The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
Host Kurt Elster shares Shopify success stories from entrepreneurs, offering a raw look at what it takes to succeed on the platform. New episodes every Tuesday since 2014.
Episodes
Shopify Rebuilt the Theme Editor From Scratch: Canvas
"Now everybody knows code. It's called English."On October 1, Shopify launched Canvas, a new theme editor built around Sidekick. Ben Sehl is Director of Product for Online Store at Shopify. He built themes as a partner, cofounded the clothing brand Kotn, and led Hydrogen from zero to one. Now he's replacing a theme editor that has worked for 15 years, and he says Canvas will be the only one in tim
From $25K to $447K a Month: BattlBox's Whatnot Playbook
"Not knowing what we were doing, just bobbling through it, we did a couple thousand dollars an hour and we were like, whoa, this might be something."John Roman bought BattlBox back in 2023 and went looking for the next channel. With over a million TikTok followers, TikTok Shop looked obvious. Then a Whatnot sales rep sent an email. Seventeen months later, live selling on Whatnot does $447K a month
7 Founders, 15 Minutes Each: What's Working in 2026
Kurt spent a day at Beanstalk, an invite-only ecommerce conference at Industry City in Brooklyn, recording 15-minute conversations under a tent. Seven made it to tape. Every guest is on Shopify. Not one led with paid ads.The lineup: Matt Butcher of Adam's Polishes on why he comes. Jay Wright, who spends about a billion dollars a year on Meta, on why your media buying is "completely cooked." Maria
Kurt & Paul: September Roundup
Discounts are the biggest line item on your P&L that nobody approved. Kurt and Paul answer the questions merchants keep asking, then lay out the Black Friday plan.Part one is a mailbag pulled from r/ecommerce, r/shopify, and the Shopify Community: the Combines With checkbox that wiped the profit on 60 orders before lunch, influencer codes showing up on Honey, welcome codes reused by new Gmail
How a Nicotine-Free Vape Brand Grows *Without Ads*
He sells vapes with no nicotine. Every ad platform, payment processor, and carrier treats him like Big Tobacco anyway.Conrad Kurth founded Cyclone Pods in 2018 after watching every friend he had get hooked on Juul. Eight years later the brand has grown every year with a 60 percent repeat customer rate, no paid ads, no Shopify Payments, and no USPS. This is what selling on hard mode actually looks
ShipBob CMO on Peak Season 2026
He's shipped over a billion units. He says your Black Friday gets decided in September.Casey Armstrong, CMO of ShipBob, returns for his third appearance to break down peak season 2026. Five years ago the villain was Shipageddon. This year there's no single boogeyman, just tariffs that pushed brands global, an exploding channel mix, and AI quietly eating the back office.What you'll learn:Why right
Shopify's New Rev Share, Catalog, and the Next Big Bets Explained
"You think you know what you're doing. Like I work at Shopify. I should be better at it."
That's Atlee Clark, Shopify's VP of Partnerships, on running her own store, Pika Layers, for the past seven years. She's joined by Eytan Seidman, VP of Product for everything partners and developers touch. Together they just rewrote the deal for Shopify's entire partner ecosystem, and this conversation explai
Shopify's Head of Growth: How to Get Recommended by AI
"It's more than 2x that conversion rate coming from another referral channel."
AI shopping agents are already sending buyers to Shopify stores, and they convert at double the rate of your other referral traffic. Most merchants have no idea it's happening because the analytics show up as direct traffic. Archie Abrams runs growth at Shopify, and he's spent five and a half years building the infrastr
Why Your Subscription Program Stopped Growing — Matt Holman
Your subscription program is adding customers every month—so why has it stopped growing?
Matt Holman, founder of Subscription Prescription and known as “The Subscription Doc,” explains how churn creates a hidden ceiling: eventually, the subscribers coming
in simply replace those going out.
Matt and Kurt discuss why improving the offer can produce a better return than obsessing over retention, inc
REPORT: AI is 0.1% of $274M in sales analyzed
"This traffic is nothing. It is a rounding error."
Kurt and Paul pulled 24 months of raw order data from 10 established Shopify stores: 94 million sessions, 2.2 million orders, $274 million in revenue. They went looking for the AI shopping revolution and found 0.1% of revenue. The catch: those referrals convert better than any other channel, and getting ready for them takes one afternoon of free w
He Sold a Startup, Now He Sells Viral Dog Pajamas
"Man, what didn't I get wrong? It's so much harder."
Brian Nolan sold his SaaS company Sellbrite to GoDaddy. Then he bought Darren & Phillip, an Australian dog apparel brand built around viral matching dog-and-owner bathrobes, and found out that owning a store is a different beast than building software for stores. The founder was the face of the brand, and she left with the sale. The Google Works
Kurt & Paul: Agentic Rants
Kurt pulled the agentic sales numbers on a store doing $1.8 million a month. ChatGPT drove $4,200 of it. So he dragooned business partner Paul Reda into an unscripted reaction to Shopify's Editions announcements. No pre-cleared questions, no talking points, just two people who've optimized eight-figure stores for AI search comparing notes on what's actually real.
They get into why Universal Commer
Shopify's Campaign Autopilot: AI Ad Agent?
"It's an in-house, ready-to-go agency. Which is free for all merchants."
That's how Sachin Malhotra, Shopify's Director of Product for Merchant Marketing, describes Campaign Autopilot, the new AI marketing tool Shopify just announced as part of Editions. It sets up your ad accounts, syncs your catalog, and runs Meta Advantage+ checkout campaigns inside the guardrails you set. You teach it your bou
Agentic Storefronts: You're Already on ChatGPT
"Being on Shopify means you get access to agentic automatically, out of the box."
Your store is already selling inside ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Shop, whether you've noticed or not. Aaron Glazer, Director of Product at Shopify, joins Kurt to explain Agentic Storefronts, the new Admin experience that finally makes that presence visible and controllable.
The buyer behavior has already shifted. S
How Shopify POS Got a Minute Faster Per Sale
"I hear store associates asking people in person for their email all the time, and it always is a little bit awkward."
Helen Mou runs product for retail at Shopify, and she just helped rebuild the thing every store runs on. This spring edition is the fastest POS Shopify has shipped. The rebuilt core selling flow saves over a minute on complex transactions, the kind with multiple items, stacked dis
Shop: The Sales Channel You Shouldn't Ignore
Also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bgrJVYiDQKc
"If I don't see that purple button at checkout, bye-bye." That's what Shop's buyers tell Kenny Cohen, and it's a clue to why Shop has quietly become one of the most valuable channels a Shopify merchant has.
Kenny runs product for Shop, and in this spring edition he walks Kurt through three updates. Agentic Shop Search now understands a buyer's taste fr
Inside Shopify's "Everywhere" Edition | Spring 2026
VP of Product Vanessa Lee joins Kurt to break down the 2026 "Everywhere" edition and the years of quiet groundwork behind it: taxonomy, attributes, clustering, and a universal product identifier that now power a search catalog of billions of products. The payoff for merchants is strange and good. You're already enrolled in agentic commerce by default. One real store is doing $60K a month through i
How We Built MKC's Montana Landing Page
Also on YouTube
Montana Knife Company was finally releasing its first folding knife, a $390 piece their fans had been begging for, and they wanted an announcement page worthy of the moment. Apple-style scroll animations. Exploding diagrams. Every element on screen doing something. The catch: you couldn't buy anything from it. The entire page existed to introduce the new product, build the hype, an
Top 1% of Shopify. 8 Figures. Profit in Year 6.
Also available on YouTube
"It was a mind and body brokenness. I'll just say like depression."
By 39, Chris Lang was running 10 businesses and falling apart. He killed most of them and bet everything on Fresh Chile, his bootstrapped Shopify chili brand from Hatch, New Mexico. It cracked the top 1% of Shopify and 8 figures in revenue, but didn't turn a profit until Q1 of year six.
Inside: why he sta
He Reviewed 500 Deals Before Buying One Shopify App
"You would probably prefer to take money from Tony Soprano."
Jeremy Horowitz has spent a decade in the Shopify ecosystem, scaled brands at Gorgias, and now runs a PE fund that's reviewed nearly 500 deals. He acquired a WhatsApp marketing app called Coco AI and he's still hunting for his next Shopify brand in the $10-100M range. We get into what actually makes a business sellable (and what kills a
The 3 Red Flags That Mean It's Fraud
"I shipped the bike and a couple of weeks later, the real credit card holder got a statement, said I didn't place that order, filed a chargeback, and then the money was gone."
Also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/6k4iyfvjuTA
John Murphy's first-ever Shopify sale was a total scam. Two weeks into launching, he wired a $5,000 e-bike to a guy putting on an old man's voice over the phone. That single char
Print on Demand's Real Playbook w/ David Hooker
"70% of stuff never goes sold. So you have to be prepared to interact with that level of rejection."
David Hooker is the brand director for both Printify and Printful, which merged in late 2024 to form FYUL. He's got access to the data behind millions of print on demand sellers, and what he's learned is both humbling and useful. The top 1% aren't more talented. They're more consistent. We get into
Ecom Vibe Check: What's Working in 2026
"If your product sucks, you're never going to succeed. A lot of people are trying to solve product problems with marketing spend."
Chase Clymer runs Electric Eye, a Shopify agency deep in CRO, redesigns, and migrations. He also hits about one industry event a month, which means he's got a real read on how merchants and partners actually feel right now. Not the Twitter version. The hallway version.
The B2B Quoting Episode
Denis Dyli has spent 13 years building Shopify stores for the businesses nobody wants to talk about: industrial suppliers, janitorial distributors, pipe manufacturers. The unsexy stuff. He's now a Shopify Platinum Partner, and he's turning all that pain into an AI-powered deal room that converts messy email RFQs into structured quotes in minutes, not weeks. We get into why B2B and wholesale are fu
76% of Subscribers Never Come Back (Here's the Fix)
"It sucks to lose a customer not because of the product, but because of the mechanism in which they get the product."
Jay Myers has spent a decade building one of the biggest subscription apps on Shopify. Now he's telling you subscriptions are broken. Bold's data backs it up: 82% of cancellations happen because customers have too much or too little product, not because they stopped wanting it. And
The 2026 EcomFuel Report
"Succeeding with paid was not about how good your ROAS was. What the paid experts did so well was they had built a business model structurally that allowed them to put as much money as they possible into that paid engine."
Andrew Youderian surveyed 300 store owners representing $3.5 billion in revenue for the sixth annual eComFuel Trends Report, and the data broke four things Shopify merchants hav
A.I. Tool Time with Kurt
Recorded live at Smart Marketer Mentor Tables in Nashville, this is Kurt's full talk on why most people are bad at AI and what to do about it. The pitch was that AI would let you do less work and produce better output. What actually happened: everyone is producing more slop, faster.
Inside: the RTF framework that fixes any prompt in 30 seconds, the 10 AI tools Kurt actually uses every day (not the
Remembering Casey Bard
This is a memorial republish. Casey Bard, founder of Tacticalories Seasoning Co., died in early April 2026 after a three-year fight with Stage 4 colorectal cancer. Casey told the people close to him that when he was gone, he wanted them to tell stories about him. This is Casey in his own words, recorded in March 2021.
Casey started Tacticalories with $500 and mixed his first batch in his bathtub.
Why Shopify Opened B2B to ALL Plans
Shopify just opened up its foundational B2B features to all paid plans, not just Plus. Samir Pradhan, VP of Product at Shopify, joins the show to break down what merchants actually get: company profiles, up to three custom catalogs, quantity rules, ACH payments, vaulted credit cards, and 50+ features total, at no additional cost. We walk through the setup, talk about what stays Plus-only, and dig
He Had Zero Audio Experience. Then He Sold $300K in Turntables.
"I don't have any really relevant credentials or qualifications when it comes to this sort of thing."
Noam Sugarman got fed up trying to find a stereo system that looked good, sounded good, and didn't require an engineering degree to buy. So he built his own. With no audio background, he launched Dum Audio, raised $75K on Indiegogo, then ditched crowdfunding platforms entirely to run pre-order cam
7 Years to Profit: The Hamster Ball Reinvented
"There were three or four years straight where we were like, if it doesn't go the way we need it to go, we'll close it down at the end of the year -- and then year end comes and we're just like, close enough to keep going."
Ethan Haber was a college sophomore with a studio art degree, a hamster named Mooksy, and a problem: the hamster ball hadn't been improved since the 1970s. So he invented a bet
AEO: Get ChatGPT to Recommend Your Brand
"I think this is a revival of SEO, a little bit of a resurrection."
SEO expert Patrick Rice is back, and this time he brought receipts. His agency got a Shopify brand to show up in ChatGPT recommendations 60-70% of the time and in Google AI Overviews 86% of the time, with a 35-40% sustained increase in branded search. All in six months. We dig into the exact GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) ta
The Shopify Product Network Explained
Amanda Engelman is the Director of Product at Shopify leading advertising and channel expansion. She built the Shopify Product Network, a free app that lets other Shopify merchants' products appear on your store. You earn commission on every sale, you keep the customer, and you get category expansion insights without carrying a single unit of inventory. One store earned over $3,000 in commissions
We Built a Shopify App. Here's What Broke.
"Even if it ends up being something that ends the universe, it at least will have been a fun ride. So let's do it."
That's what Karl Meisterheim said when Kurt pitched him on building a Shopify app. Over a year later, Promo Party Pro is live, and the journey from "this should be easy" to "why is the cart API doing that" was anything but smooth. Kurt, Paul Reda, and Karl sit down to talk through th
Live Selling Secrets From a $25M Golf Brand
"Nobody wants to get rich slowly."
Nick Mertz started Pins and Aces with $6,000 and zero outside capital. Today, his golf lifestyle brand does $25 million a year, employs over 40 people, and ships every order from their own warehouse outside Denver. But with customer acquisition costs through the roof, Nick stopped fighting the ad auction and built an omnichannel machine instead. We break down how
Why This Agency Dropped Paid Media (And Got Bigger)
"I kinda told myself I need to take a step back from e-commerce. When I took a step back, e-commerce said no and put me back in."Amer Grozdanic burned out running paid media for brands. The results were good — but never good enough. So he walked away, rebuilt his agency around what he could actually control, and landed clients like MVMT Watches and Billie Eilish without spending a dollar on ads. T
ERP Explained w/ GoodDay's Kyle Hency
For most direct-to-consumer brands, the term "ERP" evokes dread. Six-month implementations. Six-figure costs. Software built for factories, not Shopify stores. Kyle Hency experienced that pain firsthand. He scaled Chubbies Shorts past $100 million in revenue, and along the way, his "sophisticated" spreadsheet system (built by a former banker) completely fell apart. The breaking point? When Nordstr
Influencer Whitelisting: What It Is & How to Start
Here's something most merchants don't realize: you can run paid ads through an influencer's handle instead of your own. It's called whitelisting, and it converts about 15% better. Brad Hoos, CEO of Outloud Group and owner of Shopify store MuskOx Flannels, has been doing influencer marketing since YouTube was mostly cat videos. In this episode, he breaks down how whitelisting works step by step, wh
The Financial Blind Spot Costing 7-Figure Stores Millions
"You can't control tariffs. You can't control the weather. But you can control what's happening within your business."Salena Knight has audited thousands of retail businesses since 2007 and found that 4 out of 5 seven-figure stores share the same blind spot—and it's not marketing. It's money. We talked about why inventory is secretly taxable cash sitting on your shelves, how one brand increased pr
A Mushroom Brand's Bet Against Booze
"I would have invested 100% of all of the money that we raised into Meta. I would have done nothing else but secure that one channel first."After launching Troop, a functional mushroom gummy brand, Jake Mellman discovered that community events and sampling don't pay the bills. What does: Meta ads, a 76% contribution margin, and defaulting customers to quarterly subscriptions. Now he's applied thos
The First Shop Mini
"Shop has this amazing opportunity to convert shoppers into people that are being entertained by shoppable content."Bill Staley built the first Shop Mini to launch on Shopify's Shop app. Food Social brings 10,000+ shoppable recipes to 200 million potential users. We dig into why Shop is Shopify's most underrated channel, how personalization matches recipes to purchase history, and why intent-based
The Period Brand That Won $1.5M in Pitch Contests
Dana Roberts spent years watching fifth-grade girls panic through their first periods with ill-fitting products and no preparation. The period care aisle hadn't changed in decades. Same brands. Same sizing that was never designed for a 10-year-old's body. When she pitched the idea to her god-sister, Dr. Monica Williams, she got a polite brush-off. Years later, Monica's own daughter started showing
The €330M Exit Guy Shares His Europe Playbook
"We were close to closing the company two or three times. Every winter was like, okay, that's it. Goodbye company."Chris Erthel built Meller sunglasses from a Spanish side project into a brand that sells a pair every 28 seconds. Along the way, he helped scale HelloBody from €30M to €107M as fractional CMO before its €330M exit to Henkel. We talked about why US brands fail in Europe, the cultural q
$1.7M BFCM: Inside Montana Knife Company's Black Friday
Montana Knife Company pulled in $1.7 million over Black Friday weekend without discounting a single knife. Co-founder Brandon Horoho explains how: five targeted product drops, one for each customer persona. An email cadence so aggressive he was watching unsubscribe rates like a hawk. And a VIP program where the reward shows up unannounced in your mailbox. It's a story about knowing exactly who you
Native A/B Testing Hits Shopify: What You Need to Know
"It's really about helping merchants become more informed, helping them make more bold decisions."Aaron Glazer, Product Lead at Shopify, reveals two features from Winter '26 Edition that change how merchants test and optimize their stores. Rollouts brings native split testing directly into the admin. SimGym deploys AI agents trained on billions of purchases to find what's broken before real custom
SHOPIFY EDITIONS WINTER '26
Shopify just dropped their "Renaissance Edition" with 150+ product updates. We cut through the noise. Sidekick finally works—I use it daily now for reports, segments, and Flow automations. Native A/B testing arrives with Rollouts and SimGym. The new Product Network let one early adopter earn $1,400 in commission in 30 days. And Shop App? #1 in the App Store over BFCM. Here's what actually matters
Why Your Creative Strategy Is Burning Cash
"Do you care enough about new customer acquisition? What you care about shows up based off of your actions, not your thoughts or your words."Meta's Andromeda update broke everyone's brain and most brands still haven't recovered. Nehal Kazim, CEO of Ad Pros, argues that the industry overcorrected by wildly overproducing content, burning through budgets on concepts that never receive meaningful spen
She Sold 250K Shampoo Bars Without Amazon or Ads
Kate Assaraf tried every plastic-free shampoo bar on the market. They sat in her shower like, and I'm quoting here, "tombstones." Failed products. Dead ends. So she decided to make her own. Without Instagram ads. Without Amazon. Without any of the things you're supposed to need to build a business. Today on our program, we follow Kate's journey from beauty industry veteran to the woman who said no
What Discounts Actually Make People Buy (Study)
There's this thing that happens when you run an e-commerce store. You know you need to discount, but you're terrified. Terrified of training customers to wait for sales. Terrified of looking cheap. So you do nothing, or worse, you slap WELCOME10 on your popup and call it a day. Meanwhile, the big brands? They're discounting constantly. Just invisibly.Cara Marin from Seguno looked at 162,000 discou
This Founder Automated Influencer Outreach Completely
So there's this guy, Bora Celik. Software engineer, thirty years in the game. Last year he tells his investors something crazy: SaaS is dead. Not dying. Dead. And here's the thing - he might be right. See, while everyone's playing with ChatGPT, asking it questions, Bora's building these things called AI agents. They don't just answer questions. They do the work. Like, actually reach out to influen
Buff Clucks: From Homework Assignment to 7-Figure Chicken Brand
So there's this moment in 2022 where Celia Hatch wakes up from a dream about chicken supplements called "Chicken Spice." She thinks it's ridiculous. Fast forward to today, and she's running a seven-figure business serving America's 13% of households with backyard chickens.The twist is it started as her teenage son's eighth-grade homework assignment. He made $500 selling herbs in craft bags, then q
What's New in Shopify: November 2025
Shopify just went from 100 variants per product to 2,048. Shopify Partners Kurt Elster and Paul Reda tested it and found out there's a secret limit at 250 where everything changes. Your theme might work perfectly, it might half-work, or it might completely break depending on when it was built.They also dig into the new VS Code-based theme editor (developers love it, merchants hate it), the "unlist
Black Friday Starts Early: The 3-Week Email Strategy
Kurt and Filip break down buy-two-get-two offers that crush percentage discounts, why five emails on Black Friday is actually conservative, and the three-week framework 8-figure brands use to win Q4. If you're planning to send a couple emails on Cyber Monday and call it done, this episode will make you rethink everything.SPONSORSSwym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & moregetswym.com/kurtCleveri
Accessibility: Bet Hannon's 4-Step Fix
"These tools rely on automation that only catches 30% of issues. And for blind users with screen readers? The overlays often conflict with their assistive tech—making the site harder to use."Bet Hannon runs AccessiCart, an agency that fixes accessibility problems for e-commerce stores—usually right after they've been sued. We talked about why "quick fix" overlay plugins are making the problem wors
Smart Marketer Live 2025
I spent three days at Smart Marketer Live in Denver, capturing raw conversations with agency owners, brand founders, and Meta reps about what's actually working in 2025.This isn't your typical conference recap. We're talking about Meta's Andromeda update that killed everyone's ad performance over the summer, why TikTok Shop might be a trap, and how a chicken supplement business owner plans to poac
Jomboy's 3-in-1 Store + ChatGPT Shopping Arrives
So there's this baseball media company. They make shirts about guys with nicknames like "The Big Dumper." And they needed three different store experiences, but only wanted to use one store. What our co-host Paul Reda figured out next is either brilliant or insane. Maybe both.Today on the show, we're asking: when does a hack become a feature? When does one store become three? And why would anyone
SEO Is Dead. Long Live GEO. w/ Domaine's Mac King
"ChatGPT is not that sophisticated yet. So for marketers, what that means is there are real ways right now for arbitrage in this short period of time before ChatGPT gets good enough to say, no, we're only showing the proper result."Mac King from Domaine breaks down why merchants are seeing ChatGPT and Perplexity show up as referral sources in their analytics—and what to do about it. We talked abou
Jamil Bhuya: Why Store Owners Can't See Conversion Killers
Jamil Bhuya has scaled businesses across three wildly different industries: restaurants, beauty, and now Shopify agencies. That multi-industry perspective gives him a unique superpower—he can spot the conversion killers that store owners become blind to. We talked about why fresh eyes matter more than fancy tools, the psychology behind purchase objections, and how being too close to your business
Bots, Fraud, & Other Online Store BS
We're seeing 10x more bots than humans on client stores. Fraudsters are buying your cheapest items to test stolen credit cards. Your SEO agency wants 150 new collections.This week, we dig into the actual problems hitting Shopify stores right now. Not theory, not best practices, but the real BS we're fixing for clients. We break down why your analytics are lying, how to stop credit card testers, an
The $720K Exit That Disappeared
"I'm not very good at success. That's something I learned as part of this."Ben Knegendorf went from forklift operator at Walmart to selling his stake in an indoor golf business for $720,000. Then he watched most of it disappear through lifestyle creep, speculative investments, and financial ignorance. His second exit was different - and his brutal honesty about where the money went offers real les
They Bought a 'Hated' Shopify App for 2X Revenue (Now Worth Millions)
Also available on YouTube: youtu.be/gGdS45JY2YoAndrew Le and Tu Pham acquired Edit Order, a distressed Shopify app with a terrible reputation, for just 2x revenue in 2015. Ten years later, they've transformed it into Cleverific—a multi-million dollar order editing powerhouse.Guests:Andrew Le - Co-founder & Lead Developer, CleverificTu Pham - Co-founder, Marketing & Design, CleverificWebsite: https
Why Shopify's Shipping Just Got Way Better
Also on YouTube: youtu.be/56r_UJZbtLg"We want to make sure that merchants who are starting their business who don't know what are all the jobs they need to take care of for shipping to merchants who are thriving and understand the space and have complex workflows, we can solve this problem for everybody."Vibhor Chhabra, Director of Product at Shopify, breaks down how Shopify Shipping has evolved i
Ex-Supps CMO's Counter-Intuitive Growth Strategies
Also available on YouTube: youtu.be/0HHJ5tONfVoMost Shopify store owners are doing growth completely wrong. They're trying to lower ad costs, make prettier websites, and rush customers to buy. Devyn Merklin from X-Scale flips all of this on its head with counter-intuitive strategies that actually work.In this episode, you'll discover why the biggest mistake seven-figure brands make is racing to th
The £500K Exit That Saved Jayden Clark's Sanity
Also on YouTube: YouTube: youtu.be/p1PO9o9Se5o"I'm not very good at success. That's something I learned as part of this. I actually think probably most of us aren't very good at success."Jayden Clark thought he'd cracked the code on dropshipping success. Then his seven-figure business nearly broke him. We talked about why he sold for £500K instead of holding out for millions, the SEO and paid ad s
How Portland Leather Hit $500M + Top 50 on Shopify
Also on YouTube: youtu.be/nckQhAvYA-Q"We'll have done over 500 million in total sales. We'll do 310 million in the next 18 months."Curtis Matsko went from art festivals to a top 50 Shopify store by doing everything conventional wisdom says not to do. His company controls every step from raw material procurement to customer delivery, achieving top 50 Shopify status while maintaining 50% repeat cust
How Shine Supply Hit $7M/yr Without Paid Ads
Also Available on YouTube: youtu.be/_nqN9HyOpxMWhat happens when a 23-year-old refuses to play the ecommerce advertising game? Colby Stevens built Shine Supply into a $7M detailing brand using nothing but Instagram ASMR videos, authentic storytelling, and a "people over profit" philosophy.No paid ads until last month. No Amazon. No selling out to scale.Instead: 80,000 Instagram followers, hundreds
Viral Mattress Ads & Crowdfunding
Available on YouTube: [youtu.be/wDlijQtbLJo](https://youtu.be/wDlijQtbLJo)What if your brand could sell a million orders before shipping a single product?Bryant Garvin, marketing lead at Ozlo Sleep and former CMO of Groove Life, did exactly that. In this episode, he shares how performance branding, differentiated product, and a viral video formula helped Ozlo launch with massive traction. From his
What 20M Shopify Surveys Reveal About Attribution
Watch the video interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TMVqWfaddG8Shopify store owners: what if one simple question could improve your ad spend, creative, and segmentation?In this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, Matt Bahr, founder of Fairing, unpacks what 20 million post-purchase surveys taught him about attribution—and why most brands still get it wrong. Learn how to track what really
Top Shopify Conversion Mistakes
Also on YouTube...What’s really holding your Shopify store back? After 10,000 UX audits, Oddit co-founder Shaun Brandt has answers, and most stores are making the same 7 mistakes. Menus that bury the merch. Popups that hijack the screen. Product pages with zero context.This episode is a takedown of bad ecommerce decisions, packed with fixes that actually make you more money. Whether you’re running
SEO for AI: What Works, What’s Snake Oil
Available on YouTube: youtu.be/qdpFmuFD8yEShopify merchants are getting pitched AI SEO “solutions” left and right—none of them proven. So I called Jason Berkowitz, an SEO who actually knows the game, to answer the real question: what should you actually do to rank in an AI-powered world? (Spoiler: most of it’s nonsense.) We break down what’s real, what’s trash, and why good SEO still wins—even in
How Divorce, Cancer, and TikTok Built a Shopify Brand
Sara Olsher started Mighty + Bright as a handmade calendar to help her toddler cope with divorce. A decade (and one breast cancer diagnosis) later, it’s a full-time Shopify business helping kids, adults, and neurodivergent folks navigate tough life stuff with visual structure. In this episode, Sara shares how she bootstrapped the brand, embraced customer feedback, and scaled with purpose—not just
Shopify POS V10: What’s New?
Also on YouTube: youtu.be/4lOLw1k4ocAShopify VP of Retail, Ray Reddy, joins to walk through what’s new in POS V10.Faster checkoutsSplit fulfillmentCustom brandingBetter searchIf you sell in person, this episode is for you.Show LinksShopify POSShopify Editions (Summer 2025)Ray Reddy on LinkedInSponsorsZipify – Build high-converting sales funnelsCleverific – Smart order editing for ShopifyBoost AI S
Inside Shopify Editions.dev 2025
Watch on YouTubeShopify unveiled a sweeping AI-first vision at Editions.dev 2025, and it's got their partners buzzing. In this episode, we go beyond the keynote to bring you on-the-ground reactions from developers, partners, and skeptics alike.Featuring interviews with:Anne Thomas (Design Packs)Ezra Firestone (Zipify)Jamil Bhuya (Otherhalf Studio)Karl Meisterheim (Liquid Weekly)We dig into:Horizon
How BRĒZ Built a $28M Better-For-You Buzz Brand on Shopify
What if your Shopify brand could sell 16 million cans and hit $28M in its first full year? Aaron Nosbisch did just that with BRĒZ, a microdose drink brand that taps into the decline of alcohol, the rise of wellness, and a smarter ecommerce playbook. In this episode, he breaks down the entire journey—from ignored category to household name.Show LinksAaron Nosbisch: https://twitter.com/AaronJNosbisc
How a BOGO Deal Bootstrapped Neven Eyewear to Millions
Also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fXKVcwl8FS8How a BOGO Deal Bootstrapped Neven Eyewear to MillionsJonathan Strauss lost a $500 pair of sunglasses jet skiing—and turned that wipeout into Neven Eyewear. What began as a desperate liquidation promo turned into a DTC breakthrough. In this episode, Strauss reveals how a buy-one-get-two offer saved his brand, what’s changed with Meta ads, and why scalin
SEO in 2025: What Still Works for Shopify
Still trying to crack the SEO code in 2025? Jeff Oxford has worked on 300+ eCommerce sites, and he’s here to share what actually works for Shopify merchants now. From why your $300 product may be killing your rankings to how AI tools can scale your SEO ops, Jeff cuts through the noise. This episode delivers a tactical, no-fluff breakdown of SEO strategy in a search landscape increasingly shaped by
Meta’s AI Ads Engine Explained (Andromeda + ASC)
Also available on YouTube: youtu.be/m9YTxRsosJAMeta just rewrote the Facebook ads playbook—and Shopify merchants need to catch up.In this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, ad strategist Kurt Bullock (Produce Dept) breaks down how Meta’s new AI-driven ad system, Andromeda, is reshaping targeting, delivery, and scale. From embeddings and vectors to Advantage+ campaigns and creative testing,
How Bamboo Socks Built a B2B Empire on Faire
Also available on YouTube: youtu.be/l8ANgFlZK0YIt started with a sock. A turtle sock. That led to a Shopify store, a wholesale boom, and—accidentally—an agency. In this episode, Lucy Jeffrey shares how she turned Bare Kind from a seasonal side hustle into one of Faire’s fastest-growing brands. She walks us through surviving seasonality, scaling through B2B, ditching paid ads, and launching a servi
How TikTok & Sidekick Helped Sell Out a Skincare Brand
Also available on YouTube: youtu.be/Pi20dFaHoVgBen Attwood left agency life to create a men’s skincare brand he actually wanted to use. With no investors, no marketing budget, and no prior product experience, he built Clubhouse Skin using TikTok, Shopify, and a lot of trial and error.In this episode, Ben shares how he:Sold out his first product run—twiceBuilt a loyal customer base by building in p
How Smart Brands Win Top-of-Funnel in 2025
Also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XXSr4Po30oYPaid ads are busted. SEO is back but weirder. Gen Z isn’t using Google. What now?VC Smriti Jayaraman pulls back the curtain on the Shopify brands building futuristic funnels today. We’re talking AI quizzes, voice search, digital oracles, and tech that reads your face to guess your shirt size. It’s strange. It’s smart. And it works.💡 What We Co
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