For large manufacturers juggling diverse brand portfolios, the goal is always consistent, high-quality customer experience. Yet, achieving this often means battling chaos behind the scenes. The reality for many of these giants is a sprawling digital mess fraught with technical debt and internal resistance.
To dive into this challenge, we must look at the complex technical and human dynamics of managing multi-brand strategies.
TL;DR:
- Fragmented tech and internal resistance quietly break customer experience.
- One-size-fits-all platforms don’t work; flexible frontends with unified integration do.
- Technical debt from legacy systems and M&A blocks shared data and insight.
- The real challenge is aligning people, platforms, and strategy across brands.
The root cause: Fragmentation and resistance
The most obvious issue is fragmented technology, especially if brands were built or acquired over time. They all come with different maturity levels and tech stacks.
This sprawl doesn’t just impact code; it hits the internal teams. People are resistant to change. Employees accustomed to their current system will naturally resist moving to a unified platform, a challenge compounded by different fixed overheads and P&L structures across the various business units.
The customer experience tangle
This internal complexity directly sabotages the customer experience (CX). Fragmented tech and siloed data make basic operational efficiencies almost impossible.
For example, one brand might have a high-performing campaign. You can’t just replicate the campaign for the other brands. You may have different systems, different data rules, maybe even different GDPR requirements per brand entity.
Furthermore, brands need flexibility, not uniformity. If a portfolio includes everything from air conditioners to dog food to boat parts, the customer journeys are vastly different. You need flexibility at the frontend to shape the experience to the product’s needs, rather than forcing a single template onto everyone.
Technical debt: Paying for the past
The accumulation of technical debt is a slow-moving crisis for multi-brand companies. It arises primarily from two corporate behaviors:
The “If it’s not broken” mentality: Keeping old, stable, but inefficient technology running simply because it “just works.”
M&A readiness: When brands are prepared for sale or merger, tech investment is often minimized to make the books look as healthy as possible. As a result, the acquired brand lands in the portfolio with a two-, three-, or four-year-old stack.
The parent company then has the difficult task of dragging that brand up to the required maturity level, or vice versa. Since many house of brands setups grant individual brands autonomy, they often stick with preferred tools, exacerbating the problem.
This is where data becomes the greatest challenge. What can be shared, what can’t, and how do you get insights to flow across the portfolio?
When done right, the payoff is huge. One of our clients with several brands used cross-brand customer data to stop retargeting people with products they had already bought (e.g., stopping the ad bombardment for surf shorts after the purchase) and instead promoted complementary gear.
The Path to consolidation: Flexibility over forced unity
For years, the conventional wisdom was that the best solution was to move everything to one single enterprise platform. Today, while a shared stack is clean and highly scalable, this approach is often too expensive or too rigid for all brands within a diverse portfolio.
The approach today is far more pragmatic and flexible.
A good example is Lippert. While their main brand runs on Adobe Commerce, they chose Shopify Plus for some of the smaller brands, because it matched the maturity of those brands and their individual P&Ls.
The key takeaway is that the solution is not a uniform platform, but unified integration.
The complexity isn’t about using one platform; it’s about integration. The core task is ensuring that your preferred technology, like your single source of truth for PIM (Product Information Management) or ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), can work seamlessly with different frontend commerce technologies. The technology doesn’t have to be the same, but it has to work together.
Advice for leaders: Validate the belief
Before you push through any new piece of technology, you must get your business case validated. The core question should be: Does this project improve brand enrichment and brand cohesion? Can I replicate the successful outcome of this project 10x across my other brands so that we all win?
This strategic approach moves beyond simply replacing old comfort zones and focuses on tangible business transformation.
Vaimo’s superpower: Orchestration and experience
When dealing with a house of brands, you’re often dealing with ten stakeholders, not one. The orchestration of unifying those teams and getting them aligned under the business case is what’s truly complex.
For a company facing a complex, multi-brand challenge, the core need is a partner who can see both the forest and the trees.
At Vaimo, we know how to build really good experiences that convert. This involves understanding the value that needs to be created for both the business and the end consumer. With over 15 years of experience implementing solutions for brands and manufacturers, we take the pain of doubt away.
Want to learn how to turn your technical debt into a competitive advantage? Join us for our Multi-Brand Strategies Masterclass in January!
