Pragmatic Composability is Winning Over Pure MACH Architecture

Why Your Marketing Metrics Are Misleading You with Jacqueline Basulto

Author

Brent Peterson
September 18, 2025

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The Talk Commerce Podcast Newsletter

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Pragmatic Composability is Winning Over Pure MACH Architecture

By Brent W. Peterson
The composable commerce revolution promised flexibility and best-of-breed solutions. Instead, it delivered vendor nightmares and hidden costs that are bankrupting enterprise initiatives.

VTEX CEO Mariano Gomide de Faria made headlines in March 2025 by suspending his company's MACH Alliance membership, calling composable commerce a "treacherous path paved with hidden costs, operational nightmares, and financial ruin." This bold move validates what many enterprises have experienced firsthand: the promise of seamless composable integration often becomes operational quicksand.

The reality includes vendor management complications with dozens of separate relationships, API complexity requiring sophisticated mediation layers, and hidden costs that transform seemingly cost-effective solutions into financial black holes. Despite this shift, VTEX achieved a 98% customer recommendation rate by focusing on business outcomes over architectural purity.

Enterprise Success Stories

Major brands including Stanley Black & Decker, Whirlpool, Calvin Klein, Dior, and Sony are choosing unified platforms over assembled composable stacks. These companies prioritize faster deployment and improved performance without vendor coordination nightmares, demonstrating that enterprises want platforms enabling strategy, not requiring constant management.

The AI-First Commerce Challenge

AI-driven commerce demands unified data and integrated customer profiles—something fragmented composable approaches struggle to deliver. VTEX's "agentic AI workforce" resolves 92% of support tickets autonomously, showcasing the power of integrated platforms.

Growth Marketing Insights

The newsletter also features insights from SeedX CEO Jacqueline Basulto's podcast interview, exploring why isolated marketing metrics mislead businesses. Her three-pillar framework addresses the disconnect between data abundance and profit scarcity, emphasizing sustainable growth systems over vanity metrics.

The Strategic Takeaway

The market is rejecting "composable extremism" for pragmatic solutions that are outcome-oriented, human-centric, and flexibly practical. Success comes from platforms that enable effective competition rather than perfect composability.

Our Latest Episode:

Bonus Episode:

Most e-commerce businesses are swimming in data but sinking in profits. In a recent episode, we explore insights from SeedX CEO Jacqueline Basulto on why looking at marketing metrics in isolation is destroying your bottom line.

Jacqueline discusses why AI should amplify your team rather than replace them, and understanding the critical conversation every CEO and marketing director must have before launching campaigns.

It isn't about getting more traffic or clicks – it's about building sustainable, profitable growth systems that actually move your business forward.

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