Canadian specialty retailer Pet Valu recently moved to the commercetools ecommerce platform.

The replatforming helped Pet Valu “modernize its digital architecture” in less than a year, the companies said, implementing commercetools through Google Cloud Marketplace.

The retailer embarked on this digital transformation to appeal to its most loyal customers, said Tanbir Grover, chief marketing and digital officer at Pet Valu, in a released statement. Its most loyal customers want an omnichannel experience, he said. That’s to say they want “exceptional” in-store and online experiences.

Grover said replatforming through commercetools helped Pet Valu “create dynamic, omnichannel experiences quickly and at scale.” He expects this approach will help Pet Valu capture a greater share of the Canadian pet retail market.

Pet Valu is No. 510 in the Top 1000 Database. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s top online retailers by their annual web sales. Digital Commerce 360 projects Pet Valu ecommerce sales to reach $146.96 million in 2024.

Pet Valu ecommerce sales

Pet Valu picks commercetools for its ecommerce platform architecture

In an email, Grover told Digital Commerce 360 that Pet Valu’s goal in upgrading its ecommerce platform “was to enable us to adapt quickly to customer demands.” Additionally, it would help the retailer adapt to market changes and improve its site experience, as well as engagement. In addition, doing so helps Pet Valu “drive more cost efficiency” in its technology stack, he added.

Pet Valu chose commercetools for its composable commerce solution, which Grover said “would improve speed to market and enhance our digital performance.” At the same time, he hopes it would enable the retailer “to scale its business to support omnichannel aspirations and reflect industry best practice.”

Composable commerce is a modular approach to building ecommerce platforms, commercetools chief revenue officer Bruno Teuber told Digital Commerce 360 via email. That enables retailers “to create customized solutions that fit their unique needs,” he added.

“With composable commerce, companies can quickly develop and deploy new features independently, without being restricted by IT resources,” Teuber said. “Its cloud-native, tech-agnostic design ensures high scalability, reliability, and cost-effective rollouts, preparing businesses for both current and future opportunities.”

“As a result of our digital transformation, along with an improved site speed, we are now equipped to push site updates, discounts and promotions to all the Pet Valu banner websites quickly and efficiently,” Grover told Digital Commerce 360. “Moreover, it allows us to focus on payments, cross-channel activations and delivering an improved customer experience. We are excited to see how we can capitalize on personalization via our Pet Profiles, pet birthdays and other exclusive Your Rewards members-only offers.”

How does commercetools composable commerce work?

Teuber said commercetools operates on MACH-based architecture, which he called “the technical backbone” behind the company’s composable approach. MACH stands for Microservices-based, API first, Cloud Native and Headless.

“These open systems allow users to select the best-of-breed solutions that make sense for them and their customers,” Teuber said. “Additionally, being a headless platform, glitches and slowdowns are prevented because it decouples the front end and back end to allow for more agile deployment and reducing the risk of application downtime.”

Decoupling the front and back ends of an ecommerce site enables retailers to update either the content presentation layer or the business functional (commerce) layer — without one impacting the other, he noted.

Pet Valu focuses on its omnichannel experience

Currently, Pet Valu offers online functionality tied to in-store shopping. That includes:

• Near-real-time local store inventory availability
• Omnichannel coupons, which can be used online or in physical stores
• Buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS)
• Curbside pickup
• AutoShip subscription, a program that allows consumers to pick up items in stores in addition to using the traditional ship-to-home model

Pet Valu also is testing machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. It wants to shape its marketing efforts around personalization, chat and script generation, Grover told Digital Commerce 360. It’s also evaluating and learning how to use generative AI tools both on its website and in its marketing.

“We are excited to see how these tools could assist with content model generation, intelligent search, product curation and getting offers out to devoted pet lovers that are personal and relevant to them and their pets,” Grover said.

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