The New Default for Unified Retail

In 2015, a group of engineers and retail veterans were tired of watching the same thing happen to every global retailer they worked with.

A new POS here. A separate e-commerce platform there. A bolt-on order management tool. A standalone loyalty app. Each system worked. None of them talked to each other. We called it the Frankenstack, and it was strangling the very brands it was supposed to serve.

So we set out to build the opposite.

One platform. One data model. Built cloud-native, API-first, and technology-agnostic from day one. International compliance baked into the foundation, not bolted on later. Designed so retailers could shape the software around their customers, instead of the other way around.

We called the platform EVA. We called ourselves New Black, because retail was overdue for a new default.

The first customers were brave. They believed unified commerce could actually work. Today EVA powers retail in over 45 countries, with deployments of 1,200+ stores going live in under 12 months, and in 2025 it was named Best Seamless Unified Retail solution at the NRF Big Show Europe awards.

Building software this ambitious takes more than great engineers. It takes a structure that gets out of their way.

That is why New Black operates as a holacracy. Instead of a traditional top-down hierarchy, we organize around autonomous, self-managing teams. Authority is distributed, decisions are made close to the work, and roles are defined by purpose rather than position. No titles to climb, no permission to ask for, no bottlenecks waiting for a manager's sign-off.

This structure gives our people the freedom to act, the responsibility to deliver, and the clarity to know how their work connects to the bigger picture. It is how we attract the best of the best, and how we make sure their talent actually shows up in the product. The result is a company where the smartest person in the room is never held back by the org chart.

Inside the company, we still call ourselves NERDS. Nerd is the New Black, and we mean it. Flat structure, self-managed teams, creative friction welcomed. We are not here to sell another module into someone else's mess. We are here to replace the mess.

In a holacracy there are no bosses, but there are leaders. The people below lead key areas of the organization. They set direction, support their teams, and help shape where New Black is headed next. That is what New Black has been about from the beginning, and that is what it is still about today.