E-Commerce Rumour Mill: Is Demandware Founder Stephan Schambach Sending Brick and Mortar Retail To The Cloud?

At NewStore.com there currently lurks a new (e-)commerce system provider in stealth mode which is attributed to Intershop/Demandware founder and serial investor Stephan Schambach.

According to bizjournals.com Newstore brings together numerous technologies, such as iBeacons and Apple pay, with the aim of becoming the leading mobile-centric e-commerce provider.

Even Jochen Fuchs from t3n has already detected the story, even though without mentioning that Stephan Schambach has his finger in the pie.

GoodsCloud becomes NewStore

According to a recent regulatory filing NewStore lately received $30 million in equity funding. The document lists Stephan Schambach as executive along with GoodsCloud founder Felix Schulte. That the well-known business angel had privately invested in the cloud startup is no secret, and neither is the partnership with Demandware.

This solidarity is now resulting in a new company – GoodsCloud becomes NewStore. The trade register extract of the Delaware Division of Corporations reveals GoodsCloud Inc. as the previous company name.

Couch Commerce already taken over by NewStore in May

But who was taken on board on behalf of the mobile focus? The answer is obvious as the open source web app technology CouchCommerce has been in NewStore’s possession since May.
Rumour has it that Orderbird’s iPad POS System completes the colourful round dance. Orderbird has just recently taken over Pepperbill, a competitor from Erfurt which counted more than 500 customers.

Is Stephan Schambach planning the store of the future?

This alliance indicates the new direction: omnichannel retailing + mobile + cloud. Digitalization of brick and mortar retail, a vision that was already linked with Demandware, is focused on directly.
The “Digital Store Solution”, introduced by Demandware a year ago, apparently didn’t go far enough for Stephan Schambach. Does the store of the future approach us with this new attempt? SaaS for stationary retail as the next wave of e-commerce?

At least the parties involved in NewStore hint at this. Similar to Demandware the services will undoubtedly come from the cloud. The job advertisements imply that with NewStore one of the bigger players with a comprehensive range of services is established. Any position from developer to courier is advertised.

Launch is planned for this month

This is big news for the industry. We’ll get to know soon what it really is all about. As the screenshot at bizjournals.com shows the launch has already been postponed and is now planned for August. We’ll continue reporting on this. Furthermore the update of our white paper »selecting e-commerce software« (to appear in September) will deal with the respective developments in the world of e-commerce software.