Accenture is acquiring The Stable, a Minneapolis-based commerce agency focused on helping consumer brands build and operate their own digital commerce channels—and manage their brand and sales performance across key North American retailers. The move, which will find The Stable becoming part of Accenture Song. continues Accenture’s investments in commerce to help clients accelerate growth and sustain relevance.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The acquisition of The Stable will enhance Accenture Song’s global commerce transformation expertise—and its ability to rapidly build and operate data-driven digital commerce ecosystems that maximize sales performance and deliver innovative marketing and commerce experiences, according to a statement by Accenture.
The Stable has itself been expanding. In 2020, it acquired RichContext, an ecommerce tech company and late last year, the agency acquired two leading Shopify agencies, BVA and Zehner. The Stable currently employs roughly 500 people with offices in Minneapolis, Bentonville, Seattle, Los Angeles, Vancouver and virtually across the U.S. The agency has a track record of growing consumer brands through omnichannel retail and DTC commerce.
The global digital commerce market is expected to reach $27 trillion in size by 2027—and Accenture is positioning itself to be at the forefront of the market.
“Today, every company is a commerce company. The B-to-B and B-to-C companies that fast-track their commerce transformation across the customers’ entire life journey will grow well into the future. By embedding The Stable’s set of talent and capabilities into Accenture Song’s, we will continue to help our clients meet customers where they are, on their terms and reimagine buying and selling experiences,” said Glen Hartman, Accenture Song’s global lead for commerce services, in a statement.
The Stable’s team will join Accenture and be a powerful addition to its commerce services, building upon Accenture’s strategy, design, performance, technology and large-scale operations capabilities to better serve Accenture’s clients.
“We are so proud to be joining Accenture Song to execute on our shared vision of helping the world’s best brands drive commerce and experience across all platforms and channels,” said Chad Hetherington, founder and CEO of The Stable, in a statement. “Joining forces with Accenture will enable us to radically expand our capabilities across the entire value chain and fuel massive growth and value to our clients and employees.”
The Stable is the latest in a series of acquisitions that Accenture has made to scale commerce expertise and excellence, including Businet System and Tambourine in Japan, Openmind in Italy, Glamit in Argentina and Expertly in Brazil. According to Accenture, the acquisition of The Stable is in line with Accenture’s Song strategy to deepen its broad, scalable set of capabilities across product innovation, commerce and marketing transformation, sales and service.
Accenture recently rebranded its creative services division Accenture Interactive to Accenture Song, folding in creative including Karmarama, Bow & Arrow, The Monkeys, Fjord and Rothco into one.