Demandware charged retailers a share of every sale that passed through the online stores it ran for them. It did well only when they did. Big brands used its cloud software to build sites, manage products and process orders without running their own servers. When Demandware filed to go public in 2012, many retailers still ran older e-commerce software in their own data centers. Online shopping was growing quickly.

Intershop's Founder Tries Again

Stephan Schambach founded Demandware near Boston in 2004. He had earlier founded Intershop, a German e-commerce software company. His bet was that retailers would rather rent a fully managed store in the cloud than build and maintain their own systems. Tying fees to customer sales lined Demandware up with the retailers it served. Its customers included apparel, footwear and consumer brands.

Becoming Commerce Cloud

Demandware priced at $16 a share in March 2012 and jumped on its first day. It grew as more retailers moved to the cloud. In 2016 Salesforce bought Demandware for about $2.8 billion, one of the largest deals Salesforce had made to that point. Demandware became Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Retailers kept using the platform under its new name, now part of the Salesforce product line.

Cover: Marchand abat-jours, Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a street merchant (retail).