He's shipped over a billion units. He says your Black Friday gets decided in September.

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.

What you'll learn:

• Why right now is "inbound peak" and what to send your 3PL before October
• The real warehouse math: when one node beats five, and why split shipments crush margins
• The only two levers that lower shipping costs (and you can only pull one)
• The subscription discount trap that trains customers to game you, plus how Rise Coffee and Momentous do it right
• How brands turn screenshots into warehouse receiving orders in 30 seconds with AI agents in Slack
• ShipBob Promise: delivery dates on the PDP and at checkout, built by the exec who ran Amazon's North America fulfillment
• The Watchmaster story: a crawler that undercut Rolex competitors $5 at a time to win Google Shopping
• The exact signal it's time to stop packing your own orders

Guest: Casey Armstrong, CMO of ShipBob, the global fulfillment platform with 70+ facilities worldwide. Previously VP of Marketing at BigCommerce.

Show Links:

• ShipBob: https://www.shipbob.com
• Unpacked with Casey Armstrong, ShipBob's podcast: https://unpacked.shipbob.com
• Casey's prior appearances: Shipageddon (Dec 2020), 3PL ShipBob Sees Strong Black Friday Fulfillment (Dec 2021)

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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 think you know what you're doing. Like I work at Shopify. I should be better at it."

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.

We get into the new revenue share that pays partners on merchant GMV growth (Plus upgrades finally count), why Catalog and UCP put the world's products in a single API, and how Sidekick app extensions going GA changes what apps can do inside your admin. Plus the two areas both VPs say are wide open for anyone willing to build.

Stick around for the complaint Eytan admits Shopify still hasn't fixed.

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

LINKS

• Shopify Partners: shopify.com/partners
• Shopify.dev: shopify.dev
• Pika Layers (Atlee's store): pikalayers.com
• Atlee Clark on X: x.com/AtleeClark
• PromoParty (Kurt's app): [URL]

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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.

"It's more than 2x that conversion rate coming from another referral channel."

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.

Archie breaks down why AI traffic lands on product pages instead of your homepage, the five-minute ChatGPT audit that reveals what AI actually understands about your products, and which product categories are winning in agentic search right now. Plus the free growth levers already sitting in your admin, and why the smartest money might still be in direct mail.

Sponsors

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

Links

• Shopify Collective
• Shopify B2B (now on all plans)

Work With Kurt

• Apply for Shopify Help
• See Our Results
• Free Newsletter

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.

Your subscription program is adding customers every month—so why has it stopped growing?

Matt Holman, founder of Subscription Prescription and known as “The Subscription Doc,” explains how churn creates a hidden ceiling: eventually, the subscribers coming
in simply replace those going out.

Matt and Kurt discuss why improving the offer can produce a better return than obsessing over retention, including:

• 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 the risk
• How to simplify the initial offer without limiting existing subscribers
• Which products probably shouldn’t be sold by subscription
• The inexpensive billing-email improvement most brands overlook

They also compare Recharge, Skio, and Loop—and explore how AI could change subscription management.

Guest

Matt Holman, The Subscription Doc
Subscription Prescription: https://thesubscriptiondoc.com
The Cancel Page: https://thecancelpage.com

Sponsors

Swym — Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, and more
https://getswym.com/kurt

Cleverific — Smart order editing for Shopify
https://cleverific.com

Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels
https://zipify.com/KURT

Work with Kurt

Apply for Shopify help: https://ethercycle.com/apply
See our results: https://ethercycle.com/work
Get the free newsletter: https://kurtelster.com

"This traffic is nothing. It is a rounding error."

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.

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 metric gets 7% of the budget.

Also covered: the channel quietly outselling all AI sources combined 35 to 1, and the leaked evergreen code that cost one store $349,000.

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

LINKS

• State of Ecommerce 2026 (AI traffic report): https://ethercycle.com/pages/state-of-ecommerce-2026
• State of Discounts 2026: https://ethercycle.com/pages/state-of-discounts-2026
• Promo Party (free gift with purchase app): [PROMO PARTY URL]
• Shopify Agentic dashboard: Shopify admin, under Sales channels

WORK WITH KURT

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ethercycle.com/apply

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ethercycle.com/work

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kurtelster.com

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.

"Man, what didn't I get wrong? It's so much harder."

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.

In this episode: what nobody warns you about when buying an 8-year-old brand, how customers with 80+ repeat purchases justify losing money on the first order, and the TikTok creator seeding playbook that works in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands.

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

LINKS

• Darren & Phillip: darrenandphillip.com
• Loop Returns (returns & exchanges): loopreturns.com
• Judge.me (reviews): judge.me
• Promo Party (Kurt's free gift with purchase app): promoparty.app

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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.

Kurt pulled the agentic sales numbers on a store doing $1.8 million a month. ChatGPT drove $4,200 of it. So he dragooned business partner Paul Reda into an unscripted reaction to Shopify's Editions announcements. No pre-cleared questions, no talking points, just two people who've optimized eight-figure stores for AI search comparing notes on what's actually real.

They get into why Universal Commerce Protocol is legitimately impressive tech still waiting for its payday, what the app store review crackdown means for honest developers, and a discovery buried in Shopify's dev docs: a commission-based paid placements program that might finally be the part that makes the money.

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

LINKS

• DollScout, Kurt's Universal Commerce Protocol tech demo: dollscout.com
• Promo Party Pro, Ethercycle's Shopify app: promoparty.app
• Shopify dev docs, agents/catalog (paid placements developer preview): shopify.dev/docs/agents

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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.

"It's an in-house, ready-to-go agency. Which is free for all merchants."

That's how Sachin Malhotra, Shopify's Director of Product for Merchant Marketing, describes Campaign Autopilot, the new AI marketing tool Shopify just announced as part of Editions. It sets up your ad accounts, syncs your catalog, and runs Meta Advantage+ checkout campaigns inside the guardrails you set. You teach it your boundaries, it does the heavy lifting, and you keep oversight the whole way.

Sachin walks Kurt through how the "ask me first" controls work, why the tool optimizes across Meta, Microsoft Ads, ChatGPT, and Snap instead of fixating on one channel, and how it stacks with Shop Campaigns and its pay-only-when-you-get-an-order billing. If online advertising has ever felt like yelling into the void, start here.

LINKS

• Campaign Autopilot: shopify.com/blog/introducing-campaign-autopilot
• Shopify Editions

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

WORK WITH KURT

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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.

"Being on Shopify means you get access to agentic automatically, out of the box."

Your store is already selling inside ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Shop, whether you've noticed or not. Aaron Glazer, Director of Product at Shopify, joins Kurt to explain Agentic Storefronts, the new Admin experience that finally makes that presence visible and controllable.

The buyer behavior has already shifted. Shoppers now have long conversations with an AI about a whole use case, a camping trip, a problem, a gift, and arrive at your store already sold. Agentic Storefronts shows you the traffic, sales, and conversions from each AI channel, plus the real queries surfacing your products, so you can see where you rank and where you don't.

Aaron and Kurt get into why this is the new SEO, why complete product data is the whole game, how Shopify Catalog structures your catalog for agents, what native checkout in an AI channel actually means, and why you stay the merchant of record with the customer relationship intact. Plus a bonus on Rollouts and SimGem heading into BFCM.

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

LINKS

• Agentic Storefronts: Shopify Admin > Agentic Storefronts (left nav)
• Shopify Catalog (for developers): build on the product discovery API
• Rollouts and SimGem: in Shopify Admin

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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 hear store associates asking people in person for their email all the time, and it always is a little bit awkward."

Helen Mou runs product for retail at Shopify, and she just helped rebuild the thing every store runs on. This spring edition is the fastest POS Shopify has shipped. The rebuilt core selling flow saves over a minute on complex transactions, the kind with multiple items, stacked discounts, split shipping, and a customer attached for loyalty.

Helen breaks down what actually changed on a busy floor: automatic email capture through the Shop network's 200 million-plus buyers, scannable discount codes that kill the keyboard-smash, multi-select line items, per-line staff attribution, the new POS Hub, and the new Verifone Victa Mobile device for selling shoulder to shoulder instead of stuck behind the counter.

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

LINKS

• Shopify POS: shopify.com/pos
• Shopify hardware store (Verifone Victa Mobile pre-orders): shopify.com/hardware
• Get started: Shopify Admin > POS sales channel

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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.

Also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bgrJVYiDQKc

"If I don't see that purple button at checkout, bye-bye." That's what Shop's buyers tell Kenny Cohen, and it's a clue to why Shop has quietly become one of the most valuable channels a Shopify merchant has.

Kenny runs product for Shop, and in this spring edition he walks Kurt through three updates. Agentic Shop Search now understands a buyer's taste from their real purchase history, not generic web guesses. Posts let you auto cross-post your Instagram reels into a feed where people actually came to shop. And a new retail integration lets buyers check local inventory and start a return in the app to finish it in store.

The throughline: Shop already has hundreds of millions of buyers interacting with your brand for free, mostly through order tracking. The merchants who win are the ones who show up with Posts and a dialed-in storefront instead of leaving that attention on the table.

SPONSORS

Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and moregetswym.com/kurt

Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnelszipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Shop: shop.app
• Set up Posts: Shopify Admin > Shop sales channel > Posts tab
• Check your search placement: Shopify Admin > Agentic sales channel
• Sign in with Shop on the Catalog API (for developers)

WORK WITH KURT

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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.