The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
NEW EPISODES EVERY TUESDAY, SUBSCRIBE FOR UNBEATABLE ECOM RECON – Every Tuesday since 2014, host Kurt Elster shares the Shopify success stories that nobody tells you about, straight from the entrepreneurs living it. Subscribe for a raw look at what it really takes to succeed on Shopify.
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From $25K to $447K a Month: BattlBox's Whatnot Playbook
<p>"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."</p><p>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, with no ad spend.</p><p>John breaks down why Whatnot buyers spend three times what TikTok Shop buyers spend, what a three-hour show looks like when each...
7 Founders, 15 Minutes Each: What's Working in 2026
<p>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.</p><p>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 Lopez-May, VP Marketing at Nugget, on life after the pandemic lottery. Vivek Kumar, CEO of Articore (Redbubble and TeePublic), on their new Shopify integration and a $20 million turnaround...
Kurt & Paul: September Roundup
<p>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.</p><p>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 accounts, and the eternal free-shipping-or-20%-off question. Part two is what to fix in September, and what three consecutive Black Fridays of gift-with-purchase data say about thresholds, gift size...
How a Nicotine-Free Vape Brand Grows *Without Ads*
<p>He sells vapes with no nicotine. Every ad platform, payment processor, and carrier treats him like Big Tobacco anyway.</p><p>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.</p><p>What you'll learn:</p>Why a product with no addictive ingredient still gets a 60% repeat rateWhere a new customer really comes from when Meta, Google, and...
ShipBob CMO on Peak Season 2026
<p>He's shipped over a billion units. He says your Black Friday gets decided in September.</p><p>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.</p><p>What you'll learn:</p>Why right now is "inbound peak" and what to send your 3PL before OctoberThe real warehouse math: when one node beats five, and why split shipments crush marginsThe only two levers...
Shopify's New Rev Share, Catalog, and the Next Big Bets Explained
<p>"You think you know what you're doing. Like I work at Shopify. I should be better at it."</p> <p>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.</p> <p>We get into the new revenue share that pays partners on merchant GMV growth (Plus upgrades finally count), why Catalog and UCP put...
Shopify's Head of Growth: How to Get Recommended by AI
<p>"It's more than 2x that conversion rate coming from another referral channel."</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Archie breaks down why AI traffic lands on product pages instead of your homepage, the five-minute...
Why Your Subscription Program Stopped Growing — Matt Holman
<p>Your subscription program is adding customers every month—so why has it stopped growing?</p> <p>Matt Holman, founder of Subscription Prescription and known as “The Subscription Doc,” explains how churn creates a hidden ceiling: eventually, the subscribers coming<br> in simply replace those going out.</p> <p>Matt and Kurt discuss why improving the offer can produce a better return than obsessing over retention, including:</p> 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...
REPORT: AI is 0.1% of $274M in sales analyzed
<p>"This traffic is nothing. It is a rounding error."</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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...
He Sold a Startup, Now He Sells Viral Dog Pajamas
<p>"Man, what didn't I get wrong? It's so much harder."</p> <p>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.</p> <p>In this episode: what nobody warns you...
