from every store, every 5 minutes, for every SKU.

“Shopify doesn’t support that out of the box,” Steve says. “You’re going to have to build something for it — some integration layer. And that’s exactly where our platform’s strengths are.”

The distinction isn’t about features. It’s about who owns the integration complexity. With composable commerce, you do. With unified commerce, Virid does.

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Real-World Proof: How Journeys Does Omnichannel at Scale

Journeys has been a Virid client for over 20 years. The BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store) implementation is a good window into what unified commerce looks like in practice.

Every five minutes, Virid ingests inventory updates from all Journeys store locations — every store, every SKU. That data is maintained in Virid’s system and surfaced in real time on the website. When a customer clicks “pick up in store,” the inventory count they see is current. Not from a nightly batch file. Not from this morning’s feed. Now.

“There’s a bit of orchestration that has to happen there,” Steve acknowledges. “The merchant is doing some of that too, because they have to get those stores talking to us. But we handle all of that on our side — organizing it, making it available to the website.”

The same logic applies to loyalty. When a Journeys customer uses their loyalty card in-store, they can check their points on the website on the ride home. Real time. No lag. That’s the single-source-of-truth model in action.

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Who Virid Is Actually Built For

Virid’s unified commerce platform is built for omnichannel merchants doing $10M to $1B in online revenue — brands with complex data environments that need more than a plug-and-play app store can offer.

The key indicators you might be a fit:

• You have multiple data sources — loyalty platforms, product feeds, brick-and-mortar inventory — that need to stay synchronized in or near real time
• You’ve outgrown the apps-and-plugins model and need deeper integration ownership
• You don’t have a deep internal technical team and need a partner who can fill those gaps
• You’re tired of managing multiple agencies, vendors, and platforms — and want one accountable partner

That last point is core to Virid’s model. They’re not just a platform — they’re an agency too. Software engineers, UX designers, business analysts, and merchandising support are all available as part of the engagement. Steve calls it filling the gaps: mapping what the brand’s team can handle, and bringing Virid’s team in to cover the rest.

“We used to call it staff augmentation,” Steve says. “We roll in with a new customer, identify where their gaps are, and try to fill them so we have a cohesive team on both sides.”

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What Partnership Looks Like After Your Site Launches

One of the most common failure modes in ecommerce: you hire an agency, they build a beautiful site, they launch it on Shopify — and then they leave. Twelve months later, nobody’s paying attention. The platform drifts. Problems accumulate.

Virid structured their entire business model around solving that exact problem.

Steve describes the origin story simply: “One of our early clients said, look — I just want to write one check. One person to call when something breaks. One relationship.” Virid has operated that way ever since.

In practice, that means:

• Weekly status calls — reviewing what’s live, what’s coming, what needs attention
• Quarterly business reviews — aligning platform direction with the brand’s KPIs
• Annual site visits — Virid brings the full team to the client’s location for a year-in-review and roadmap presentation
• Multi-year contracts — built for long-term relationships, not project engagements

Journeys is still a client after 20+ years. That’s the model working.

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6 Questions Every Brand Should Ask Before Picking a Platform

Steve’s been on the other side of enough vendor evaluations to know which questions brands routinely skip — and why those omissions cost them later.

1. Who am I talking to 18 months after launch?

Most platforms offer a warranty window — six to eight months. After that, you’re on your own or you need to hire someone. Know the answer to this question before you sign, not after.

2. Can I talk to a customer who left?

Any vendor will give you a reference list of happy customers. Ask for a customer who churned and find out why. That conversation will tell you more than a dozen reference calls.

3. What does the SLA actually cover?

Service level agreements vary enormously. Some platforms only offer real SLAs at their premium tier. “If it goes down, it goes down — sorry” is not an acceptable answer if your brand does significant order volume. Calculate what one hour of downtime costs you, then decide what SLA you need.

4. What’s the real total cost of ownership?

“The platform cost is just the tip of the iceberg,” Steve says. Add up the apps, the integrations, the agency fees, the support contracts, and the internal time required to manage it all. A “cheap” platform is often the most expensive option by year two.

5. How does your roadmap get built?

Large platforms prioritize features for their largest customers. Smaller brands often find that the feature they need isn’t on the roadmap — and there’s nothing they can do about it. Understand how the vendor makes product decisions and whether brands like yours have a voice.

6. What’s your support response time — really?

A ticket system with a 24-48 hour response window is not support. It’s a queue. Know whether you’re getting a person or a portal, and what happens when something breaks on a Friday night.

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What to Do Before You Start Shopping for a New Platform

Steve’s pre-search advice is counterintuitive: don’t start with the platforms. Start with your problems.

“Document why you’re leaving,” he says. “Because you may end up going to another platform and having the same problems. What is it about your current situation that isn’t working? Is it that people aren’t purchasing? They’re not coming to your website? Those aren’t platform problems.”

The homework looks like this:

• List the specific capabilities your current platform is blocking — not general frustrations, specific gaps
• Separate platform problems from strategy problems (traffic, conversion, merchandising) — the latter won’t be fixed by a new platform
• Define what “done” looks like: what would a successful platform need to enable for your business 3 years from now?

Once you have that list, you can evaluate vendors against actual requirements — not feature marketing and sales decks.

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AI’s Role in the Future of Ecommerce

Virid is already embedded in the AI ecosystem. Their Market Agility platform is registered with Claude (Anthropic), ChatGPT, and other AI systems — meaning users can ask an AI to interact directly with their ecommerce environment. Think: “Find all products that haven’t sold in 30 days and deactivate them.” Or: “Give me a morning briefing on what’s moving and what’s at risk of stocking out.”

Steve’s view on the broader AI + SaaS shift is pragmatic: “Rather than building a user experience for someone to go in and do things manually, just build the capabilities and allow Claude — or Gemini or ChatGPT — to go in and do it for them. The customer interacts with their AI. They don’t need a separate user interface.”

On AI shopping — the idea that consumers will one day buy through Claude or ChatGPT directly — Steve’s framing is matter-of-fact: “It’s just another channel. Back in the day, Amazon was ‘oh my God, what about Amazon?’ It’s the same thing. You get your product data into the AI systems, you handle the order through your existing infrastructure. We already know how to do this.”

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About Virid

Virid is a unified commerce platform and agency that has been building and running enterprise retail websites since the late 1990s. Their Market Agility platform takes a unified commerce approach — acting as a single integration layer that connects loyalty systems, fulfillment partners, product information systems, and brick-and-mortar inventory in or near real time. They serve omnichannel brands doing $10M to $1B in online revenue and bring an in-house team of engineers, UX designers, and business analysts to every engagement.

Clients include Journeys, who has been on the platform for over 20 years.

If you’re evaluating an ecommerce platform vendor, check out Virid’s profile on Blurbs for case studies, vendor Q&As, and the key questions you should be asking before you take a demo call.

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