"Even if it ends up being something that ends the universe, it at least will have been a fun ride. So let's do it."

That's what Karl Meisterheim said when Kurt pitched him on building a Shopify app. Over a year later, Promo Party Pro is live, and the journey from "this should be easy" to "why is the cart API doing that" was anything but smooth. Kurt, Paul Reda, and Karl sit down to talk through the whole thing: why free gift with purchase is Kurt's favorite promo, the edge cases that nearly broke them, the popup cooldown debate that consumed days, and what it actually takes to ship a polished app on Shopify in 2025.

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Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
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Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
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Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
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LINKS

• Promo Party Pro: https://promoparty.app/
• Crowdfunder App: https://apps.shopify.com/crowdfunder
• Ethercycle: https://ethercycle.com

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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.

"Nobody wants to get rich slowly."

Nick Mertz started Pins and Aces with $6,000 and zero outside capital. Today, his golf lifestyle brand does $25 million a year, employs over 40 people, and ships every order from their own warehouse outside Denver. But with customer acquisition costs through the roof, Nick stopped fighting the ad auction and built an omnichannel machine instead. We break down how live selling on Whatnot and TikTok became a serious revenue channel ($400K in December alone on TikTok Shop), why licensing collabs with Coca-Cola and South Park actually boost brand legitimacy, and how wholesale is flipping from 10% to 40% of revenue. Plus: the grab bag strategy that went nuclear, and why Nick runs his family business like a sports team.

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LINKS

• Pins and Aces: https://pinsandaces.com
• Nick Mertz on Instagram: https://instagram.com/nvmertz
• Pins and Aces on Instagram: https://instagram.com/pinsandaces
• Nick's first episode (June 2023): https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/[LINK-TO-ORIGINAL-EPISODE]
• Whatnot: https://whatnot.com
• TikTok Shop: https://shop.tiktok.com

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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 kinda told myself I need to take a step back from e-commerce. When I took a step back, e-commerce said no and put me back in."

Amer Grozdanic burned out running paid media for brands. The results were good — but never good enough. So he walked away, rebuilt his agency around what he could actually control, and landed clients like MVMT Watches and Billie Eilish without spending a dollar on ads. Today, Praella works with brands up to $400M in revenue, and Amer's seen the same blind spots in almost every store.

We dig into the Shopify features most merchants ignore (B2B, Markets, Flows, Collective), why BattlBox's Whatnot channel converts 10X better than TikTok Shop, and the one question you should ask any agency before signing a retainer.

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Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
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LINKS

• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/J3QTUEVulFc
• Praella: praella.com
• Amer on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amergrozdanic
• Whatnot: whatnot.com
• BattlBox: battlbox.com
• Shoplift (A/B testing): shoplift.com
• Intelligems (A/B testing): intelligems.io
• Shopify Collective: shopify.com/collective
• Shopify B2B: shopify.com/plus/b2b
• Shopify Flow: shopify.com/flow

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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.

For most direct-to-consumer brands, the term "ERP" evokes dread. Six-month implementations. Six-figure costs. Software built for factories, not Shopify stores. Kyle Hency experienced that pain firsthand. He scaled Chubbies Shorts past $100 million in revenue, and along the way, his "sophisticated" spreadsheet system (built by a former banker) completely fell apart. The breaking point? When Nordstrom called wanting to stock Chubbies, and his team realized they had no infrastructure to even accept the order. That painful lesson led Hency to raise $13.5 million for GoodDay Software, an ERP designed from day one for Shopify merchants. In this episode, we demystify what an ERP actually is, identify the warning signs that a brand has outgrown spreadsheets, and explore why the traditional barriers to operational infrastructure are finally falling for smaller businesses. Hency makes the case that it doesn't have to be this hard anymore.

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LINKS

• GoodDay Software: https://gooddaysoftware.com
• Kyle on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kylehency
• The Normal Brand case study: https://bit.ly/4bzwcFM

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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.

Here's something most merchants don't realize: you can run paid ads through an influencer's handle instead of your own. It's called whitelisting, and it converts about 15% better. Brad Hoos, CEO of Outloud Group and owner of Shopify store MuskOx Flannels, has been doing influencer marketing since YouTube was mostly cat videos. In this episode, he breaks down how whitelisting works step by step, why he thinks of creators as "decentralized media companies," and what most brands overthink when they're just getting started.

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

Promo Party — Kurt's new app for free gift with purchase promotions
promoparty.app

LINKS

• Outloud Group: https://outloudgroup.com
• MuskOx Flannels: https://gomuskox.com

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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 can't control tariffs. You can't control the weather. But you can control what's happening within your business."

Salena Knight has audited thousands of retail businesses since 2007 and found that 4 out of 5 seven-figure stores share the same blind spot—and it's not marketing. It's money. We talked about why inventory is secretly taxable cash sitting on your shelves, how one brand increased profit margins 30% by auditing their pick-and-pack costs, and why running a 30% off sale on luxury products got zero orders.

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Promo Party Pro - Boost sales with promotional campaigns
promoparty.app

LINKS

• Bringing Business to Retail Podcast: https://salenaknight.com/podcast
• Salena Knight: https://salenaknight.com
• The Retail Academy: https://theretailacademy.com

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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 would have invested 100% of all of the money that we raised into Meta. I would have done nothing else but secure that one channel first."

After launching Troop, a functional mushroom gummy brand, Jake Mellman discovered that community events and sampling don't pay the bills. What does: Meta ads, a 76% contribution margin, and defaulting customers to quarterly subscriptions. Now he's applied those lessons to Psilly Goose, a functional beverage targeting the 46% of American adults who've stopped drinking. The challenge: THC restrictions, heavy shipping costs, and a farm bill that could shut him down by November.

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LINKS

• Troop Mushroom Gummies: https://trytroop.com
• Psilly Goose: https://drinkpsillygoose.com
• Previous episode with Jake & Stephanie: https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/jake-mellman-stephanie-moyal
• Breeze (Aaron Nosbish episode): https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/aaron-nosbish-breeze

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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.

"Shop has this amazing opportunity to convert shoppers into people that are being entertained by shoppable content."

Bill Staley built the first Shop Mini to launch on Shopify's Shop app. Food Social brings 10,000+ shoppable recipes to 200 million potential users. We dig into why Shop is Shopify's most underrated channel, how personalization matches recipes to purchase history, and why intent-based shopping beats interruption marketing every time.

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LINKS

• Food Social: https://foodsocial.io
• Food Social App (iOS & Android): Search "Food Social" in app stores
• Email Bill: [email protected]

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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.

Dana Roberts spent years watching fifth-grade girls panic through their first periods with ill-fitting products and no preparation. The period care aisle hadn't changed in decades. Same brands. Same sizing that was never designed for a 10-year-old's body. When she pitched the idea to her god-sister, Dr. Monica Williams, she got a polite brush-off. Years later, Monica's own daughter started showing signs of puberty, and suddenly the problem wasn't theoretical anymore.

What followed was a brutal education in bootstrapping: churning through agencies, surviving iOS 14.5, and funding an entire company through pitch competitions because traditional VCs wouldn't write checks. Last year, a three-minute pitch won them $1 million from Pharrell Williams. Then Ulta told them to change their name if they wanted shelf space. They did it in 90 days.

Now Scarlet by RedDrop is in almost 400 stores trying to fix something the industry ignored for generations. We talked about all of it, including the part where Monica says she wishes she'd never bootstrapped at all.

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LINKS

• Scarlet by RedDrop: tryreddrop.com
• Ulta product page: ulta.com/brand/scarlet-by-reddrop
• Black Ambition Prize: blackambitionprize.com
• Klaviyo: klaviyo.com
• Smart Marketer: smartmarketer.com

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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.

"We were close to closing the company two or three times. Every winter was like, okay, that's it. Goodbye company."

Chris Erthel built Meller sunglasses from a Spanish side project into a brand that sells a pair every 28 seconds. Along the way, he helped scale HelloBody from €30M to €107M as fractional CMO before its €330M exit to Henkel. We talked about why US brands fail in Europe, the cultural quirks that kill conversions in Germany, and why Italy requires cash on delivery or you're dead on arrival. He's run 3,500+ A/B tests and shares counterintuitive findings that challenge everything you think you know about landing pages and ad creative.

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LINKS

• Meller Brand: https://mellerbrand.com/
• Weavy AI: https://www.weavy.ai/
• Rory Flynn (AI Content): https://www.instagram.com/_roryflynn_/
• Chris Erthel LinkedIn: https://es.linkedin.com/in/chriserthel
• Discount Code: CHRISERTHEL (highest discount ever at Meller)

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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.

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.

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LINKS

• Montana Knife Company: https://montanaknifecompany.com
• MKC on Instagram: https://instagram.com/montanaknifecompany
• Brandon's first episode: https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/montana-knife-company

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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.