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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$1.7M BFCM: Inside Montana Knife Company's Black Friday
<p>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 your customer is and giving them what they want before they ask. Also: why Brandon actually high-fives when his repeat customer rate goes down.</p><h2>SPONSORS</h2><p>Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more<...
Native A/B Testing Hits Shopify: What You Need to Know
<p>"It's really about helping merchants become more informed, helping them make more bold decisions."</p><p>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 customers do.</p><h3>SPONSORS</h3><p>Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more<br />getswym.com/kurt</p><p>Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify<br />cleverific.com</p><p>Zipify - Build high-converting...
SHOPIFY EDITIONS WINTER '26
<p>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 for store owners.</p><h2>SPONSORS</h2><p>Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more<br />getswym.com/kurt</p><p>Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify<br />cleverific.com</p><p>Zipify - Bu...
Why Your Creative Strategy Is Burning Cash
<p>"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."</p><p>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 spend. His math: you're paying $250-500 per asset for creatives that never get tested. Kazim has spent 13 years running campaigns for brands like Canada Goose and DTC companies doing $10-16 million a month. His solution is...
She Sold 250K Shampoo Bars Without Amazon or Ads
<p>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 to everything, and built a million-dollar company anyway.</p><p>In this episode, we explore how Kate sold 250,000 shampoo bars in 4 years while refusing Meta ads, Amazon listings, and influencer partnerships...
What Discounts Actually Make People Buy (Study)
<p>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.</p><p>Cara Marin from Seguno looked at 162,000 discount code sets. Real data from real stores. And what she found flips everything we thought we knew. The most successful stores discount more, not less. They just do it smarter. With unique...
This Founder Automated Influencer Outreach Completely
<p>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 influencers, negotiate deals, send products, follow up. No humans involved. One of his clients, Harney & Sons Tea, they've got agents running their entire influencer program. The agents find people, check their engagement rates...
Buff Clucks: From Homework Assignment to 7-Figure Chicken Brand
<p>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.</p><p>The twist is it started as her teenage son's eighth-grade homework assignment. He made $500 selling herbs in craft bags, then quit. Ms. Hatch, a serial entrepreneur with 16 businesses behind her, picked it up and scaled Buff Clucks to seven figures in 18 months using Meta advertising, landing pages, and subscription bundling.</p><p>This is a story about...
What's New in Shopify: November 2025
<p>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.</p><p>They also dig into the new VS Code-based theme editor (developers love it, merchants hate it), the "unlisted" product status that's perfect for hiding free gifts and private sales, and Kurt reveals the one homepage element that gets clicked more than anything else—you're probably not using it right.</p><p>...
Black Friday Starts Early: The 3-Week Email Strategy
<p>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.</p><h2>SPONSORS</h2><p>Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more<br />getswym.com/kurt</p><p>Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify<br />cleverific.com</p><p>Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels<br />zipify.com/KURT</p><h2>LINKS</h2>Filip Pejic...
