insights! #111: VTEX: Warum ein brasilianischer Commerce-Pionier gerade Europas Märkte aufmischt

Mariano Gomide de Faria, Co-Founder von VTEX, hat eine der spannendsten Commerce-Plattformen gegründet – lange bevor „Headless Commerce“ überhaupt ein Buzzword war.

Was ihn antreibt? Ingenieurskunst, Pragmatismus und ein tiefer Glaube an effiziente Technologie. Ach ja – und Speerfischen. Aber das ist eine andere Geschichte. VTEX ist heute in 46 Ländern aktiv, betreibt Lösungen für Schwergewichte wie Samsung, Whirlpool oder OBI und ist an der New Yorker Börse notiert. Klingt nach Tech-Elite? Ist es auch. Nur eben mit deutlich weniger Lärm – und deutlich mehr Substanz.

“Innovation right now is to do the same thing with 80% less resources. That’s innovation. We insist on simplicity. The world is over-engineered, and now we need to write off edge cases. You don’t need to automate 99% of everything. Solve 95% of the cases and treat the rest as exceptions. You’ll save 80% of your money. That’s where commerce is going.”

Mariano Gomide de Faria Co-Founder VTEX

VTEX als hochperformante Plattform

VTEX ist nicht einfach ein weiteres E-Commerce-System mit netten Features. Die Plattform versteht sich als Backbone für vernetzten Handel – und sie verfolgt eine klare Philosophie: weniger Komplexität, mehr Wirkung.   Das System bietet: • integrierten Shop, CMS, PIM und Marktplatz-Funktionen, • über 150 sofort einsatzbereite Payment-Verbindungen, • modulare Architektur mit Plug-and-Play-Ansatz, • und ein Framework, das zwischen Shopify-Leichtigkeit und Magento-Flexibilität vermittelt.   Doch das Besondere ist das Prinzip dahinter: Du sollst nicht endlos bauen, sondern gezielt reduzieren können. Freiheit bedeutet bei VTEX nicht, dass du alles machen kannst. Sondern dass du abschalten kannst, was du nicht mehr brauchst. Eine Plattform mit Exitstrategie für unnötige Features? Das ist nicht weniger als revolutionär.

Deutschland braucht neuen Pragmatismus

In Deutschland ist man stolz auf durchdachte Technik – manchmal fast zu stolz. Die hiesige Handelslandschaft hat viel Geld in SAP, Salesforce und Eigenentwicklungen gesteckt. Vor allem während der Corona-Zeit wurde investiert, was das Budget hergab. Doch jetzt, in Zeiten hoher Zinsen und stagnierender Umsätze, zählt etwas anderes: Lean Commerce. Genau hier sieht Mariano die Lücke – und VTEX die Chance. Er beschreibt die deutsche Mentalität treffend: „Freedom on an unlimited basis“. Doch genau das sei der Denkfehler. Denn wer alles baut, was möglich ist, gibt schnell 5–6 % des GMV nur für Technologie aus. Zukunftsfähig? Kaum. Ein Unternehmen wie OBI zeigt, wie es anders geht: 10 Milliarden Umsatz – und weniger als 500 IT-Mitarbeiter. Möglich macht das eine Plattform, die reduziert statt aufbläht, die skalierbar statt verspielt ist.

Warum Commerce global gedacht werden muss

Mariano denkt Commerce nicht in Landesgrenzen, sondern in Möglichkeiten. Die Logik alter Master-Franchise-Strukturen hält er für überholt. Mit VTEX lassen sich neue Märkte testen, ohne große Investitionen – einfach durch Aktivierung bestehender Funktionen. Kein monatelanger Rollout, sondern ein Markttest in Tagen.   Dabei profitiert VTEX von der globalen Erfahrung: • Was in Brasilien beim Thema Logistik funktioniert, kann auch in Thailand skalieren. • Die besten OMS-Modelle entstehen in den USA, die besten Social-Media-Anbindungen in Asien. • Und all das fließt in eine Plattform, die weltweit ausgerollt werden kann.   Für deutsche B2B-Marken – von Maschinenbauern bis zu Komponentenherstellern – ist das eine echte Einladung. Wer seine digitalen Vertriebskanäle modernisieren will, braucht heute mehr als ein hübsches Frontend: Er braucht einen flexiblen Backbone, der global liefert.

Innovation bedeutet: mit weniger mehr erreichen

Eine der stärksten Aussagen aus dem Gespräch mit Mariano bleibt hängen: „Innovation today is doing the same thing with 80 % less resources.“
Das klingt nicht nur pragmatisch – das ist es auch. In Zeiten von überengineerten Architekturen ist Vereinfachung das neue Fortschrittssymbol. Wer sich auf die 95 % der relevanten Use Cases konzentriert und die restlichen 5 % bewusst als Ausnahme behandelt, spart Geld, Zeit und Nerven. Und genau da setzt VTEX an: mit einer Plattform, die nicht jedem Hype folgt, sondern die Spielregeln verändert.

Lateinamerika: Der unterschätzte Entwicklungshub

Was oft übersehen wird: Lateinamerika – und speziell Brasilien – ist längst ein Tech-Hotspot. Jährlich verlassen rund 280.000 Ingenieure die Hochschulen. Viele von ihnen mit exzellentem technischen Background, großer Leidenschaft und – besonders wichtig – viel Praxisorientierung.   Während Osteuropa, Indien oder China stark vom geopolitischen Umfeld beeinflusst werden, gilt Brasilien als sicherer Hafen: politisch stabil, krisenfest, frei von Naturkatastrophen – und mit einem kulturellen Fokus auf langfristige Partnerschaften statt kurzfristigem Outsourcing.   Die ganz Großen haben das längst erkannt: • Meta, Google, AWS – alle bauen dort Entwickler-Hubs auf. • Accenture und WPP führen ihre globalen E-Commerce-Teams von Brasilien aus. • Und VTEX? Ist so etwas wie der Türöffner zu dieser Welt.

VTEX Day: Wenn Commerce zum Festival wird

VTEX denkt auch Marketing anders. Statt auf klassische Ads setzt man auf ein eigenes Mega-Event: den VTEX Day. Was Salesforce mit der Dreamforce kann, kontert VTEX mit brasilianischem Herzblut.   Die Zahlen? Beeindruckend: • 50.000 Teilnehmer über zwei Tage, • 10.000 Leute auf der Hauptbühne, • über 200 Speaker, 280 Sponsoren und eine Fläche von 1 Million Quadratmetern.

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Joubin Rahimi

Now we have got the first insights! Podcast here with Mariano. Hi Mariano.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Hi, pleasure to be here.

 

Joubin Rahimi

It's great. Great that we can be on your booth, right? At the OMR. And for all of you, VTEX is something pretty new in Europe, right? And perhaps, Mariano, you can say two things about you and two things about VTEX.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Okay. So about myself, I am a mechanical engineer. So I used to work for banks. Okay. And 25 years ago, I started VTEX. So we started from Brazil, from the city of Rio. And the second thing about me is that I am passionate about spearfishing. So pretty rare sport. And this is what I do, when my wife says that I just being complete as my own is just doing Spearfishing.

 

Joubin Rahimi

That's really dangerous, right?

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yeah, you need to take care.

 

Joubin Rahimi

And are you also eating the fish by your own? Oh, yeah.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

That's the best. That's really fresh.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

That's the really fresh. Afterwards, I can give you one hint here. Here's one friend of mine, a spearfisher, and he's bringing really good fish to the table. That's the best.

 

Joubin Rahimi

That's the best.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

And he worked for some of these really biggest guys with yachts over 100 Meter. Oh. I cannot say the name, but okay.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

So about VTEX. VTEX is a 25 years old company, a digital commerce platform. We started in Brazil and now we operate in 46 countries. We are public in New York Stock Exchange. We are the leaders in IDC. In German, we operate OBI. It's a pretty big company here.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Obi for all of you.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Obi, OBI. So we operate OBI here and we see a good momentum for VTEX in Germany. That's why we came to OMR. And I'm really surprised. OMR is a huge event.

 

Joubin Rahimi

And the funny thing, Mariano, you already have also your own event, right? Yes. It is at the beginning of June. How many attendees do you have? Listen, listen now.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

So, VTEX Day, it's 25. 000 people per day. So the two days. So at the end, 50. 000 participants. It's a pretty big event.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Incredible big.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

It is. It is

 

Joubin Rahimi

like IBM has running events like that or Microsoft.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yeah, Salesforce is a bit bigger. Is bigger. VTEX Day, the main stage is for 10. 000 people. So that's the size of the event. We are running the event for the last 15 years and that's how our ecosystem connects. So we do have a 280 Sponsors and more than 200 speakers. So it's one million square meters. So it's huge. Yeah. Yeah. And that's our way to do marketing. Is producing the content and sharing the content inspired by the vision we do have for VTEX.

 

Joubin Rahimi

The great thing is when I learn about VTEX, you are the player. You are the player in the American market there.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yeah, we are doing well. I believe we were in the right spot, in the right moment. Let’s put some aspect of lucky. It’s a brasilian engineer product, but we always develop the product by deploying a complete solution, but also allowing the customers to turn on and turn off some of the modules and composing by themselves. And that naturally became a the go-to for the enterprises. We run Walmart, Carrefour, L'Oréal, Samsung, Electrolux, Whirlpool, all those industries, Black & Decker. So we run all those industries. And the thing that they have with VTEX is, when they need to go fast, they just deploy and go fast. But sometimes they have $1 billion operation and they need to compose and they need to own part of the system. So they can compose in VTEX IO as well. We are in between Shopify kind of a framework like Magento or commercetools, we are in between. And I would credit this, the success of VTEX. So we are pretty happy where we are positioning. I believe we are future proof, where we are positioning. And at the end of the day, there are not so many platforms around. And very, very few of them own it by a group of people with a founder mentality. And we are in this secret spot.

 

Joubin Rahimi

So that's very interesting because before we decided to go with VTEX, we were analyzing the situation for our clients. And what we saw, they spent a lot of money at Corona for the infrastructure and everything, what they needed. A bit too much sometimes. And then, especially in Europe and Germany, it's not going up like to Corona. It's now decreasing. Sometimes and the people say, okay, we have to save money. So okay, we are in Germany. They spend a lot of money into SAP, of course, or Salesforce, which is demandware ex demandware, which is also coming somehow from Germany. And we do have got shopware, commerce tools. So great products, but they are more and more enterprise, or they are every time enterprise. And then we have the Shopify stuff. And the people who spend a lot of money here. And then we see here, this is all right, and a gap between both. And this is very fitting. That was our feeling there.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

This is correct. The German commerce history is to sell freedom on unlimited basis. So I give you the tools and you create above it. But that actually requires 5 to 6% of the GMV to be spent in the technology infrastructure. And at the end of the day, the game right now is not anymore about functionalities. It is about ecosystem, how lean you can operate, how lean you can scale, how lean … For example, OBI is for me a world class case, where you do have a $10 billion operation run by less than 500 people in IT. And that's, I believe, where the retailers and the brand manufacturers will go. They say, they need to be lean. These are financial status quo that we are living right now. It's not even a crisis. I believe we will stay. So the high interest rate will stay, and the companies need to pursue a fast track to innovate and to customize and develop 100% their own DevOps and everything. It's just too much. So with VTEX, you can choose where you put your bets. So at the end of the day, I state that freedom is not the right to compose.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Freedom is the right to write off what you have composed before. So when you want to turn it off, you just turn it off your custom thing, you use out of the box, and you keep innovating where you really make the difference.

 

Joubin Rahimi

And this is what I thought, is you're having the commerce part, you have got a CMS, you have got a PIM, you have got a marketplace, which is very broad portfolio, right? Yes. But it's more or less commodity. So not your product, but in general, it is nothing so special after 25, 30 years of innovation there.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

It's interesting enough to say that innovation right now is to do the same thing with 80% less resources. That's innovation.

 

Joubin Rahimi

That's a good statement to say, okay, the right thing with-

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yeah, we have one of the principles of VTEX, we call insist in simplicity. And I believe the world over engineered architectures, connections,

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

especially in Germany. We are good in engineering

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

No, no, no, no. Germany is doing well. You can see other countries that over engineering much more than Germany. But at the end of the day, the world is over engineered. And now we need to just write off edge cases. You know, like there's a ground rule that say, you don't need to address 99% of the cases and automate the exceptions. Address 95% of the cases because you're going to save 80% of your money and treat the 5% as an exception that you don't need to automate. I believe that's where the commerce world will go. I believe VTEX is well positioned to capture these. So we see the German market as a huge market for us. We do have a lighthouse here that's OBI. So pretty promising what we are seeing.

 

Joubin Rahimi

So what is also pretty interesting for all the people who are watching and listening, you have got a global view, or somehow global view. And speaking in economics, how do you position Germany, Europe, America? There's so much volatility now in South America.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

So I believe Germany has hundreds or thousands of brand manufacturers. And the brand manufacturing from Germany, they are not yet with the front-end or the global positioning that they need to survive. So let’s take a company, for example, like MTU Rolls Royce. All the B2B in Germany didn’t invest in rebuilding the front-end of the channels as other countries. So it’s still a very old way of distributing and communicating. But this is about to change, because with the AI thing, you need to control the channels. So there is no space anymore for brand manufacturers, like Stanley, Black & Decker. They use VTEX, and now they are creating all like a vast numbers of channels to address any demand, from EDI, from Punchout, to self-service portal, to sales rep automation systems. So all of these, outside of SAP, we are calling this the front-end of the ERP. For many, many years, the ERP was the front-end.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Right, it was the truth for everything.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yes, and not anymore. So the B2B needs a tool to sell. And the e-commerce platforms will take this space. And Germany has a big market on B2B and can use this globally. For example, companies that are being manufactured in Germany, for them to discover a new market like Brazil, like Mexico, like Thailand, it needs the old way to go, too. With the digital, the new market comes to you. So it becomes cheaper to distribute what you already have. So it's a massive B2B replatform, that we're going to see in the world. And the incumbents like SAP, Salesforce, they do not have the capability of delivery the last mile on channels as VTEX. So that's why we are really enthusiastic by being here and by pushing the market.

 

Joubin Rahimi

What I understood is, I was in a project, one client was in Greece, and they had a lot of issues with the addresses. You have got the same, right? Because in Germany, one address, one name, nearly like that. But you have got even in Favelas and so on, not really addresses, right? No. You covered it differently.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

So this is one aspect of a global platform. When you started to VTEX and deploy multiple countries out of the box. And I believe this is one of our main differentiator. We call ourselves the backbone for connected commerce. For example, just in payments, we do have more than 150 connections, live. You don't need to integrate, you just go live. So these of things gives the brands the ability to test new markets. Instead of being a big project, they just test. And that's what I believe the world needs, is the brands to be more aggressive in testing new markets, and at the end of the day, become more profitable.

 

Joubin Rahimi

So there's still a a lot of room having German brands going over to Brazil, for example?

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

German brands going all over the world. Today, they go buy a master franchise by old ways of distributing. And I believe, it's not the digital that's changing. It's the way you distribute your manufacturing that's changed. The manufacturing is changing overall. And with the tariffs, it's a new element. Of course. Yeah.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Trump is one of the best sales guys now for Brazil.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

He's creating a lot of volatility. So at the end of the day, how you manufacture and how you distribute, now you need to lever the velocity, the speed, as one of your ingredients to survive. And I believe that's what VTEX delivers.

 

Joubin Rahimi

And one question, you have got C&A as a a client, the fashion retailer from Germany. They have got in Germany a different solution than in Latin America, right? Is that something common or is that-

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

It is pretty common.You know, like when you have a big company, you allow countries to have their own solution. So C&A a big fashion big fashion group in Brazil. And they use VTEX for many, many years. Und they outgrow their  Commerce-office in the world. So now we are seeing the opposite. Like many companies starting us in in of the of the countries and exporting VTEX to other counties. And it's interesting because the best practice of e-Commerce, digital channels, B2B channels, it is actually commoditizing. So people believe that, oh, I am unique am I am in a unique country. For unique conditions. Maybe not. Maybe you're going to see the world and say, oh, the best logistics systems are coming out of Argentina and Romania. The best social media is coming out of Indonesia and China. The best OMS system is coming out of United States. And VTEX operating all the 46 countries, we know what's the best of the best, and we put this in one platform. So we call ourselves a very opinionated software. So we tell our customers how they need to architecture the software and save money and be lean and be fast.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

So it's a different world, different type of software to be around.

 

Joubin Rahimi

It's not only software, right?

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

It's not software anymore. You need to have an opinion. You need to be in the edge of servicing instead of just enabling to provide to your customers what they are asking for.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Great. Thank you. One last question. You are the co founder of VTEX.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yes.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Really happy to be part of the show here. When was the moment to say, Okay, this is now I want this is now, I want to found VTEX. Was was any tipping moment?

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

I was working for a bank. I was 22 years old. It was 25 years ago, I'm 47. And in back there. Brazil was not in the loop of investments. So it was not easy to create a new company.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Okay, yeah.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

But at the end of the day, we believed in the brazillian engineering. Brazillian engineering is one of the most secret, hidden secrets in the world. For example, nobody knows, but the private jet, most sold in the United States it’s a brazilian private jet.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Okay, which one?

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

It’s a Embraher Phenon 300.

 

Joubin Rahimi

Is that Embraher? Is it-Brazilian?

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yeah, Brazil. So, a brazilian engineering has been behind for many, many things in the world. And it was something that I am a mechanical engineer, as I said. So I said, we need to do something that can show the capability of our engineering. And the Internet was booming and then I say: Okay, let’s join the engineering from Brazil plus Internet, and let’s create here a company called VTEX. We struggled for many, many, many years. Just after twelve years of brazilian operation, we added a first, second country, that was Argentina. And after 2012, we concurred like Latin America up to 2016. I believe we were like the big leader there. And then we opened to the US and we opened to Europa.

 

Joubin Rahimi

and you are going fast

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

And then we're going fast and fast. We did our IPO in 2021. July 2021. And it was amazing, IPL. So it was pretty interesting, the journey from a very, very small startup to a huge public company right now. But the spirit of founder-led, the energy, I believe, is still in the company.

 

Joubin Rahimi

And I have got a last, last question.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Please, please.

 

Joubin Rahimi

So in Germany, I go into agencies and companies. So we're thinking about how we can be better for our clients what is really needed. One Part is that the clients want to have got reliable agencies and it service companies where they can act with. So you need local presence. Where everything is produced, it really doesn't matter. Pricing doesn't matter, but where... FIrst data, security things, but it doesn't matter. So we went to Eastern Europe, we went to India, so so Germany at all. So we looked at Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia. So we have several of these countries also development hubs and now my question is, after looking also to Africa, we didn't look at Latin America or Brazil. And you said it's a best hidden secret. Should we move with a development unit to Brazil?

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

I believe there are five big regions in the world where engineering have the asset, the amount of people being formed by universities. We have Indien, China und Russia as the biggest regions. Then we have Eastern Europe and Latinamerika. Eastern Europe, around 300. 000 engineers, Lateinamerika, around 280. 000 engineers a a year. And because of the geopolitics, in the last 5, 10 years, all the four big regions are outdated. So desperate, the world is looking for a safe harbour, where you have almost unlimited resources so you can use. And that's Latin America. And Brazil, by being the biggest country of Latin America

 

Joubin Rahimi

The most stable country.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

Yeah, can lead the way in a safe shore. Because Brazil and Latin America has a lot of bad things. But one good thing: We don't like war. We never been into war. And we are pretty safe. There is no earthquake. So you know, because we were forgotten by the world, now is a really amazing place where where you can deploy development. You can really have high level Engineering in a very affordable way and the people have grips. and passion. Passion, Grit, – „Kreativ-engineerie, i call.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

AWS, Meta, Google, all the big ones are hiring thousands of brazilians, Argentinians, Colombians right now. So I believe that you should see it. And there are many small companies that you can buy. So Accenture, the leading unit of Accenture in the world for commerce right now, is a brazilian company that they bought. WPP, the same the leading company for them in the world for e-commerce is a brazilian company. So many of the bigger size in the world is buying small companies and developing from the grounds in Latin America. So you should definitely take a look.

 

Joubin Rahimi

You too. You too, yes. Thank you for all the insights.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

it's a pleasure.

 

Joubin Rahimi

That's very, very valuable. Having the outside view of you helps everyone here to make better decisions.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

And thank you. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Amazing ecosystems that i am just realizing you have here.

 

Joubin Rahimi

The funny thing is here, the hamburgers, so the people who are living here, don't like the OMR because it's too fancy, too loud, too many people. I think that.

 

Mariano Gomide de Faria

We love loud people

 

Joubin Rahimi

Thank you so much

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