Consumers' shift to online shopping during the global
pandemic and the persistence of this habit continues to generate revenue for
makers of developer tools that help e-commerce sites to shop more conveniently.
Los Angeles-based Nacelle is one of the e-commerce infrastructure
companies that continues to grab investor attention - and quickly. It closed
with a $ 50 million Series B round from Tiger Global. This is just six months
after their $ 18 million Serie A round led by Inovia and following a $ 4.8
million seed round in 2020.
The company operates in a headless commerce space, which
means that it disconnects the interface of the website, also known as the
storefront, from the back end, where all the data is stored, to make shopping
more convenient, said CEO Brian Anderson. TechCrunch. This way, you can update
and maintain the inside of the store, where essentially all the magic happens,
without changing the front-end.
“Online shopping is not a new phenomenon, but the way we
interact with customers is constantly changing,” he said. "Online shopping
technology is not up to par: when you click on something, everything should
reload compared to an app like Instagram."
More and more people shopping on mobile are creating
friction by downloading apps for each brand. It "takes away the fun of
shopping online" because no one wants to have so many apps on their phone,
Anderson added.
Stephen Kramer, board member, and former executive vice
president of Hybris said via email that the e-commerce industry has
experienced several waves of innovation over the past two decades. Now the
maturation of consumer behavior and expectations is accelerating the current
phase.
“Retailers and brands are struggling to implement the latest
technology to meet today's demands for flexibility, speed, and user experience,”
added Kramer. "Nacelle offers organizations a future-ready way to
accelerate innovation, make the most of existing investments, and do it with a
significant return on investment."
Data already shows that trends in the COVID era have
accelerated e-commerce in about five years, with Gartner predicting that 50% of
new business opportunities will be implemented as API-centric SaaS services by
2023.
Trends like these attract competitors who also attract the attention of investors; For example, Sophistry, Swell, Fabric, Commerce Layer,
and Vue Storefront are just a few of the companies that have raised funds this
year alone.
Anderson notes that the market remains attractive and cannot
be ignored, especially given the growing share of online retail sales. He
explained that some of his competitors are forcing customers to migrate from
their current technology stack to appropriate platforms so that their users can
get good customer service. In contrast, Nacelle allows customers to maintain their
technology stack and assemble components as they see fit.
“This is painful for any vertical, but especially for
e-commerce,” he said. "This is your direct line of income."
Meanwhile, Nacelle's own revenue grew 690% last year and
customers are signing multi-year contracts, Anderson said.
Anderson, an engineer by trade, wants to delve deeper into
new products as the spread of headless trade grows. These include providing a
dynamic level of functionality at the top of the technology stack for
storefronts that are traditionally static and even introducing some live
streaming capabilities later this year.
In this way, Nacelle is investing a new dimension in its
go-to-market strategy and will enhance customer success, partnerships, and
product progress. He said Nacelle is previously the “de facto standard” for
Shopify Plus headless sellers.
“We want to put everything in a dedicated e-commerce API
that allows front-end developers to easily complete their tasks,” added
Anderson. "We also offer vendor starter kits as a starting point."
