Sandra Wu

Custom stacks can lead to two very real problems: depending on custom development and increased tech debt. Combined, your pace slows and ultimately, your trade-off is innovation and growth. That’s why Mejuri went from a fully custom stack to Shopify. Before Shopify, Mejuri was on an entirely custom stack: custom ecommerce, payments service, and middleware that was built to connect their custom ecommerce site to their point of sale system [POS]. This led to a ton of challenges. They were spending too much time building and maintaining 3rd party integrations to coordinate channels, data, and functionality between systems. With limited resources and team members, the trade-off of building custom features was they were not able to address their mounting technical debt. Addressing those issues in-house, slowed down their pace of innovation making them unable to deploy features as fast as they needed to. That’s the ‘invisible’ cost component with a custom stack. You spend an inordinate amount of time building custom features at the cost of innovation. Brands can avoid that with Shopify. Shopify is a natively unified ecommerce and POS system so everything just works together really really well. It doesn’t require middleware or integrations. Your customer, order, and product data flows to both channels from a single source of truth. It’s simpler and allows you to move faster. Hear about from Mejuri yourself. Rohit Nathany, the Chief Digital Officer sat down with us to talk about the pain points they faced on a custom stack. As Rohit says, what better way to simplify than to have a unified ecommerce and POS solution? See the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/eyCSdVgf

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On Tuesday I caught up with Brandon Kuipers, one of the founders of Zox.    They have sold almost 10,000,000 products on Shopify since starting the business in 2011.   But they have been running into a problem: Like many stores, they offer hundreds of products and customers get overwhelmed and can't figure out how to find the products that are right for them.   They have solved their problem using an Octane AI smart quiz.   Here's what really stood out to me: ✅ Their quiz has solved decision paralysis for over 50,000 people so far. ❤️ Customers are loving the AI quiz, even sharing their results with each other. 🤖 The AI quiz asks shoppers a few questions, most of them free form where the shopper can type anything, and then it uses AI to write a personalized message to every single shopper and helps find them exactly the right handful of products that they will love out of the hundreds of products on the store. 🚀 They hadn't been able to make a quiz previously because they are constantly adding new products to their store. The AI quiz automatically updates itself with any new products without the Zox team needing to do anything special. ⚡ They made this quiz on vacation in just a few hours, most of which was just them thinking about what questions they wanted to ask in the quiz. I'm really excited about our AI quiz option on Octane AI. It's not our most popular quiz type just yet, but for some brands it is making previously impossible experiences possible.   We have a lot of plans for improving our AI quiz technology, we're overflowing with inspiration. I can definitely imagine a world where your quiz is creating itself (we already do this actually), automatically improving itself, and forming more and more personalized bonds with each customer.   What do you think of AI powered quizzes?

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These entrepreneurs faced risk in their platform-dependent business. So they opted to sell their Shopify app: Canadian entrepreneurs Derek Morin and Bogdan Radu knew there was a risk to building apps for someone else’s platform. In 2016, they launched Tabarnapp to enable automatic discounting in Shopify. Their metrics by 2022: • Over $1 million in annual revenue • 80% net margin • 60,000 downloads of their flagship app, Automatic Discount • 2,500 recurring clients paying $10 to $1,000 monthly But they recognized the risk. “We realized that at any point, because we were platform-dependent, we could go bankrupt or we could be disrupted by Shopify,” Morin said. Changes to the platform — plus an increased competitive landscape — sparked the idea to sell the company. They sold Tabarnapp to software company Staytuned in November 2022 in a mid-7 figure deal. All the details in our story... https://lnkd.in/eUGEB9K5

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Frustrated with ad spend that doesn’t drive clear results? Many DTC brands hit familiar roadblocks on their way to scaling up. This is the Vulcan way to help Shopify stores grow with intention: Clarity on What’s Working: A lot of brands simply don’t know how ad spend impacts the bottom line. With in-depth dashboards and reports that go beyond the usual metrics, we help you see exactly what’s driving revenue—from product page views to conversion rates. Scaling with Strategy: Growth shouldn’t be a guessing game. We take brands from that $50-100k mark and help them reach new heights with data-backed strategies. Through full-scale ad management across Google, Meta, and more, we ensure your growth is stable, sustainable, and scalable. Creative that Speaks to Your Audience: No more wasted spend on ads that have lost their impact. We’re constantly testing and iterating, keeping your ads fresh and relevant so you’re always connecting with the right audience in the right way. One Team, One Goal: When everything’s managed under one roof, it’s easier to keep your brand voice consistent and performance-driven. With Vulcan, you get a partner who understands the ins and outs of your ad spend and is committed to pushing your growth forward. If your brand is ready to get real about scaling up, let’s talk!

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Shopify has taken a big step toward becoming the core account layer for both digital and physical commerce. This development is part of a larger trend I've been following over the last year, where Shopify continues to push its infrastructure to unify a variety of shopping experiences. 🔥 𝗔 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 - Now, when customers use "Sign in with Shop," they'll notice a more personalised touch: their avatar from the Shop account will appear in the header, replacing the generic customer account icon. This change means that your Shop account acts as a common framework linking all Shopify-powered shopping experiences, making the whole shopping process more straightforward. The ability to carry your information across different shopping scenarios is now more streamlined. Whether you're exploring a new brand, investing in loyalty programs, or looking for products that complement previous purchases, this integration simply makes the shopping experience better, both online and offline. 💁 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝘆-𝗼𝗻𝘀 - An exciting part of this new capability is the digital try-on feature, which shows the type of interactive shopping experiences that could be built on this infrastructure. (Check out the image underneath!) Shopify powers 10% of US e-commerce, you can take it out shopping in a lot of places already. 💡 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘀 - That will affect shopping: - Recent technological breakthroughs have blown my mind. Microsoft’s new VASA-1 AI, for instance, can create videos of convincing human avatars from just a photo and a voice clip. - Similarly, innovations like those demonstrated by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who conducted a video interview with his AI-generated twin, and Melissa Heikkilä of Synthesia, who tested synthetic media by recreating herself, are pushing the boundaries of what's possible. - Imagine inviting a digital version of Albert Einstein or Warren Buffett to a meeting, using an AI trained on their extensive knowledge. - Or consider the potential of virtual employees who can remember all past meetings and help identify errors or biases in your processes. The implications of these technologies are crazy. They invite us to rethink not only how we shop but also how we live. Shopify's move is just the beginning… #shopify #account #avatar #shop

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Who better to talk about Shopify's trajectory and future than Benjamin Lang • OLY.? In our 50th podcast episode, I had an extremely interesting conversation with Benjamin about a lot of awesome topics that are close to my heart, and I can't be more excited about what's happening in the Shopify ecosystem. For example: • B2B features • From only online commerce to commerce in the more broad sense of the word • The focus on TCO • Customer centricity I'm very grateful I had the chance to talk to Benjamin, and I hope we can do it again some time in the near future as things are moving so fast. Thanks a lot for your time and effort Benjamin! #deardigital #shopify #podcast

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i want to talk about "admin flavors", something i start to notice, is how Shopify is secretly replacing many business and ops tools. many brands we worked with at Autrement, have one way or another a business tool, a custom built technology that reflects team expertise, some brands use ERPs, some have it in-house, some use both, especially in b2b, or retail. a tool that unifies many aspects of the business, each business is unique thus each business stack has its own challenges, its own flavor i call it. what's the relation between this and that? good question. the concept of "admin flavors" is a key outcome of this approach. a flavored admin is a customized version of Shopify (operating commerce system and backoffice), tailored to meet the specific needs of different businesses especially verticals. - for instance, fashion retailers might have integrated size guides and lookbook and e-merchandising management tools inside shopify. - while food and beverage businesses could benefit from recipe databases and nutritional information blocks. - electronics retailers might have specialized warranty management and technical specification tools built into their admin interface. these customizations improve operational efficiency and allow brands to maintain their unique workflows. shopify is an open and extendable platform at its core, they give you the building bricks (extension components and apis), a map where you add them (extension points) these blocks act as bridges between shopify and other business tools, enabling seamless integration of various operations. as this process unfolds over time—an admin extension here, another there—you end up with a unified operational system. a tool that centralizes everything you use across different platforms. instead of switching between tools, which can cause significant issues, especially regarding privacy and permissions at scale, you have a single, controlled environment. in a disjointed system, a staff member might be denied access to a resource in one platform but inadvertently granted it in another for a specific task, leading to potential security breaches. a unified system helps mitigate these risks, that will ported by shopify. looking to the future, we may see the emergence of industry-specific apps offering pre-configured admin flavors for different verticals. I've personally observed this in fashion, where some solutions have moved outside Shopify to build this up, because Shopify's current admin extensibility state isn't yet mature enough to fully accommodate these tools. However, it's only a matter of time before it will be.

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Initially, Shopify struggled to raise VC because of 1 misunderstood metric. Today its market cap is $86.5B. 😳 Investors evaluating Shopify were stuck on the fact there were already 10,000 e-commerce merchants, causing concern around TAM. But if you don't get TAM right, you won’t be able to calculate slope, which is what you’re supposed to be investing in anyway. You need to answer two questions to get that evaluation right: → Is this a trend that’s going to continue to grow significantly? → Is this a company that’s capable of catalyzing that growth? If investors had answered the above, they would have seen that the addressable market was likely to grow exponentially—and that Shopify was going to be the primary enabler of that growth. In theory, investors get it. But in practice, it's actually very hard to invest in because you have to be able to understand the dynamics of why that increase will happen. One indicator is the rate and quality of progression in a product’s service, particularly if you're a user of a similar product. AI is a great illustration of how this is happening right now. Its progression rate is astonishing. If a service provider's service is getting better over time, you should invest in it with the assumption that it’s progressing exponentially. That's why I'm bullish on Notion right now. The way they've implemented AI indicates that as AI improves, Notion will accrue increasing benefits. Take their recent announcement that inside Notion, users can call on their other apps for information, reinforcing themselves as the front page of where you do work, making it your OS. I break it all down in the video below. Comment any topics you want me to cover for future Whiteboard Wednesdays. 

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Shopify showed the world that simplifying something complex can generate $8B in annual revenue. Here’s how I’m bringing that lesson to the company I co-founded: When Shopify started, they were turned down by almost all VCs - The market was deemed way too small.    What those VCs missed - Shopify was creating its own market. The VCs didn’t see this because they were only looking at existing markets. Now, Shopify is closing in on $8B annual revenue. “Market sizing gets much larger as friction is removed.” Tobi Lütke, co-founder and CEO of Shopify. Because taking something complex, making it simple, and inviting new players into the e-commerce space. Expanding the market size… This is essentially what we’re trying to do with private market investing at Stableton. Private companies that have reached the growth equity or pre-IPO phase are typically fast-growing, well-funded, often profitable and can provide strong returns to investors. The problem: It is out of reach for most investors, including banks and wealth managers. And even here, most of them typically only participate in primary funding rounds. The only way to invest is by participating in secondary transactions, which are complex deals many investors are unaware of. We’re taking this complex problem and making it simple. We’ve built a portfolio of the Top 20 pre-IPO tech companies by making 50-100 secondary transactions per year. As the go-to partner for pre-IPO investing, we can enable financial firms and their end clients to participate and subscribe to this portfolio, much like an ETF. This way, they get exposure to some of the most attractive private assets without ever engaging in a single secondary trade. From complex to simple. Want to learn more? Check out Stableton’s Navigator newsletter for the latest investing trends and insights: https://lnkd.in/eBE5GxAK #secondaries #innovation #growthequity

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What Does Shopify's Peel Analytics Acquisition Mean? If you missed it, Shopify made another acquisition in the last few months that is just starting to get some light shed on it. The company is called Peel Analytics, and it fits the mold of many of Shopify's smaller acquisition - it is a capability that it wishes to see in its platform. In short, the capabilities reflect a larger shift in DTC. From customer file growth to customer file optimization and activation. Here are some of the capabilities I expect to come to Shopify as a result of this acquisition (based on analysis of Peel's case studies): * Filtering out any messy or junk data in-platform rather than off-platform * Creating segmented audiences group (repeat purchasers, SKU and region filters), which then interface with Klaviyo and Attentive. * Cohort reporting out of the box, in particular with regards to behavior of customers acquired via influencer discounts. * Customizable reports including LTV calculations, CAC, LTV to CAC, returning orders and customers * "Frequently purchased together" and other types of product reporting based on market basket analysis. * Some subscriber reporting that previously you may have only been able to get in subscription platforms themselves. While Klaviyo is building a CDP, I expect that Shopify feels these Audience features will be a standard part of DTC going forward, and so should not erode much from where Klaviyo is headed. First, Shopify's Shop Cash offers have recently become "Shop Campaigns" and no doubt this acquisition is part of the reason for that. Also the elevation of Customers as a key concept within Shopify seems like one of their plans. Similar to the way Shopify has wanted to be the home of all checkouts and orders, I expect Shopify has started to feel that customer segmentation and analysis should happen on-platform rather off. Who is to worry? I don't think many companies have too much to worry about generally. On the other hand, some reporting-centric companies like Daasity and Triplewhale will likely have to move further up-market to continue to compete. The "Shopify reporting" space has gotten over-crowded in the last few years which is likely one of Shopify's signals that the base platform needed upgrades. I do think some of the lower-end subscription platforms could end up in the crosshairs also. How might this shape Shopify's Platform? I don't expect this solution to do so much for mid and upper-level Shopify Plus customers, but it could give Shopify a few more reporting capabilities to add to base tiers, and it's possible that more customizable reporting could become a Plus or even an full Enterprise feature. It's also not hard to imagine a Shopify where future Enterprise users may separately for a Data or Reporting module.

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I'm going to share the 2 most under-utilized Shopify reports which brands fail to capitalize on 📈 (These take 5 mins to use - I promise) 😉 1. Customer Cohort Report 👥 Why is this so good? You can use it to: 📍See which products create higher LTV (Lifetime Value) 📍Identify the countries with better LTV 📍Discover which products have better net LTV 📍Calculate the average amount spent per customer 📍Forecast future sales trends with more accuracy 2. Profit by Product Report 💰 This little report LITERALLY can show you what products you're banking on vs. losing on. We use this report to: 📍Find opportunities to increase gross margins 📍Exclude discount use on products that aren't profitable 📍Change/test free shipping thresholds 📍Bundle products for profit margin arbitrage Don't miss out on these valuable insights! #Shopify #eCommerce #DataDriven

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🚀 Elevate Your Shopify Experience with Advanced Order Tracking! 🚀 Say goodbye to WISMO worries and hello to enhanced Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) on Shopify. Our out-of-the-box solution provides 24/7 support, higher CSAT, better post-purchase experiences, and increased revenue. No more "Where is my order?" questions! Empower your customers with: - A branded tracking page - Proactive shipping notifications - Estimated Delivery Dates (EDD) - Localization & branding - Progress bars & map coordinates - Custom shipment statuses - Product recommendations Transform your customers into advocates and keep the huge order traffic—typically checked 4-8 times—from slipping away to third-party sites. Boost your sales effortlessly through smart marketing channels directly within your store. Leverage data-driven insights into shipments, transit times, and notifications to refine your shipping strategies and post-purchase efforts seamlessly. 🔍 Optimize. Enhance. Transform. Let’s make every interaction count! #ShopifySuccess #CustomerSatisfaction #OrderTracking Focus on what truly matters by giving peace of mind to both you and your customers! 🌟 Click for details : https://lnkd.in/eBxp3Qzm

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Update on the 7-Eleven Takeover Bid: Couche-Tard Uplifts Its Offer Amidst Persistent Hurdles 🔄 The saga continues! Following the swift rejection of Couche-Tard’s initial bid for 7-Eleven, we’ve seen a notable escalation in the bid, with reports indicating a 20% increase in Couche-Tard’s offer. 📈 If successful, this acquisition would mark the largest-ever Japanese acquisition in history—an intriguing prospect that could redefine the retail landscape. 🌍 However, the challenges remain formidable. As I discussed previously, Japanese owned Seven & i Holdings has a well-documented history of resisting foreign takeovers, especially when it involves a cherished brand like 7-Eleven. 🇯🇵 My prediction is that this renewed bid will also face rejection, much like the first attempt. Even if it manages to clear that hurdle, the path to FTC approval would likely be lengthy and complicated. 🏛️ Given Couche-Tard's successful track record with acquisitions, one has to wonder: when will they pivot away from pursuing 7-Eleven and consider targeting other regional players like Wawa, Inc., Buc-ee's, Ltd., or Sheetz? 🤔 These brands also boast strong market presence and loyalty, and could present less contentious opportunities for growth. As the conversation around the future of convenience retail evolves, I’m curious to hear your thoughts. How do you see this unfolding? Will Couche-Tard's strategy shift in response to these challenges? Let’s discuss! 💬 Stay tuned for further insights as this story develops!

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I've been in of the Shopify/DTC space for 3 years, and much of Monk's growth from 0 to over $500k ARR tis down to the community and the knowledge shared by brand, app & agency operators. I've been consistently bookmarking content pieces all these years, here are the top 5 from from August 2024: (all links in the comments below) 1. Zach Stuck, founder of Homestead, & his team ran an interesting test on one of their brands where they took shoppers from a landing page to a gamified cart drawer to checkout instead of directly taking them from landing page -> checkout and saw a 2x increase in CVR & RPS. ^This is in line with what we've seen at Monk too with brands using the app to gamify their cart experience with discounts/gift with purchase/upsells. 2. Youssef B. shares a step-wide guide on how to craft a post purchase upselling strategy. He's split it into 3 parts: psychology of the upsell, the different types/offer constructs you can experiment with and a sample flow from a live CPG brand. Post purchase offers are one of the lowest hanging fruits when it comes to increasing your AOV - having a tried and tested approach locked in can bump up AOV by up to 20%. No brand should be sleeping on this. 3. Managing cashflow smartly is one of the most underrated skills a DTC brand operator can have. A redditor shares 4 insights on how DTC brands should manage their cashflow and directions to optimize to ensure they have as much cash flow as possible 4. Rishabh Jain of FERMÀT does a Whiteboard Wendesday every week and one of them in August is a masterclass in internal team communication to ensure expecations are aligned, teams are motivated and there's an organizational level focus on cohesion and collaboration reducing inter team friction - highly recommend watching the whole video 5. Ronak Shah and team at Obvi are experimenting with a new sales strategy on top of their existing stack of email, SMS, push notifs etc - sending calendar invites to potential shoppers. They use an ESP to basically send calendar invites to specific email addresses along with an email with the meeting description + the offer or whatever you're trying to communicate. Sounds kinda annoying but this just might work for your brand.

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The ecomm platforms as I see the market (Gartner style) Leaders - Shopify - Salesforce - Adobe - commercetools Challengers - BigCommerce - WooCommerce Visionaries - Centra - Fabric - Spryker - Swell Niche Players - Elastic Path - Commerce Layer

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It's incredibly tough to imagine a DTC world pre Shopify Markets. At Monk, one of the app's strengths is it's direct integration with Shopify Markets that makes setting up the app for international brands seamless and largely automated. All currency conversions, product price adjustments etc are fetched automatically and any change made in Shopify Markets reflects directly within the app as well. This is a *huge* step up on the traditional way of doing so which brands did in ~2021/early 2022. Truly a 10x product outcome.

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Shopify is not for small brands. Not anymore. Enterprise, B2B brands are leveraging the best of Shopify platform. Bobby Morrison has a point here.

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We've seen more DTC brands that have killed it in retail building their Shopify store 🛍️ Just because a brand is successful in store, doesn't necessarily translate to online success You have to get a lot of things right in you're going to scale profitably online 🦸‍♂️

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