“Headless commerce” is a phrase that will get thrown round lot (I’ve typed it a number of instances at this time already), however Vue Storefront CEO Patrick Friday has an particularly vivid approach of utilizing the idea for example his startup’s place within the broader ecosystem.
“Vue Storefront is the bodiless front-end,” Friday mentioned. “We’re the strolling head.”
In different phrases, whereas most headless commerce firms are centered on creating back-end infrastructure, Vue powers the front-end, particularly the progressive net functions that buyers really work together with. The corporate describes itself as “the lightning-fast frontend platform for headless commerce.”
Friday mentioned that he and CTO Filip Rakowski created the Vue Storefront know-how as an open supply undertaking whereas working at e-commerce company Divante, earlier than finally spinning it out right into a separate startup final yr. The corporate was additionally a part of the latest class at accelerator Y Combinator, and it just lately raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by SMOK Ventures and Movens VC.
“We needed to arrange a brand new entity in the course of COVID, we needed to elevate in center of COVID and we needed to persuade the company eliminate the product in the course of COVID,” Friday mentioned. He even recalled signing papers with an investor one morning in early December and doing an interview with Y Combinator that night.
Picture Credit: Vue Storefront
As they’ve constructed a enterprise across the core open supply know-how, Friday and his workforce have realized that Vue has extra to supply than simply constructing net apps, as a result of it connects e-commerce platforms like Magento and Shopify with headless content material administration methods like Contentstack and Contentful, funds methods like PayPal and Stripe and different third-party providers.
In reality, Friday mentioned prospects have been telling them, “You might be just like the glue. Headless was so complicated to me, after which I acquired this Vue Storefront factor to return in on prime every part else and be the glue connecting issues.”
The platform has been used to create greater than 300 shops worldwide. Friday mentioned adoption has accelerated because the pandemic and ensuing development in e-commerce have pushed companies to appreciate they’re utilizing “this legacy platform, utilizing outdated frameworks and applied sciences from a great 4 or 5 years in the past.”
Rakowski added, “We additionally see that many purchasers really come to us deciding that Vue Storefront may be step one of migration to a different platform. WE can rapidly migrate the front-end and write back-end agnostic code.”
As a result of it had simply raised funding, the Vue Storefront workforce didn’t participant within the latest YC Demo Day, and will probably be presenting on the subsequent Demo Day as a substitute. Within the meantime, will probably be holding its personal digital Vue Storefront Summit on April 20.
