Stop Copying, Start Leading: LATAM’s Opportunity to Redefine Commerce
Legacy players are stalling. Forward-looking brands in Latin America have a chance to set a new standard—if they leap smart.
Latin American brands have long been portrayed as lagging in digital commerce. In a region where a handful of large, established platforms still dominate and dictate rigid templates, innovation has often felt boxed in. But that doesn’t mean the region is weighed down by the same problems as older ecommerce markets.
In North America and Europe, the biggest drag on transformation is deep, sprawling tech debt — decades of highly customized, tightly coupled systems that take years to unwind. LATAM’s challenge is different. While many brands do lean on legacy-style platforms, they’re not entrenched in the same hard-to-escape, bespoke architectures. And that lighter baggage is a massive advantage.
The acceleration of the past few years has opened a path not just to parity, but to leadership. By breaking free from rigid, template-driven models and skipping straight to modular, agent-native systems, LATAM brands can move faster, adapt more easily, and raise the bar for digital commerce in the region.
Agent-native, API-first commerce isn’t just a technical trend. It’s a way of rethinking how brands serve customers through automation, flexibility, and composability. But tech alone isn’t enough. Leading means changing the way organizations think, hire, measure, and operate. LATAM’s opportunity is real, but it requires boldness, vision, and the willingness to stop copying what worked elsewhere and start building what will work better.
Stalled by Templates: What’s Holding LATAM Back
Many Latin American ecommerce strategies remain dependent on the templates and best practices embedded in large, legacy platforms like SAP Commerce, Adobe Commerce, and Salesforce, or by our-of-the-box implementations of other platforms like VTEX. These platforms provide a degree of stability, but they also impose limitations. Customization is often expensive, experimentation is rare, and differentiation becomes difficult.
In this context, brands risk becoming interchangeable. When everyone uses the same tools the same way, there’s no competitive edge. LATAM’s ecommerce evolution has stalled not due to a lack of ambition, but because of a reliance on overly rigid systems that were designed for a different era of digital commerce.
The Latecomer Advantage
But being “behind” in ecommerce maturity has one powerful upside: less baggage. LATAM brands are not as burdened by sprawling legacy architectures. They can sidestep the drawn-out process of untangling outdated tech and instead leap straight to modern, modular systems.
This kind of leapfrogging has precedent. Just as parts of Africa skipped landline infrastructure in favor of mobile-first networks, LATAM has the chance to bypass the slow evolution of commerce platforms and embrace the next generation of digital experience tools, including (and most impactfully) agent-native commerce.
What Is Agent-Native Commerce and Why Does It Matter?
Agent-native commerce refers to systems that are designed to operate through autonomous services, connected via APIs, and capable of evolving with minimal human intervention. It’s not just MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless); it’s MACH with brains. These systems can adapt in real time, serve personalized experiences, and connect flexibly to other technologies.
For business leaders, the value is tangible: greater speed to market, more relevant customer interactions, and lower long-term maintenance costs. It also means freedom: from vendor lock-in, from slow release cycles, and from one-size-fits-all assumptions about the customer journey.
Who Will Lead—and What Will It Take
The LATAM brands best positioned to lead are those willing to reject “how it’s always been done.” They are less concerned with vendor prestige and more focused on delivering standout user experiences. These companies see their digital presence not as a cost center but as a key differentiator.
Leadership will require more than just new tools. It will demand new mindsets that embrace the principles of cross-functional collaboration, a focus on experimentation, and a relentless push for better user outcomes. It also requires support from the top: executives who are willing to invest in flexibility, even when it doesn’t fit neatly into a traditional roadmap.
The Transformation Is Bigger Than Tech
Digital commerce evolution is not just a technology problem. It’s a cultural one. Organizations need the right people, the right processes, and the right metrics. They need to align incentives around outcomes, not just project delivery. And they need to stop treating digital like a side channel.
Too often, companies adopt a new platform and expect it to solve old problems. But composable and agent-native systems only create value when paired with organizational change. That means rethinking KPIs, empowering teams to experiment, and building feedback loops that reward learning.
Planning the Leap
Shifting to agent-native, modular systems isn’t something that happens by chance. It takes a clear-eyed strategy that connects technology choices to business outcomes, with a plan for building the people, processes, and governance to support it. Tools like Orium’s Agentic Strategy Canvas can help leadership teams map priorities, identify quick wins, and anticipate the organizational shifts that will make technology stick. For brands that want guided support, Orium’s Studio offers a deep-dive consultation to shape and stress-test transformation plans before they’re set in motion, ensuring the leap forward is both bold and grounded.
Leading the Region, Not Just Competing in It
Latin America doesn’t need to catch up. It needs to lead. That means rejecting outdated assumptions, investing in agile infrastructures, and setting new standards for what great digital commerce looks like in the region.
The opportunity is here. LATAM brands can leap ahead by skipping the legacy clutter and embracing systems that enable smarter, faster, more human-centric experiences. The question is not whether they can do it. It’s whether they’ll choose to.
If you’re building in LATAM, the time to stop copying is now. The time to lead is already here.
