Meet Magento New York 2025 at Civic Hall was a big one for us at Magebit. As a Gold Sponsor, speaker, and the most-nominated agency in the Ecommerce Excellence Awards, we packed a lot into two days in New York - plus a few client visits after the event.
From the Magebit side, it felt less like “just another conference” and more like a checkpoint of how far our team and clients have come on Adobe Commerce (Magento 2).
The Day Before: Client Day & Pre-Party
Client Day with Merchants and Partners
Our Meet Magento started a day early with our traditional Client Day. We organized a relaxed activity with a great view of New York, joined by our friends from Better Baseball and Hyvä. It was a mix of merchants, tech partners, and our own team, talking shop but also just enjoying time together away from laptops. We wrapped it up with a proper dinner - good food, honest conversations, and a nice “reset” before conference mode.
Rocket Shippers Pre-Party
In the evening, we headed to the official MM25NYC pre-party hosted by Rocket Shippers. The venue was spot on - central, relaxed, and busy from the moment doors opened. We caught up with old friends, met new merchants, and had the first “What are you working on?” conversations that always turn into ideas. It set a friendly tone for the main day and reminded me again how strong the Magento community energy still is.
Conference Day at Civic Hall
Gold Sponsor Presence and Booth
Meet Magento NYC is a one-day conference focused on Magento / Adobe Commerce (Magento 2), with three tracks, an expo marketplace, and an awards ceremony - all packed into one day at Civic Hall, Manhattan. As a Gold Sponsor, we started early with booth setup: Hyvä and Venta demos up, performance case studies ready, and a lot of coffee. Our goal was simple - every merchant who stopped by should walk away with at least one concrete idea they can implement in their store.
Throughout the day, we talked about performance, Hyvä, our Venta theme, and, very practically, how to use AI in day-to-day eCommerce work. Many merchants came with specific problems - slow sites, messy roadmaps, migration questions - and we tried to give them straight, honest answers instead of buzzwords.
Raimonds’ Talk: AI-Powered Teams
One of my favorite moments was seeing Raimonds Vizulis, our Senior DevOps Engineer, on stage. His talk, “Why Your Next Competitive Edge is AI-Powered Teams”, focused on how AI changes how teams work, not just how code is written.
He showed real workflows where AI helps developers, PMs, QA, marketers, and support - things like automated test generation, faster reporting, content variations, and AI support agents. The key message: the edge is not “having AI”, it is teaching your people to use it daily to ship faster and with fewer mistakes. For merchants, that translates into leaner teams, quicker launches, and better customer experience.
Other Sessions We Took Notes From
We split the team across tracks so we could cover more ground. A few sessions stood out:
- Keynote: TikTok & Creators - Emily Anderson from TikTok explained how creators can drive results through the whole funnel, not just awareness, and how to actually measure that impact.
- Hyvä CMS Preview - a look at the upcoming Hyvä CMS, finally making content editing on Magento feel modern for both developers and merchants.
- Adobe Commerce Roadmap & Strategy - updates on where Adobe is taking Commerce and Magento Open Source, including SaaS-style services and performance improvements.
The common theme: performance, AI, and content are all converging - and Magento / Adobe Commerce is still very much in that conversation.
A Quick Thanks to the Organizer
Meet Magento NYC is hosted by Marsha Naidoo, who has been a driving force in the Magento community for years. She’s organized Meet Magento New York, Meet Magento Canada, and Women in eCommerce events, and is an active contributor to the Magento Association. You can feel that community-first mindset in the way the event runs - from the agenda to the networking and the atmosphere in the hall.
Ecommerce Excellence Awards: Magebit’s Big Night
Most-Nominated Agency
At the end of the day came the Ecommerce Excellence Awards. This year, Magebit ended up being the most-nominated agency, with our projects appearing across almost every category. We had finalists in areas like B2B, design, breakthrough growth, innovation, and global expansion. For us, this is as important as actually winning - it means a lot of very different brands and use cases we work on are recognized as top-tier Magento builds.
World Traveler Award - Hydro Flask
We won the World Traveler Award with Hydro Flask, part of Helen of Troy. Hydro Flask needed a global eCommerce setup that felt local in each region, so together we launched more than 15 localized Adobe Commerce (Magento 2) storefronts across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific on Adobe Commerce Cloud with a Hyvä/Venta frontend. Each site has local language, currency, taxes, and checkout, while all share one brand system and codebase. We hit 90+ Core Web Vitals scores across these stores, so the experience is fast as well as localized. For travelers, it means Hydro Flask feels “native” whether you are buying in USD, EUR, JPY, or MXN - a digital experience that matches the global lifestyle of the brand.
You can read more about what we did in the Hydro Flask case study.
Innovator Award - HardwareStore
Our second win was the Innovator Award for HardwareStore, a regional home-improvement retailer in the Ace Hardware group. Their challenge was paint - a category that is usually very “offline” - so we built the “Mix Your Color Online” experience around Benjamin Moore’s color catalog. Customers can browse and compare shades online and order sample chips or pots before committing to full cans, all integrated into a multi-brand, multi-location Magento setup. The result is more informed purchases, fewer returns, and higher engagement in the paint category, plus a digital experience that still supports 120+ physical locations. For us, it’s a strong example of using Magento to solve a real-world buying problem in a practical way.
Learn more about our long-term collaboration with the retailer in the Aubuchon Ace Hardware case study.
After the Event: Visiting Our U.S. Clients
One of the best parts of these trips is meeting clients in person. After MMNYC, we lined up four visits in the area.
Arteriors - NYC Showroom
In Manhattan, we visited Arteriors, a luxury designer brand known for lighting, furniture, and decor that you’ll see in high-end residential and hospitality projects. Their New York showroom at 200 Lexington Avenue brings together chandeliers, furniture, and accessories in a curated space that feels like walking through a design magazine. For us, seeing how Arteriors' merchandise is presented physically was valuable input for how we think about category layouts, imagery, and storytelling on their Adobe Commerce (Magento 2) site. A brand like this lives on details, and our job is to make sure those details don’t get lost online.
Automann - Heavy-Duty B2B in New Jersey
Across the river in New Jersey, we stopped by Automann, a global distributor of heavy-duty truck and trailer parts with tens of thousands of SKUs in their catalog. Their promise is “keeping trucks moving,” and walking through their operation made that very real - aisles of parts, tight logistics, and a team that knows exactly why uptime matters so much to their customers. Our B2B Magento work with Automann focuses on fast search, accurate inventory, and tools that make it easy for distributors and repair shops to order the right part the first time. Seeing warehouse workflows live helped us fine-tune ideas for better navigation, quick reordering, and account-based features.
The Fabric Mill - Long Island Textile Destination
Finally, we visited The Fabric Mill in Plainview, Long Island - a family-owned fabric store with a 22,000 sq. ft. showroom full of designer fabrics, trims, and decorative hardware. If you work with upholstery or drapery, this place feels endless: silks, velvets, outdoor fabrics, patterns in every style, and an in-house workroom for custom projects. Our job is to translate that depth into an online experience - strong filtering, clear photos, and guidance so customers can choose the right fabric from home. Hearing their team talk about how customers shop in-store gave us practical ideas on category structure, search terms, and sample options for their Magento store.
Rocket Shippers - 3PL Partner Visit
We also made a stop at Rocket Shippers, our 3PL partner focused on eCommerce fulfillment. They’re an omnichannel 3PL that helps brands handle D2C and B2B orders, subscription boxes, Amazon prep, and returns – essentially the full “pick, pack, and ship” cycle so merchants can focus on growth instead of warehouses. During the visit, we walked through their operations, talked about upcoming joint projects, and aligned on how we can better connect Magento / Adobe Commerce stores with their fulfillment stack. For us, it’s important that technology, storefront, and logistics work as one system, and seeing Rocket Shippers’ processes up close helps us design smoother post-purchase experiences for our clients.
Key Takeaways for Merchants
If you are running an eCommerce store, this means that:
- AI is now a team tool, not just a dev tool - used right, it speeds up development, QA, marketing, and support, and that was a big theme in both our talk and the event agenda.
- Localization wins globally - Hydro Flask’s award showed how multi-store, multi-language, multi-currency setups on Adobe Commerce (Magento 2) can pay off when done properly.
- UX innovation still matters - tools like “Mix Your Color Online” prove that solving one specific buying problem can lift a whole category.
- Community is a shortcut to answers - in one day, you can validate ideas with other merchants, agencies, and tech partners instead of guessing alone. Face-to-face still beats Zoom - visiting showrooms, warehouses, and stores gives context no analytics dashboard can.
