The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

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 like. What you'll learn: Why a product with no addictive ingredient still gets a 60% repeat rate Where a new customer really comes from when Meta, Google, and TikTok won't run your ads Why "alternative advertising" on age-restricted sites sent traffic that never converted The Sunday morning Shopify Payments shut off with no warning, and the standalone store he keeps ready for next time How UPS and FedEx agreed to ship after seeing lab data, and why USPS never will Whether publishing third-party lab results helps SEO (his honest answer: he can't prove it) Why Wisconsin only allows vapes from Philip Morris, Altria, and Reynolds The Focus Pouch story: caffeine plus lion's mane, reishi, and cordyceps, two years before caffeine pouches were a category Vapes for dogs, the leaking device that got pulled, and what he'd tell his 2018 self His advice for anyone selling a restricted product: ignore the ad people, do the legwork yourself Guest: Conrad Kurth, founder and CEO of Cyclone Pods, a nicotine-free vape and nootropic pouch brand based in Santa Monica, California. Former software engineer. Show Links: Cyclone Pods: https://cyclonepods.com Email Conrad: conrad@cyclonepods.com SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com/unofficial Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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 now is "inbound peak" and what to send your 3PL before October The real warehouse math: when one node beats five, and why split shipments crush margins The only two levers that lower shipping costs (and you can only pull one) The subscription discount trap that trains customers to game you, plus how Rise Coffee and Momentous do it right How brands turn screenshots into warehouse receiving orders in 30 seconds with AI agents in Slack ShipBob Promise: delivery dates on the PDP and at checkout, built by the exec who ran Amazon's North America fulfillment The Watchmaster story: a crawler that undercut Rolex competitors $5 at a time to win Google Shopping The exact signal it's time to stop packing your own orders Guest: Casey Armstrong, CMO of ShipBob, the global fulfillment platform with 70+ facilities worldwide. Previously VP of Marketing at BigCommerce. Show Links: ShipBob: https://www.shipbob.com Unpacked with Casey Armstrong, ShipBob's podcast: https://unpacked.shipbob.com Casey's prior appearances: Shipageddon (Dec 2020), 3PL ShipBob Sees Strong Black Friday Fulfillment (Dec 2021) SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 explains what that means for your store. We get into the new revenue share that pays partners on merchant GMV growth (Plus upgrades finally count), why Catalog and UCP put the world's products in a single API, and how Sidekick app extensions going GA changes what apps can do inside your admin. Plus the two areas both VPs say are wide open for anyone willing to build. Stick around for the complaint Eytan admits Shopify still hasn't fixed. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Shopify Partners: shopify.com/partners Shopify.dev: shopify.dev Pika Layers (Atlee's store): pikalayers.com Atlee Clark on X: x.com/AtleeClark PromoParty (Kurt's app): [URL] WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 infrastructure for exactly this moment: Shop identity, cart sync, and the Shop Product Network. Archie breaks down why AI traffic lands on product pages instead of your homepage, the five-minute ChatGPT audit that reveals what AI actually understands about your products, and which product categories are winning in agentic search right now. Plus the free growth levers already sitting in your admin, and why the smartest money might still be in direct mail. Sponsors Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels Links Shopify Collective Shopify B2B (now on all plans) Work With Kurt Apply for Shopify Help See Our Results Free Newsletter The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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, including: Why Matt considers a 40% subscription opt-in rate achievable How gifts can outperform deeper subscription discounts Why customers who switch products or flavors can be worth 6x more When migrating subscription platforms is worth the risk How to simplify the initial offer without limiting existing subscribers Which products probably shouldn’t be sold by subscription The inexpensive billing-email improvement most brands overlook They also compare Recharge, Skio, and Loop—and explore how AI could change subscription management. Guest Matt Holman, The Subscription Doc Subscription Prescription: https://thesubscriptiondoc.com The Cancel Page: https://thecancelpage.com Sponsors Swym — Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, and more https://getswym.com/kurt Cleverific — Smart order editing for Shopify https://cleverific.com Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels https://zipify.com/KURT Work with Kurt Apply for Shopify help: https://ethercycle.com/apply See our results: https://ethercycle.com/work Get the free newsletter: https://kurtelster.com

"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 work. Then the discount data. Across $285 million in gross sales, nearly every store hands the same 20% code to new and returning customers alike, all year long, while the promo type that wins on every metric gets 7% of the budget. Also covered: the channel quietly outselling all AI sources combined 35 to 1, and the leaked evergreen code that cost one store $349,000. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS State of Ecommerce 2026 (AI traffic report): https://ethercycle.com/pages/state-of-ecommerce-2026 State of Discounts 2026: https://ethercycle.com/pages/state-of-discounts-2026 Promo Party (free gift with purchase app): [PROMO PARTY URL] Shopify Agentic dashboard: Shopify admin, under Sales channels WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 Workspace account was locked to Australian billing. Moving inventory from Australia to the US costs more than shipping it from China. In this episode: what nobody warns you about when buying an 8-year-old brand, how customers with 80+ repeat purchases justify losing money on the first order, and the TikTok creator seeding playbook that works in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Darren & Phillip: darrenandphillip.com Loop Returns (returns & exchanges): loopreturns.com Judge.me (reviews): judge.me Promo Party (Kurt's free gift with purchase app): promoparty.app WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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 Commerce Protocol is legitimately impressive tech still waiting for its payday, what the app store review crackdown means for honest developers, and a discovery buried in Shopify's dev docs: a commission-based paid placements program that might finally be the part that makes the money. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS DollScout, Kurt's Universal Commerce Protocol tech demo: dollscout.com Promo Party Pro, Ethercycle's Shopify app: promoparty.app Shopify dev docs, agents/catalog (paid placements developer preview): shopify.dev/docs/agents WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 boundaries, it does the heavy lifting, and you keep oversight the whole way. Sachin walks Kurt through how the "ask me first" controls work, why the tool optimizes across Meta, Microsoft Ads, ChatGPT, and Snap instead of fixating on one channel, and how it stacks with Shop Campaigns and its pay-only-when-you-get-an-order billing. If online advertising has ever felt like yelling into the void, start here. LINKS Campaign Autopilot: shopify.com/blog/introducing-campaign-autopilot Shopify Editions SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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. Shoppers now have long conversations with an AI about a whole use case, a camping trip, a problem, a gift, and arrive at your store already sold. Agentic Storefronts shows you the traffic, sales, and conversions from each AI channel, plus the real queries surfacing your products, so you can see where you rank and where you don't. Aaron and Kurt get into why this is the new SEO, why complete product data is the whole game, how Shopify Catalog structures your catalog for agents, what native checkout in an AI channel actually means, and why you stay the merchant of record with the customer relationship intact. Plus a bonus on Rollouts and SimGem heading into BFCM. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Agentic Storefronts: Shopify Admin > Agentic Storefronts (left nav) Shopify Catalog (for developers): build on the product discovery API Rollouts and SimGem: in Shopify Admin WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 discounts, split shipping, and a customer attached for loyalty. Helen breaks down what actually changed on a busy floor: automatic email capture through the Shop network's 200 million-plus buyers, scannable discount codes that kill the keyboard-smash, multi-select line items, per-line staff attribution, the new POS Hub, and the new Verifone Victa Mobile device for selling shoulder to shoulder instead of stuck behind the counter. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Shopify POS: shopify.com/pos Shopify hardware store (Verifone Victa Mobile pre-orders): shopify.com/hardware Get started: Shopify Admin > POS sales channel WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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 from their real purchase history, not generic web guesses. Posts let you auto cross-post your Instagram reels into a feed where people actually came to shop. And a new retail integration lets buyers check local inventory and start a return in the app to finish it in store. The throughline: Shop already has hundreds of millions of buyers interacting with your brand for free, mostly through order tracking. The merchants who win are the ones who show up with Posts and a dialed-in storefront instead of leaving that attention on the table. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and moregetswym.com/kurt Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnelszipify.com/KURT LINKS Shop: shop.app Set up Posts: Shopify Admin > Shop sales channel > Posts tab Check your search placement: Shopify Admin > Agentic sales channel Sign in with Shop on the Catalog API (for developers) WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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 it. Inside this episode: why the catalog plus UCP makes every Shopify store callable by any AI app, how to use Agentic Storefronts to see exactly where you rank and what data to fix, and why Vanessa says not to sleep on Shopify retail in 2026. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more getswym.com/kurt Ecommerce Alley — The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale Special offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Shopify Spring 2026 "Everywhere" Edition: shopify.com/editions/spring2026 What is Shopify Catalog (merchant explainer): shopify.com/blog/what-is-shopify-catalog Shopify Engineering blog, product taxonomy at scale: shopify.engineering/product-taxonomy-at-scale Shopify Engineering blog, catalog clustering: shopify.engineering/catalog-clustering Shopify Catalog API + dev dashboard: shopify.dev Agentic Storefronts: in your Shopify admin sales channels Vanessa Lee on X: x.com/vlaurenlee WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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, and capture emails before the drop. Then it had to survive launch day. Paul Reda walks through the build that crashed Safari before it sold out in minutes: why video was the obvious answer and the wrong one, how a canvas-based flipbook moved 40MB without killing phones, where "French developer Claude" wrote every line of GSAP, and the one rule that made it all possible. Content leads design, or you don't get the dinner. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more getswym.com/kurt Ecommerce Alley — The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale Special offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Montana Knife Company: montanaknifecompany.com The Montana (the folding knife landing page): montanaknifecompany.com GSAP (animation library): gsap.com Prior MKC episodes with Brandon [Horejsi]: search the feed for Montana Knife Company WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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 started publishing his real ROAS on LinkedIn when the numbers were ugly, the 80% Meta cut that finally flipped him profitable, and how a 250K-follower organic community out-engages Heinz, Tabasco, and Sriracha combined. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more getswym.com/kurt Ecommerce Alley - The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale Special Offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Fresh Chile: https://freshchileco.com/ Chris Lang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislangsocial/ Chris Lang on X: https://x.com/chrislangsocial WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 deal instantly), how earnouts and seller notes really work, why DTC as we knew it is dead, and his scorching take on why Shopify Capital loans are worse than credit card debt at 40% effective interest. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Ecommerce Alley - Is It Your Ads Or Is Meta Having A Bad Day? Check it at ecommercealley.com/bad Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Jeremy Horowitz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyhorowitz1/ Coco AI (WhatsApp Marketing for Shopify): https://my-coco.ai/ WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 chargeback kicked off an eight-year obsession with not getting burned again. He grew eBike Generation into a $3M store and pieced together a fraud detection stack that didn't eat his razor-thin drop shipping margins. Now he runs FRIQ Labs, productizing the system he built for himself. We covered the trifecta of red flags that almost always mean fraud, why you should never auto-capture payments on Shopify, and how being curious about a single weird order can save you thousands. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT Promo Party - We built an app! https://promoparty.app/ LINKS FRIQ Labs: https://friqlabs.com Drop Ship Breakthrough: https://dropshipbreakthrough.com Ben Knegendorf's episode: https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/ben-knegendorf-dropships-FLGufeLE Ekata: https://ekata.com Shopify Protect: https://shopify.com/protect WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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 AI-generated mockups that actually look real, why email marketing is still a "print money button," and how community-driven niche selling beats paid ads for customer acquisition in 2025. Also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ppYhfdota7k SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Printify: printify.com Printful: printful.com David Hooker on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidhooker/ David Hooker's TEDx Talk on Visual Literacy: ted.com/talks/david_hooker_the_importance_of_visual_literacy WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"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. We got into the real state of ecom in 2026: Facebook CPMs nearly doubling since the pandemic, why most brands under $5M shouldn't be split testing at all, how agencies are using AI tools like Claude and Nano Banana to skip hours of busywork, and Chase's bold prediction that Shopify is about to overhaul its partner program after a failed enterprise bet. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Electric Eye: https://electriceye.io/ Honest Ecommerce podcast: https://honestecommerce.com/ Fathom (sales call recording): https://fathom.video/ Nano Banana / Gemini image generation: https://gemini.google/overview/image-generation/ Figma Make: https://www.figma.com/ WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

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 fundamentally different buying experiences, how mid-market manufacturers ($20M-$100M) are the most underserved segment in ecommerce, and why your B2B quoting process probably still feels like 1997. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Uncap: https://uncap.com Denis Dyli on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/denisdyli WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.