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.
Episodes
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 quit. Ms. Hatch, a serial entreprene...
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 "unlisted" product status that's perfect f...
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.
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Cleverific - Smart order editing ...
"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 worse, the four accessibility issues yo...
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 poach employees like she's manifesting ...
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 voluntarily remove every frontend a...
"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 about the terminology wars (GEO vs AEO ...
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 destroys your ability to see what c...
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, and whether more granular SEO collect...
"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 lessons for entrepreneurs facing their...
Also available on YouTube: youtu.be/gGdS45JY2Yo
Andrew 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, Cleverific
- Tu Pham - Co-founder, Marketing & Design, Cleverific
- Website: https://cleverific.com/
Spon...
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 into something completely different ...
Also available on YouTube: youtu.be/0HHJ5tONfVo
Most 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 the bottom on customer acquisition co...
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 strategies that drove his rapid g...
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 customer rates on non-consumable goods.
...
Also Available on YouTube: youtu.be/_nqN9HyOpxM
What 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 of photo reviews, and a community ...
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 early work at Purple Mattress to G...
Watch the video interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TMVqWfaddG8
Shopify 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 works, identify new channels like A...
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 a $50k side hustle or an eight-fig...
Available on YouTube: youtu.be/qdpFmuFD8yE
Shopify 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 a sea of chatbots and grifters.
Spon...
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