Introducing Distributed Ecommerce Hub: The Smarter Way to Scale Your Business

For manufacturers with distributor networks, franchisors, and direct-selling platforms, scaling ecommerce across a partner network can be a challenging, disjointed process. Each new storefront launch often requires manual setup, results in inconsistent branding, and offers limited visibility into performance, making it difficult to scale efficiently or maintain control.

Distributed commerce is complex. But it doesn’t have to be.

That’s why BigCommerce, in partnership with Silk Commerce, is launching Distributed Ecommerce Hub — a centralized platform built to simplify and supercharge how you launch, manage, and grow storefronts for your partner network.

“Distributed Ecommerce Hub represents a step change in how manufacturers, distributors, and franchises can approach ecommerce at scale,” shared Lance Owide, General Manager of B2B at BigCommerce. “Rather than treating each new storefront as a new custom project, brands can now enable their entire network from a single platform, accelerating time to market, improving partner performance, and increasing channel control while also maintaining brand consistency and quality.”

The problem with traditional distributed ecommerce

For many manufacturers, franchisors, and direct-selling organizations, enabling ecommerce across a network of partners or individual sellers is a constant challenge.

• Storefronts often lack cohesion across regions or sellers, resulting in inconsistent customer experiences.

• Product catalogs are difficult to manage at scale and frequently prone to errors.

• Partners receive little to no support, leading to slow and inefficient launch timelines.

• Parent brands, franchisors, and manufacturers have limited visibility into product performance and key analytics.

• IT teams spend months addressing repetitive challenges that should be solved through centralized systems.

These challenges slow everything down. Instead of focusing on growth, businesses are stuck solving the same problems over and over. Without a unified system in place, scaling becomes inefficient, disconnected, and unsustainable.

Enter Distributed Ecommerce Hub.

What is Distributed Ecommerce Hub?

Distributed Ecommerce Hub is a powerful solution that enables you to launch branded, compliant, and data-connected storefronts at scale. Whether your network requires 10 stores or 1,000, the platform makes it easy to deliver consistent customer experiences, support your partners, and maintain full control over your brand.

Built on top of BigCommerce’s powerful SaaS ecommerce platform and its B2B toolkit, B2B Edition, Distributed Ecommerce Hub extends those features through a turnkey partner portal developed by Silk. The result is a powerful, centralized solution for enabling downstream sellers — fast.

With Distributed Ecommerce Hub, brands can accelerate storefront launches, maintain brand consistency, scale beyond the limits of traditional multi-storefront setups, and gain total visibility into sales and performance across their entire network.

“We designed Distributed Ecommerce Hub to meet the needs of complex, distributed organizations who want to scale ecommerce without sacrificing control,” said Michael Payne, Vice President of Silk Commerce. “By combining BigCommerce’s flexible, open platform with our deep systems integration experience, we’ve created a powerful solution that can support anything from five storefronts to 5,000 — or even more.”

Who is Distributed Ecommerce Hub for?

Distributed Ecommerce Hub is purpose-built for manufacturers with distributor or dealer networks, franchisors, and direct-selling platforms who need a better way to scale their ecommerce strategy.

Manufacturers.

Push down catalogs and promotions, ensure brand consistency, and gather network-wide insights — all while enabling dealers/distributors to manage their own ecommerce storefronts.

Franchisors.

Maintain control of brand and product data while giving franchisees the tools to manage localized content, offers, and orders.

Direct selling platforms.

Provision storefronts for thousands of individual sellers with personalized experiences, centralized compliance, and scalable ecommerce enablement.

Distributed Ecommerce Hub key features

Distributed Ecommerce Hub combines the power of BigCommerce’s flexible, open platform with enhanced functionality from Silk to deliver a robust, scalable solution for distributed commerce:

• Centralized store creation and management: Easily launch and manage hundreds or even thousands of storefronts from a single admin panel with no manual setup and no developer bottlenecks.

• Shared and customizable catalogs and pricing: Distribute product catalogs and pricing structures across your network with precision. Push standardized catalogs to all stores or tailor selections and price lists for specific dealers, distributors, or regions, all from one place.

• Full theme and brand control: Maintain a cohesive brand identity across every storefront. Assign themes, branding assets, and layouts globally while allowing partners to localize content and promotions within approved boundaries.

• Role-based access and Single Sign-On (SSO): Manage permissions at every level with role-based access controls and SSO. Empower your team and partners with the right tools, while keeping governance and compliance intact.

• Unified order tracking and analytics: Track orders and performance across every storefront from one centralized dashboard. Get a complete view of your network’s activity with sales reporting, inventory insights, and customer behavior analytics.

• B2B workflows: Support complex buying journeys with native B2B capabilities. Enable quote requests, bulk orders, negotiated pricing, and multi-step approval workflows, tailored for enterprise and trade buyers.

• Performance dashboards for dealers and franchises: Give each store operator visibility into their performance. Distributed Ecommerce Hub provides individual storefronts with dashboards to track sales, inventory, fulfillment, and customer trends, helping your partners sell smarter.

Turn complexity into streamlined growth

What once took weeks of coordination and custom development can now be done in minutes, with full control and visibility.

Here’s how Distributed Ecommerce Hub simplifies and accelerates your digital strategy:

1. Create: Instantly launch new storefronts from your central admin panel. No developer resources required.

2. Customize: Apply themes, control branding, and tailor catalogs for consistent yet flexible storefront experiences.

3. Share: Seamlessly hand over store access to partners with the right permissions already in place.

4. Distribute: Push updates, product changes, and promotions across your entire network with a few clicks.

5. Manage: Track performance, manage users, and ensure compliance from a single, centralized platform.

By bringing storefront creation, catalog management, and performance tracking into one solution, Distributed Ecommerce Hub helps transform complex, distributed selling into a scalable growth engine for your brand and your partners alike.

The final word

If you’re a manufacturer, franchisor, or direct selling platform looking to modernize and scale your online strategy, Distributed Ecommerce Hub is the platform built to help you do it.

Talk to a BigCommerce expert about how Distributed Ecommerce Hub can help you streamline and scale your distributed selling strategy.