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Composable commerce in action: Exterioo's modern e-commerce stack

About Exterioo

Original Belgian design

Sustainable quality

34 showrooms

Exterioo is a well-established name in the Belgian and Dutch market for quality garden furniture and outdoor accessories. With 34 showrooms and a wide range of garden sets, lounge sets and parasols, the company serves customers who value quality, design and durability. As part of Beliving Group, Exterioo combines the strength of physical retail with a modern online experience.

Consultancy as a lever for internal talent

Exterioo had a clear ambition but a complex challenge. To make it happen, the company needed architectural advice from someone who knows the e-commerce market inside out. PHPro stepped into that role as strategic consultant. Our architect contributed to the right technical choices, the design of the composable stack and the long-term vision behind the platform. The implementation itself was carried entirely by Exterioo's strong internal development team.

For Exterioo, this was the ideal combination: the autonomy and speed of their own team, paired with the strategic depth needed to make the right decisions at the right moment. PHPro's consultancy was the lever that enabled Exterioo's own developers to make the difference.

The ambition to evolve towards composable commerce

Exterioo was running on Adobe Commerce Enterprise with a PWA frontend, a solid foundation that had served the company well. But Exterioo didn't want to stand still. The ambition was to evolve towards a composable ecosystem with maximum flexibility as its starting point.

Two concrete challenges took centre stage.

The first was about the showroom experience. Exterioo envisioned an innovative tool for the shop floor where the offline and online worlds connect seamlessly. Sales staff would be able to guide customers using tablets to browse products, build configurations and add items directly to a basket. That tool needed to run in sync with the webshop and the point-of-sale system.
The second challenge was about content operations. Marketing teams wanted to work freely without constantly depending on developers. Product data managed in a PIM system, content in a separate CMS, but in the frontend brought together into one rich user experience.

The strategic choice was clear: a move to composable commerce based on MACH principles, with Magento Open Source as the beating heart of the new ecosystem

The solution: composable commerce explained

Composable commerce sounds technical, but the principle is straightforward. Think of a traditional computer where all components are fixed together. Want a faster hard drive? You have to crack open the whole machine and hope everything still works. A composable platform works differently: you choose the best tool for each function and connect it to the rest via APIs. Want a new payment provider? Plug it in. A different CMS? Swap it out without touching anything else.

The big advantage is flexibility. You're no longer tied to one vendor or one system. Your platform grows with your ambitions and you can respond to market changes at speed, without launching a major development project every time.

From enterprise to open source: the architecture of the new stack

PHPro advised on the architecture and the choice of components. Based on those recommendations, Exterioo's internal team got to work. The new stack consists of three independent core components that work together seamlessly via APIs.

The e-commerce core runs on Magento Open Source, the choice that best suited the composable setup and the need for maximum flexibility and customisation. Magento manages product catalogues, orders, inventory and integrations with PIM system Akeneo.

The frontend runs on Next.js, a modern JavaScript framework known for lightning-fast pages and excellent performance. Exterioo deliberately chose a fully custom-built frontend, designed specifically to support the company's unique needs. Through server-side rendering, pages are generated and cached on the server, delivering blazing-fast load times. All UI components were developed and documented via Storybook, allowing the team to work consistently and efficiently, with every component reusable and tested.

For content management, Exterioo chose Sanity, a headless CMS that operates entirely independently of the webshop. Marketing teams can easily manage landing pages, blog articles and product information without ever touching code. Because it's headless, content can be pushed to multiple channels: the webshop, apps, kiosks or other future touchpoints.

All components are connected via APIs and work together seamlessly. They remain independent of each other, meaning one component can be replaced or upgraded without affecting the rest of the ecosystem.

Innovation on the shop floor with tablet assisted sales

One of the most striking features is the tablet assisted sales tool, or TAS for short. Sales staff across Exterioo's 34 showrooms use tablets to guide customers through their purchasing journey. They can search for products, show technical specifications, build configurations, draw up quotes and add everything directly to a basket.

Two separate interfaces were built on top of Magento: the public webshop and the TAS tool. Both run on the same technical foundation but are each designed for their specific context. This means the TAS tool is always up to date with the latest prices, stock levels and product information, with no extra synchronisation or separate application required.

A customer can have a quote drawn up in the showroom, find it again later at home in their account on the webshop, and complete the purchase online or at the till. Everything stays perfectly synchronised through the Tilroy point-of-sale system.

The result is a genuine omnichannel experience where the line between online and offline disappears. Not as a marketing promise, but as a technical reality.

The move to composable commerce gave us the flexibility to respond quickly to market developments and take a step forward in performance and usability. From the tablet-assisted-sales tool in our showrooms to seamless online fulfilment, the difference is tangible for both our teams and our customers. What makes this collaboration special is that PHPro was our strategic advisor, making recommendations based on their expertise. We followed those recommendations and our internal development team ran with them. That trust and long-term thinking: that's worth its weight in gold.

Ben Uytterhoeven - Digital Business Analyst, Beliving

Technologies and integrations used

The Exterioo platform runs on a composable stack with the following technologies:

Magento Open Source as the e-commerce core
Next.js for the frontend
Storybook for component development and documentation
Sanity as headless CMS
Akeneo as PIM system for product information
Tilroy for point-of-sale synchronisation
RESTful and GraphQL APIs for communication between components
Cloud-native hosting for optimal scalability and reliability

Results: stability, speed and strong SEO

The move to composable commerce delivered several concrete benefits for Exterioo. Despite a thorough technical migration, there was no dip in sales, which is far from a given in projects of this scale. The new frontend loads significantly faster than the previous platform, resulting in a better user experience and a positive impact on conversions. The improved load times have also done the SEO performance good, as speed remains an important ranking factor for search engines like Google.

The biggest strategic advantage lies in the future-readiness of the architecture. Because all components operate independently, replacing or extending one part is far more manageable than in a monolithic setup. That reduces maintenance costs over time and shortens the time-to-market for new features.

From project team to strategic consultancy

The collaboration between PHPro and Exterioo is a good illustration of how a partnership can evolve. It started as a classic Magento project where PHPro delivered a full project team, including a dedicated project manager, product owner, technical architect and developers. Together they built the Magento webshop with PWA frontend that served Exterioo for years.

As Exterioo's own team built up more knowledge and experience, the desire grew to take more ownership internally. PHPro supported that evolution and gradually shifted from full project delivery to strategic consultancy. When Exterioo set its sights on composable commerce, PHPro was ready with the architectural expertise and strategic advice needed to take that step confidently. The building was done by the internal team.

Today PHPro continues as strategic consultant at Exterioo. We think ahead about future developments, advise on technical choices and ensure the platform keeps evolving in line with the company's ambitions. A collaboration built on trust, mutual respect and a shared long-term vision.

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Conclusion

Exterioo made a deliberate choice for an approach where autonomy and expertise go hand in hand. With PHPro's consultancy as a strategic compass and a strong internal team carrying the implementation, a future-ready platform emerged that flexibly grows with the company's ambitions. That is composable commerce in practice: not just a technical choice, but an organisational one too.

And it proves what good consultancy can do: not take over, but strengthen.

Ready for composable commerce?

Do you have a strong internal team but want to be sure you're making the right technical choices? Or are you looking for an experienced partner to think along at a strategic and architectural level, without taking over the execution? That is exactly what PHPro's consultancy is for.