Commerce and Unit M: Closing the DACH Digitisation Gap Together

The digital future of B2B in Germany is here but most businesses haven't arrived yet

The opportunity is real and buyers are already feeling the gap

Germany's B2B ecommerce market is one of Europe's most significant. Online stores and marketplaces alone account for around €476 billion in annual volume, with double-digit YoY growth. Yet for all that scale, the digital shift is far from complete.

If your business still relies on phone, fax, or EDI for a significant share of orders, you’re not alone. This scenario is still the reality for much of the German Mittelstand. But the buyers you are trying to win and retain have moved on. Today, 71% of B2B buyers are under 40. They’ve grown up with B2C digital experiences and bring those expectations to work. They want self-service ordering, automated workflows, real-time inventory visibility, and digital journeys that are as intuitive as consumer commerce. The gap between what they expect and what most B2B businesses currently offer is widening fast — and every quarter you wait, that gap gets harder to close.

Commerce is not the platform you may remember

You may know us as BigCommerce. But, what we are today is something more. Commerce is a consolidated solution built for the complexity of modern B2B commerce: the BigCommerce transaction engine is at the core. Now, we’ve added Feedonomics for data feed management and enrichment across every channel, and Makeswift for building storefront experiences your buyers actually want to use.

This means you can automate your product data at scale, reach buyers wherever they are discovering and purchasing (including the emerging agentic AI channels reshaping how B2B buying happens) and build a digital customer journey that reflects your brand and serves your customers the same way B2C leaders do. And we can do all of this at a size and price point built for the Mittelstand, not just for global enterprises.

“The businesses I talk to every day in DACH are not missing ambition — they’re missing a platform that handles the real complexity of B2B without requiring a team of engineers to run it. Commerce is that platform. And with Unit M alongside us, DACH B2B businesses finally have a trusted partner who genuinely understands their environment.”

— Lance Owide, VP of B2B, Commerce

A collaborative model built on regional expertise

Unit M has spent more than 25 years advising and implementing digital sales solutions for mid-market B2B companies across DACH. They currently manage over €800 million in online revenue for clients spanning wholesale, mechanical engineering, and industrial sectors. Their depth of knowledge of ERP integration in German manufacturing environments, the compliance landscape, local payment preferences, and how to build organisational buy-in inside conservative enterprise structures is what makes this partnership meaningful for you.

This is not a top-down, one-size-fits-all model. Unit M's implementation expertise shapes the strategy around your business, localises the buyer experience for your customers, and accelerates your time to value. You get a trusted consultancy that has seen your challenges before, paired with a platform that is ready to meet them — without over-engineering or over-budgeting the solution.

“The most successful digital commerce projects are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones that create measurable value for customers and internal teams quickly. By combining Commerce’s technology platform with our implementation and B2B expertise, we can help companies reduce manual processes, improve customer experience, and achieve results faster.”

— Stefan Koshold, CEO, Unit M

If you're ready to go further: the composable advantage

If you’ve already built a strong digital foundation, i.e., are running an established portal, managing complex pricing and catalogue requirements, and serving a loyal customer base online, the next stage is unlocking the full potential of a composable approach

Commerce's open SaaS architecture supports more than 100 independently deployable microservices, covering everything from storefront and catalogue to payments, promotions, and localisation. What does this mean in reality? You’re no longer locked into a monolithic platform's roadmap. You can integrate best-of-breed tools, build headless storefronts with frameworks like Catalyst and Makeswift, and extend your commerce stack as your needs evolve — without rebuilding from scratch.

“Purchase order automation, customer-specific pricing, multi-language storefronts, composable architecture — these are not future capabilities. They’re all available to you now, at a price point built for the Mittelstand. The question is no longer whether the technology exists. It is whether you have the right partner to help you get there.”

— Lance Owide, VP of B2B, Commerce

Unit M's expertise in composable and headless architectures means you have a proven partner to guide that transition, reducing technical risk and accelerating your path to a more flexible, future-proof commerce experience.

“Many B2B companies in DACH have already built their first generation of digital sales channels. The next challenge is creating a technology stack that can evolve with the business. Composable commerce gives companies the freedom to integrate best-of-breed solutions, adapt to changing customer expectations, and innovate without costly replatforming projects. That’s where we see enormous potential for the Mittelstand.”

— Stefan Koshold, CEO, Unit M

The final word

What you need to recognise as a B2B is that you don’t have a motivation problem. If you’re a manufacturer, wholesaler, or distributor in DACH, you already understand the pressure to digitise. What you haven’t been able to find is the right combination of technology and trusted local expertise to make it achievable — at the right scale, at the right price, with the right support behind it.

Commerce and Unit M are that combination. Whether you’re taking your first serious step into digital commerce or ready to push towards a composable, automated, buyer-first experience, this partnership offers a clear and proven path forward.

Ready to explore what is possible? Get a B2B demo or reach out to the Unit M team at unit-m.de to get started.