Al’s Sporting Goods Goes Headless with VTEX and deco.cx

Al’s Sporting Goods was ready to up their game when it came to digital agility. They needed an ecommerce stack that could keep pace with an expanding catalog, evolving customer expectations, and the demands of a fast-moving omnichannel retail environment. 

The company operates five Al’s Sporting Goods stores in Utah and Idaho, plus four Bob Ward’s Sporting Goods locations in Montana, and knew they needed a solution that could deliver more speed, more flexibility, and less friction without slowing their momentum.

Teaming up with VTEX and Deco.cx, Al’s made the strategic move to pragmatic composability—rebuilding their digital foundation for faster content updates, smarter merchandising, and future-ready innovation. The result was a flexible, scalable commerce experience that converts better and evolves faster. 

A growing gap between vision and reality

Al’s Sporting Goods had long thrived on the VTEX platform, fueling omnichannel growth—but their digital experience just wasn’t keeping pace with their competitors when it came to site speed and conversion. The team knew it was time to rethink their strategy before they started losing ground.

At the start of 2024, the Al’s leadership team decided to take control of their ecommerce future before challenges turned into obstacles. With a strong omnichannel presence and a diverse catalog featuring brands like Nike, Patagonia, and The North Face, they needed a platform that could offer more flexibility, improve product discovery, and support continuous evolution of the site. The goal was clear: modernize their digital commerce strategy with modern front-end technologies that would uplevel Al’s Sporting Goods as a leader in online retail.

Flexibility that wasn't flexible enough

When they had more straightforward ecommerce needs, Al’s Sporting Goods successfully used VTEX Store Framework to manage content and the front-end experience on their website.But, as the company’s catalog and complexity increased, so did their need for a more flexible solution. Their needs had outgrown the  out-of-the box options, and it was time to move to a tool that would allow them to:

• Launch campaigns fast without dev support
• Tailor content to different audiences
• Empower non-technical teams to manage digital assets and pages

A catalog too complex to convert

Managing thousands of SKUs across brands like Patagonia and Nike had become a logistical headache. Navigation was clunky. Search underperformed. Collections lacked cohesion. And every friction point risked lost sales. Al’s needed a more structured and intuitive catalog that could give them. The previous architecture struggled with:

• Efficient product categorization and intuitive navigation Expanded filtering and search capabilities to improve product discovery.
• Better organization for product groupings, enhancing the effectiveness of merchandising efforts.

A future-ready digital commerce strategy

To stay at the front of the pack, Al’s needed a modular, scalable commerce architecture built to support its online + BOPIS model and prepare for future innovations like rapid checkout and detailed delivery commitments.

Al’s Sporting Goods teamed up with VTEX and Deco.cx to take on these challenges, moving to a headless architecture built for speed, flexibility, and standout customer experiences.

Headless CMS + VTEX: Total Experience Control

The shift to Deco.cx’s headless CMS—integrated directly with VTEX—gave Al’s Sporting Goods complete control over the frontend experience. The results were immediate:

• Lightning-fast content updates, no backend interference
• Seamless, branded UX across devices
• Advanced content scheduling, customization, and personalization capabilities
• Real-time A/B testing, monitoring, and modification from one centralized interface
• Advanced content scheduling, customization, and personalization capabilities

The company also became one of the first retailers to implement a fully headless "My Account" experience through deco.cx, allowing the Al’s team to design intuitive, customer-centric navigation flows and implement cohesive styling throughout the shopping journey.

A catalog (re)built for conversion

A full catalog transformation  was a critical component of Al’s digital transformation, streamlining the customer journey and boosting conversion by reducing friction at every step through:

• A renewed catalog tree that makes navigation more intuitive
• Enhanced specifications and filtering to help customers find products easily
• Better collection aggregation, improving cross-sell and upsell opportunities

Built for what's next

By embracing pragmatic composability using VTEX’s composable and complete digital commerce platform, Al’s Sporting Goods laid the foundation for future-focused innovation:

• Optimized total cost of ownership (TCO), enables the company to pursue continuous ecommerce innovation without compromising profitability
• Seamless integration processes for fast deployment of new features like FastCheckout and Delivery Promise (rolling out in 2025), and AI-powered personalization with Synerise
• Cutting-edge HTMX-based frontend innovations that optimize frontend performance while maintaining dynamic content capabilities
• Real-time A/B testing, monitoring, and modification from one centralized interface

Stronger performance, higher revenue

A more intuitive shopping experience and improved catalog structure have increased revenue by 16% in Q1 2025.

How tailored the buyer journey and increased seller productivity.

Optimizing search, navigation, and content management led to an 8% increase in organic traffic in Q1 YoY. In the same time frame, improved filtering and product discovery also contributed to a 20% higher average order value (AOV), reinforcing the impact of a streamlined digital experience.

Enhanced site performance through advanced technology

The implementation of Async Render technology by deco.cx has enabled faster site loading times, improving user experience while reducing bounce rates. This performance optimization ensures customers can browse products quickly and with low latency.

What's next for Al's Sporting Goods

With a modern, composable commerce stack, Al’s Sporting Goods is positioned for continued innovation. The company’s roadmap with VTEX includes:

• Launching FastCheckout, Delivery Promises, and upcoming VTEX out-of-the-box solutions, ensuring a seamless setup and improved operational efficiency
• Integrating AI-driven personalization with Synerise, enhancing customer engagement without the need for a full search overhaul
• Staying at the forefront of digital commerce trends by continuously evolving alongside VTEX’s ecosystem

The partnership between deco.cx and Al's is driving future advancements through:

• An ongoing project to further scale the benefits Al's can achieve with Deco's CMS, consistently positioning AL's ahead of market competitors
• The initiation of an AI project aimed at supporting AL's operations, with a specific focus on developing a generative CMS solution