From Vue Storefront to Alokai: The story behind our rebranding

Today, we're celebrating a significant milestone in our journey – a transformative shift from Vue Storefront to Alokai. This change isn't just about a new name – it's a reflection of our growth, turning our vision into reality, and our commitment to paving the way towards composable commerce. 

The origin: Where did we begin? 

It all started when a group of developers realized there had to be a better way to optimize the Magento frontend for performance and proper customizations. The year was 2017 and the new headless approach just took on the market, promising better performance and faster delivery. So they decided to build a solution that would allow to reuse components and accelerate the development. And that’s how our open-source storefront starter came to be. 

Fast-forward to 2021, our journey took a significant leap and Vue Storefront came into its own, earning a spot in the Y Combinator lineup. What followed were years of product development, expanding our tech to support new backends and frameworks, securing nearly $40 million in funding, and fostering a dedicated community. 

Up until the very point where it's become clear that Vue Storefront has outgrown its name. 

Explore Alokai

The change: Why are we rebranding?

We grew, our customer and partner bases expanded, and now we’ve reached the point where we could no longer pretend that “Vue” and “Storefront” was enough to describe our product.

"Alokai is more than a new name. This change embodies our vision to lead and guide the industry towards a future where adapting composable commerce should be as easy as possible and available to everyone. It's about embracing the full spectrum of possibilities in composable commerce, ensuring we remain at the forefront of innovation and service excellence."

Patrick Friday,
Alokai CEO and co-founder

More than Vue, more than Storefront

The announcement of our React version in March 2023 raised an important question: “They can’t seriously be running React projects with Vue literally in the name!” This moment highlighted our broader mission: to offer a true plug-and-play experience, free from the constraints of any single frontend framework or ecommerce backend.

This transition reflects our journey from a specific solution to a versatile platform, ready to guide and accelerate global composable commerce and digital experiences:

“Our evolution has taken us far beyond the confines of a traditional storefront. We no longer simply provide a UI kit for accelerating storefront implementation. Instead, Alokai has become a rich ecosystem of integrations, facilitating the entire customer journey – we help our clients build, connect, and deploy enterprise-grade frontends faster.”

Patrick Friday,
Alokai CEO and co-founder

The mission: What do we hope to build?

Our mission has always been clear: to guide merchants towards easier composable commerce adoption and accelerate time to market. 

We aim to reduce the complexity of adopting composable commerce, making it easier, faster, and more affordable for everyone. With that in mind, we give the merchants all the necessary tools to enhance their customer experience by leveraging our comprehensive platform to connect, build, deploy, and improve their online presence. 

"There was a clear need for a solution that would act like a bridge between complex custom code enterprises rely on and build&buy platforms with limited functionality. Alokai has become that solution.” 

Patrick Friday,
Alokai CEO and co-founder

Driving change one step at a time, frontend-first

Frontend defines customer experience, which directly impacts conversion rates and revenue. But building customer experience comes with a price. Integrating different systems like CMSs, search solutions, or recommendation engines is time-consuming, expensive and requires a lot of maintenance and knowledge. Same for deploying and hosting your application later. That’s where Alokai comes in. 

“We are on a mission to provide one product that helps our customers to connect, build, deploy, and then improve their online stores - giving ready-made modules, like integrations with popular CMSs, but still allowing them to build their own architecture and control every part of the journey.”

Filip Rakowski
Alokai’s CTO and co-founder

The meaning: What does Alokai stand for?

In our quest for a name that captures our essence and future direction, we drew inspiration from the harmony and leadership found in an orchestra. The name Alokai is inspired by the concept of leadership and guidance, much like a conductor orchestrating a symphony. 

Developers are skilled musicians. The instruments are all the essential ecommerce tools:  APIs, UI components, and architecture guides, etc. Each piece, from a line of code to a design element, blends like notes in a melody. And we are in the middle of it all, carefully guiding the orchestra, ensuring the symphony flows.

This vision led us to 'Alakai', a term rooted in the Hawaiian language, meaning 'a leader' or 'a guide'. From this, Alokai emerged – a name that's straightforward, memorable, and perfectly reflective of our role as navigators and innovators in technology. 

The choice to change "a" to "o" in moving from 'Alakai' to 'Alokai' was deliberate, too, reflecting our commitment to openness and the open-source community. This subtle shift honors as well our roots in Vue Storefront, with the letter "O" being the only letter shared between the new and old name.

Alokai reflects our ambition to harmonize the digital ecommerce landscape, guiding developers and businesses through the complexities of digital transformation with clarity and simplicity. 

“Our new identity as Alokai is a testament to our dedication to openness, innovation, and our roots in the open-source community”

Patrick Friday,
Alokai CEO and co-founder

The change: What else is new?

It’s much more than just a name, let us tell you that!

Our rebranding encompasses everything from the name to the overall visual identity. 

The new logo and branding embody our focus on connectivity, agnosticism, and transformation. 

Our refreshed color palette pays homage to our origins with Vue Storefront, introducing mature shades of green, purple, and gray to symbolize our growth and evolution.

But one thing will always stay the same.

Our core value: Empowering developers

As we live through this major update, our commitment to developers remains unchanged. Even though our focus has shifted towards serving enterprise clients, our dedication to making developers' lives easier remains at the heart of Alokai. 

This commitment is reflected in every line of code and page of documentation we create and share with our open-source community . 

The future: What’s next for Alokai?

2023 was the year when we fully embraced the spirit of agnosticism and brought to life the first truly composable frontend. This wasn't just about innovation; it was about setting a new market standard – a solution that's not tied down by frontend frameworks or backend constraints.

As 2024 unfolds, we're not just stepping up; we're leaping forward! We aim to be the driving force behind the businesses stuck between “embracing risky replatforming” and “staying within the constraints of legacy systems”. Our mantra – modernize without replatforming – is more than a goal. It's a promise. 

“Our evolution into Alokai marks a new chapter, embodying our commitment to innovation, versatility, and developer empowerment across the globe. Looking ahead, I'm even more hopeful and excited for the future we're shaping together.”

Patrick Friday,
Alokai CEO and co-founder

We act as a bridge between the best of MACH and legacy systems, allowing companies to remain on robust ecommerce platforms like SAP Commerce Cloud , Salesforce CC , and Adobe Commerce, while leveraging the latest composable tools at the same time. Our frontend-first approach allows merchants to introduce monumental updates with minimal changes to the user-end of things, enriching, not jeopardizing, customer experience.

"Companies in composable space are obsessed with combining best-of-breed technologies as plug-and-play API's, but the frontend is still left behind. A reasonable question arises: how to maintain flexibility without being shackled by the backend technologies? At Alokai, we've tackled this head-on with our Unified Data Layer, enabling a truly decoupled frontend experience. Our approach will allow for seamless transitions and integrations, making the adoption of composable architectures less risky, more cost-effective, and truly plug-and-play.“ 

Filip Rakowski
Alokai’s CTO and co-founder

In embracing our new identity, we're not just navigating the present; we're charting a course for the future of digital commerce. A future where flexibility, speed, and innovation drive success in an ever-changing landscape. 

Welcome to Alokai , where we're redefining the rules, one seamless experience at a time.