Toms Shoes has announced a fortification of its ecommerce operation, bringing in Deck Commerce to create a two-pronged architecture that separates the shopping experience from the logistics engine powering it.
Even with Shopify on board to provide the best ecommerce experience for customers, Toms Shoes came to identify a few core areas where the online fulfillment was breaking down, including:
- Fragmented order workflows
- Limited inventory coordination
- Manual exception handling
- Scalability constraints
To address these issues, Toms Shoes has recently added Deck Commerce as a behind-the-scenes order orchestration layer, according to a press release from the company. That layer will handle fulfillment, inventory and backend coordination. The combination addresses operational challenges that Shopify alone wasn’t designed to solve. The result, the company said, has been improved automation, fulfillment reliability and scalability without replacing existing systems.
Toms Shoes is No. 271 in the Top 2000 Database. That database ranks North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.
Currently, more than 110 of the Top 2000 online retailers in North America use Shopify as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2025, the combined web sales of all Top 2000 retailers that used Shopify’s ecommerce platform reached $10.458 billion.
Those in the database using Deck Commerce for order management combined for more than $2.8 billion in ecommerce sales last year.
What using Deck Commerce solves for Toms Shoes
Ecommerce experts said the addition of Deck Commerce should continue to help Toms Shoes address some of the challenges it was facing.
“For Toms, this setup means easier operations, less manual work, fewer disconnected systems, better order management, and an easier system to expand if needed,” said Aaron Smedley, general manager of Shopify at Cloudinary, a cloud-based media optimization and management platform. “And probably most important, less disruptive because it doesn’t require ripping and replacing everything.”
Smedley said more brands will likely follow suit because pressures are coming from multiple fronts. Those pressures include the need to modernize, meet customer expectations for fast delivery and accurate inventory, and an increased focus on backend operations.
“This structure isn’t necessarily disruptive because it’s really more evolutionary rather than revolutionary at this stage of ecommerce. Brands want flexibility to adjust and meet what the market demands, but in a way that means they can keep what works and directly replace what doesn’t,” Smedley said.
He added that while not disruptive, this type of structure is becoming the new normal.
“With this structure, you have specialized tools effectively working together and less reliance on all-in-one platforms,” Smedley said.
Taking a multi-platform approach
Mandy Cordia, founder and ecommerce consultant at The Kindness Cause, an ecommerce consultancy, also views the addition of Deck Commerce as more of a maturation than a disruption in the industry.
“Shopify does an excellent job helping brands launch, sell and scale online,” Cordia said. “However, inventory management, order orchestration, fulfillment routing, exception handling and advanced reporting are areas where many growing brands eventually find themselves seeking additional solutions.”
And that is where Deck Commerce excels.
“This is not a criticism of Shopify,” Cordia said. “In many ways, it reflects Shopify’s philosophy of providing a flexible ecosystem rather than an all-in-one enterprise solution.”
She added that the challenge for brands is that as operational complexity increases, they often discover that some of the tools they need either require third-party applications, custom integrations or higher-tier plans to access.
Cordia said inventory management is an area where Deck Commerce can lend extra muscle.
“While Shopify provides inventory functionality that works well for many businesses, organizations with multiple warehouses, omnichannel fulfillment requirements, complex product assortments, or high order volume often require more sophisticated inventory visibility and order management capabilities than a storefront platform is designed to provide on its own,” Cordia said.
Deck Commerce recently partnered with Eddie Bauer to offer similar backend fulfillment capabilities and solutions. Cordia said that overall, this type of multi-pronged approach will continue to grow and evolve. Toms also uses Cart.com on the back end.
“This reflects where ecommerce is heading,” Cordia said. “Success is becoming less about finding a single platform that does everything and more about building an ecosystem of specialized tools that work together to create a seamless customer and operational experience.”
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