When does a brand need an Omnichannel Commerce Suite?

For brands, omnichannel often starts from a very different position than it does for traditional retailers. Many brands start webshop-first: first a webshop, one central inventory and one fulfilment process. Marketplaces or international webshops may follow. As long as online remains the primary sales channel, that architecture is relatively straightforward.

The next phase of growth usually comes later. A first physical store. A flagship store. Pop-up locations. Shop-in-shops. Perhaps eventually multiple physical stores across different countries. For a brand, this expansion often feels primarily like an opportunity to extend the brand experience into the physical world. The focus is on the store concept, interior, service, assortment and customer experience.

But this is exactly where another challenge emerges. The brand experience may be perfectly thought through, while the architecture behind it is still designed around one central online channel.

For brands, omnichannel complexity often does not arise because the brand experience has not been properly designed, but because the architecture behind that experience is still webshop-first. Geplakte tekst

Moving from webshop-first to omnichannel is a bigger step than it seems

A webshop-first environment can work perfectly well as long as online remains the primary sales channel. Products are published online, inventory sits in one warehouse or with a fulfilment partner, and orders are processed from a single location.

Once physical stores become part of the operation, that changes.

Inventory is no longer located in one place. A store becomes both a sales channel and an inventory location. Customers may want to see online what is available in-store, collect an order, return an online purchase or order an item in-store that is no longer available locally.

The question is therefore no longer only:

How do we create the same brand experience in-store as online?

But also:

Can our existing architecture truly support online and physical retail as one commerce operation?

That is where a webshop-first architecture increasingly reaches its limits.

Pain point 1: the store becomes a separate technical channel

The first physical store is often built alongside the existing e-commerce environment. A POS system is added, along with ERP and inventory integrations, and perhaps a separate solution for loyalty or customer data.

Individually, everything works. But online and the store become two separate technical worlds.

The webshop knows what is available online. The POS knows what is happening in-store. Inventory is synchronised between systems and customer data may be spread across multiple environments.

With one store, this may still be manageable. But with five, ten or twenty stores, the same setup suddenly becomes the foundation for a much larger operation.

What started as a practical way to connect a store to the webshop gradually becomes an architecture that requires more and more processes, integrations and exceptions around it.

Pain point 2: the brand experience is strong, but the customer journey stops at the systems

Brands invest heavily in creating a consistent brand experience. The webshop is refined down to the smallest detail. The store has the same look and feel. Packaging, content, campaigns and service are aligned.

But customers do not experience a brand visually alone.

They also expect channels to work together functionally. For example:

seeing online whether a product is available in-store;

ordering online and collecting in-store;

returning an online purchase in a physical store;

using the same promotions and loyalty benefits online and offline;

ordering an item in-store that is no longer available locally.

When the front end communicates one brand, but the back end consists of disconnected processes, friction appears. To the customer, the webshop, POS and ERP are not separate systems. It is one brand. That means the architecture itself ultimately becomes part of the brand experience.

Pain point 3: inventory suddenly becomes a commercial issue

For an online brand, inventory is often relatively straightforward. A product sits in the central warehouse, is either available or unavailable, and is shipped from there.

Physical stores change that. Inventory is suddenly distributed across a distribution centre and multiple stores. At the same time, you want to use that inventory as effectively as possible commercially.

An item may appear sold out online while twenty units are still available in stores. A customer sees a product online but does not know it is available in a store nearby. Or the webshop sells an item that was just sold in-store.

That does not only create operational problems. It can also directly cost revenue.

Inventory that exists but cannot be sold online remains on the shelf. Customers abandon their purchase while the product is actually still available. And the less visibility you have across your total inventory, the harder it becomes to sell stock efficiently before discounts or markdowns are required.

Inventory is therefore no longer just a logistical issue. It becomes part of the customer experience and your commercial strategy.

That requires more than periodically synchronising stock levels. You need central logic that understands where inventory is located, which channels it is available to and how it can be used commercially.

Pain point 4: fulfilment was simple until stores became part of the network

Webshop-first fulfilment usually follows one clear route:

order → warehouse → customer

With physical stores, many more possibilities emerge:

order → warehouse → store
order → store → customer
order → store → collection
return → store → inventory

The organisation then needs to determine which location should process an order, when store inventory should be made available for online sales and what happens when an item is no longer available at one location.

When these decisions are spread across the webshop, ERP, POS and separate integrations, more and more exceptions arise. And exceptions almost always lead to manual work.

For a brand looking to scale physical retail quickly, fulfilment therefore soon becomes more than a logistics process. It becomes a matter of central order and inventory orchestration.

Pain point 5: physical and international growth make the architecture increasingly heavy

Connecting the first store usually still works. The same applies to click & collect, showing store inventory online or supporting in-store returns.

Technically, almost anything can be built. The more important question is what happens when you keep expanding the same setup.

Every new store may require additional logic between the webshop, ERP, POS, WMS, fulfilment, loyalty and payments. And with international growth, you also add multiple webshops, marketplaces, local fulfilment flows and payment methods.

Commercially, the fourth store should be roughly the same step as the third. A new country should build on what is already there. But when every expansion requires new integrations, exceptions and testing, the technical effort grows much faster than the organisation itself.

At that point, the architecture starts to slow down the growth strategy. The key question becomes: do new stores, countries and channels build on existing commerce processes, or does the same logic need to be connected again every time?

Brands often look at architecture too late

This is perhaps the biggest difference compared with traditional retailers. A retailer with dozens of stores knows from the start that inventory, POS and store operations are complex. A brand often starts from marketing and e-commerce.

The webshop is central. Growth is measured in conversion, reach, community and brand experience. As long as the technology behind it works, architecture receives relatively little attention.

Until physical retail becomes part of the strategy. At that point, decisions that made perfect sense for one webshop suddenly become critical to much larger challenges.

Where is inventory managed? Where does the order logic live? How do stores and online work together? What happens with returns? How do you add the next store? And how many new integrations are required?

Your choice of commerce architecture therefore determines much earlier than many brands realise how much omnichannel complexity you will face later.

When does an Omnichannel Commerce Suite become relevant for a brand?

Not every brand with one webshop needs an Omnichannel Commerce Suite. A webshop-first solution can be an excellent fit when online remains the primary channel and inventory and fulfilment are relatively simple.

The tipping point comes when physical retail becomes a structural part of the strategy. For example, when:

you open one or more physical stores;

store inventory needs to become available online;

click & collect or ship from store becomes part of the customer journey;

customers need to be able to return online purchases in-store;

stores and online need to use the same promotions, loyalty or customer data;

inventory becomes distributed across multiple locations;

you grow internationally across multiple webshops, stores and marketplaces;

every new expansion requires more integrations and custom development.

At that point, the question shifts from:

Which additional omnichannel functionality do we need?

to:

Is our commerce architecture still suitable for the brand we are building?

What changes with an Omnichannel Commerce Suite?

An Omnichannel Commerce Suite does not start with the webshop as the central channel. It starts with the commerce processes that all channels need.

Products, inventory, orders, content and fulfilment form one central foundation on which webshops, stores, marketplaces, apps and other sales channels can build.

That does not mean everything needs to live in one system. A brand can continue to work with specialised solutions for ERP, POS, payments, loyalty, marketing and logistics.

The difference is that every channel no longer needs to organise its own commerce processes.A new store connects to existing product, inventory and order logic. A new country builds on the same foundation. An app uses the same commerce processes as the webshop and stores. That is the essential difference between adding omnichannel to a webshop-first environment and building from an omnichannel-first architecture.

Brand experience ultimately starts behind the scenes too

Brand experience remains crucial for brands. But a beautiful store, strong webshop and recognisable campaign are not enough to create a true unified commerce experience.

Customers also notice whether inventory is accurate. Whether an order is visible everywhere. Whether a return is handled smoothly. Whether a product that appears sold out online is actually still available in a store.

Unified commerce therefore does not only happen in the design of your channels. It happens when the architecture behind them enables those channels to truly function as one. For brands moving from e-commerce into physical retail, that requires an important shift in thinking:

the architecture that worked perfectly for your webshop is not automatically the architecture that will allow you to scale omnichannel successfully.

Omnichannel from the ground up

The NextChapter multiˣ suite was developed from this omnichannel-first vision. Webshops, physical stores, marketplaces, products, inventory, orders and content all build on one central commerce foundation.

This means a brand does not have to organise physical retail as a new technical layer on top of the webshop every time. A new store can build on the same product, inventory and order processes already used by other channels.

This allows a brand to open new physical stores without having to connect each store to the webshop as a separate technical project. New countries, marketplaces and other sales channels can also continue building on the same foundation.

At the same time, there is still room for specialised solutions for ERP, POS, payments, loyalty and logistics. The multiˣ suite acts as the central commerce layer that brings these systems and sales channels together.

For brands, this means less dependency on separate integrations, greater control over inventory and orders, and an architecture that scales more effectively with the commercial strategy.

But perhaps even more importantly, it makes it possible to operationally deliver on the strong brand experience customers see at the front end.

The brand experience can continue to grow, while products, inventory, orders and fulfilment are organised behind the scenes from one connected foundation.

Technology therefore becomes more than something that supports the webshop. It becomes the foundation of the complete brand experience, online and offline.