The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

Noam Sugarman, entrepreneur and founder of Dumb Audio who built a direct-to-consumer hi-fi brand with no prior audio experience. He discusses designing living-room friendly turntables, why self-run Shopify pre-orders beat Indiegogo, pricing between cheap and elite gear, and how add‑ons like subwoofers drove unexpected upsell success.

Ethan Haber, entrepreneur and founder of Happy Habitats who redesigned small-pet products, tells the seven-year saga of reinventing the hamster ball. He covers design and patent hurdles, COVID-era manufacturing and packaging disasters, retail wins that validated the product, a pivot from social ads to marketplaces, and the persistence that finally led to profitability.

Patrick Rice, SEO and AI consultant who runs Patrick Rice Co., explains how GEO got brands into AI recommendations. He explores web consensus via listicle outreach, structured data and JSON-LD, Reddit tactics, and a six-month case study with big visibility lifts. The conversation covers tooling, measurement differences between AI and classic ranking, and ethical sustainability of these tactics.

Amanda Engelman, Director of Product at Shopify who built the Shopify Product Network app, explains a tool that surfaces other merchants' products on your store for commission. They cover how placements work across collections, search, and post-purchase pages. Engineering behind multi-merchant checkouts, taste-matching challenges, and how shop campaigns feed the network are discussed.

Karl Meisterheim, developer who built the Promo Party Pro app, shares technical tales from building a Shopify public app. He digs into theme integration surprises, cart API and performance headaches, edge cases like $0 products and discounts, and the long popup cooldown debate. Short, candid stories about shipping a polished app and the tradeoffs behind key engineering choices.

Nick Mertz, founder of Pins and Aces, turned $6,000 into a $25M golf lifestyle brand. He digs into live selling on Whatnot and TikTok Shop, licensing collabs with big IP, scaling wholesale to 40% of revenue, in-house fulfillment, viral grab-bag tactics, and running the company like a sports team.

Amer Grozdanic, co-founder and CEO of Prella who rebuilt his agency after burning out on paid media. He discusses why he dropped ads to focus on migrations and on-site work. They cover underused Shopify features like B2B, Markets, and Flow. He also explains why selling on channels like Whatnot can outperform TikTok Shop and how to measure success beyond ads.

Kyle Hency, co-founder of Chubbies and founder of GoodDay Software, built an ERP made for Shopify merchants after scaling Chubbies past $100M. He shares why ERPs intimidate brands and when spreadsheets finally break. Hear stories about automating POs, live COGS and profitability, agent-driven allocation, and how tooling can make operations feel simple again.

Brad Hoos, CEO of Outloud Group and founder of MuskOx Flannels, is a longtime influencer marketing pro. He explains influencer whitelisting and why running ads from creators converts better. He frames creators as decentralized media companies. He covers setup steps, attribution options, and how to pick and test creators for paid partnerships.

Salena Knight, a retail strategist who has audited thousands of stores since 2007, explains the money mistakes top shops make. She reveals how inventory ties up taxable cash. She digs into hidden pick-and-pack and shipping leaks. She discusses pricing, promotions that backfire on luxury goods, and ways to monetize faster delivery.