Magento's multi-store architecture is one of its most powerful features — one codebase, one admin panel, multiple storefronts with independent catalogs, pricing, languages, and themes. We recently completed a 10-store implementation for a Southeast Asian retailer. Here's what we learned.
Website > Store > Store View Hierarchy
Magento's scope hierarchy is Website > Store > Store View. Websites share a customer base and cart. Stores share a catalog but can have independent root categories and pricing. Store Views are typically used for language or currency variants of the same store. For true multi-brand deployments with separate customer pools, use separate Websites within the same Magento installation.
Shared vs. Independent Catalog
Decide early which products are shared across stores vs. store-exclusive. Magento's Shared Catalog (Adobe Commerce) handles this well — you define which products are visible per customer group or website. For Open Source, use product visibility settings per website. Be careful: EAV attribute values (name, description, images) can be set per store view, but stock is shared by default unless you enable MSI (Multi-Source Inventory).
Performance Considerations
Each store view multiplies the static content deployment time. 10 store views × 2 languages = 20 static content deploy runs. Optimize by deploying static content in parallel using the -j flag, or pre-generating static content in your CI pipeline. Database table sizes also grow proportionally — with 10 stores, your EAV tables will be 10x larger, making proper indexing critical.
