The Disappearing Storefront: Why B2B Commerce Needs a ‘System of Work’ for AI

For decades, digital commerce has revolved around one thing: the storefront.

Pixel-perfect homepages. Product detail pages engineered to convert. Checkout flows measured to the millisecond.

That era is ending.

AI agents don’t shop like people do. They don’t browse categories or admire your hero banner. They parse structured data, apply pricing rules, and transact in seconds. That means the storefront isn’t the center of commerce anymore; it’s future is fading into the background.Let’s Be Real: B2B Never had Great Storefronts

Let’s Be Real: B2B Never had Great Storefronts

If we’re being honest, most B2B storefronts were never great. Many manufacturers still rely on clunky portals and workflows, PDFs, punchout integrations, or even physical mail-order catalogs. Even the companies that “digitized” often bolted storefronts onto legacy systems, leaving buyers with clumsy interfaces to navigate.

But this lag in digital adoption might turn into an advantage. Just as some markets skipped landlines and went straight to mobile, B2B companies can skip the era of over-engineered storefronts and leapfrog into an AI-mediated future.

Research suggests that this appetite for B2B disruption is stronger than many think. We surveyed B2B manufacturers and wholesalers earlier this year in our Digital Commerce Landscape report and found:

• Manufacturers: 56% say AI adoption is a top factor influencing their digital commerce strategy, and 45% are prioritizing product discoverability as the top investment to drive digital growth.
• Wholesalers: 49% reported major shifts in buyer spending patterns as the top factor influencing strategy, while 56% are doubling down on custom product/component configuration as their top investment to drive growth.

And in qualitative interviews, leaders repeatedly told us their focus was on orchestrating highly specific, business-critical rules across systems. Meeting these goals requires a shift to connected, machine-readable ecosystems that unlock access to real-time data, enforceable business rules, and reliable transaction flows.

That’s exactly the role a “system of work” plays in commerce. As Andreessen Horowitz noted in a recent analysis, the most durable AI companies don’t just bolt agents onto existing systems of record. They become the system of work, or a “durable moat [that controls] where and how the data enters the system.”

We’ve Seen this Movie Before

The internet has faced this kind of disruption before. Each time, new infrastructure had to emerge to keep the ecosystem stable. You can think of each of these big shifts as their own “systems of work,” controlling the flow of data in the ecosystem.

• Search and Robots.txt: Early crawlers were chaos until robots.txt established rules of engagement.
• Payments and PCI DSS: Online transactions were the wild west until PCI standards created a secure, scalable model.
• DNS: The web was unfindable until DNS gave every site a name. Without it, brands were invisible.
• OAuth: App-to-app connections were unsafe until OAuth introduced delegated permissions.

Every leap required new rules of engagement. AI commerce is no different. That’s why we’re imagining a world where the commerce platform must function as a system of work for transactions. Practically, this looks like a:

• Data layer: Feeding agents structured product data, pricing rules, and real-time availability.
• Rules engine: Handling B2B-specific requirements like CPQ, EDI, and multi-tier catalogs.
• Trust framework: Validating which agents are allowed to act, under what terms, with what permissions.

The Leapfrog Moment for B2B

Whether we’d like to accept the reality or not, AI agents are quickly becoming the new interface for commerce.

For B2C brands, the storefront is no longer the brand identity and that shift might feel like a threat. But for B2B companies, many of whom were never going to win on glossy, pastel storefronts, it’s an opportunity to leapfrog. Instead of chasing design trends, they can implement a system of work that AI agents and human buyers can trust.

That means shifting investments away from the storefront and into the foundations of intelligent commerce:

• Machine-readable data
• API-driven integrations
• Intelligent configuration tools
• Transaction frameworks that protect both brand and buyer.

Prepare for a shift where commerce platforms become the true system of work for AI commerce — handling the data, rules, and transactions that make agent-to-agent commerce work. That’s the real frontier. And it’s coming faster than most companies think.