Ecommerce has never had more tools, and it's never been less clear which one is doing what. Every new AI tool that lands overlaps with three you already run, and half of them get absorbed into something else within months.

So when something in the business isn't working, the instinct is to go and buy the next thing that'll fix it. But the problem usually isn't the tools. Most operators are running a fraction of what they already pay for, and the platforms they do have aren't talking to each other. A platform you use half of, sitting in a stack that doesn't share its data, is the most expensive software you own.

The brands getting this right do three things differently.

In this playbook, based on a conversation with Ed Hallen, co-founder of Klaviyo, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about getting more from the tools they already pay for:

• Put your tech budget where the money is actually made, not spread thin across the fringes
• Chase the connections rather than the next tool, because the value lives in your data moving between platforms
• Run your integrations at two speeds. Switch on the easy wins today and resource the deep work like the project it is

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Martin Cox walked away from agency life two months ago. No business plan. Four Shopify apps with animal mascots. A clear view of where the ecosystem is heading.

If you've been in the Australian Shopify scene for any length of time, you've heard Martin's name. He's the guy people mean when they say "we should just ask Martin." After more than a decade agency-side, he's now co-founder of Native App Co, a Melbourne studio building a small family of focused Shopify apps that don't feel like apps. He also co-hosts The Shopify App Show, so he sees the ecosystem from both inside the build and across the platform.

Nathan sat down with Martin to dig into what's actually changing for merchants in the AI era: why store credit is the promotional lever most operators are sleeping on, why product data is the new SEO, and what the global Shopify catalogue means for how stores get found from here.

Today, we're discussing:

• Why an app's real job in 2026 is to put guardrails around AI, not just add features [05:00]
• How store credit beats discount codes for spreading acquisition cost across two baskets [17:30]
• The musky tobacco t-shirt rule for product data in the age of AI search [32:00]
• Why Shopify Flow integration is the single strongest quality signal when evaluating an app [44:30]
• Where the global catalogue could take Shopify and what merchants should do about it now [35:30]
• Martin's easy in, easy out framework for choosing apps that won't burn you [44:00]
  
  

Use the code ADDTOCART for three months free on any Native App Co app: nativeappco.com/addtocart

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Influencer marketing is still a young line item, the pricing is all over the shop, and you can spend real money on a creator without ever being sure what you got back. So plenty of teams treat it with one eyebrow raised.

But the problem was never influencers.

Most brands treat influence as one big post, from one big name, a single moment they hope lands. The brands getting real value treat it as a relationship instead: the same credible people showing up more than once, who actually believe in the product.

The brands getting this right do three things differently.

In this playbook, based on a conversation with Jess Hatzis, co-founder of Frank Body and Willow & Blake, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about getting more from influencers for less:

• Influence works on frequency, not one big post, so the same credible people need to show up for you again and again
• Pick creators who already believe in your product, then treat them like partners rather than a media buy
• Bring creators together in person and do it on repeat, which buys frequency, content and a real bond for about a tenth of the cost

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Rohan McCloskey refunded $350,000 in donations, gave up his salary for a year, and nearly lost everything. He's still building GoGenerosity. And he'd do it again.

That kind of conviction usually comes from one of two places: delusion or proof. In Rohan's case it's the latter. One in six customers at his best-performing store donate every single time they shop. Ninety-eight percent of mystery shoppers said they were more likely to return to a brand running GoGenerosity than a competitor selling the same product. Only one merchant in his ideal customer profile has ever churned, and that was because the merchant's business hit financial difficulty, not because the product failed.

Rohan is Founder and CEO of GoGenerosity, a Shopify app that turns small customer contributions at checkout into real goods delivered to charity partners. The model is cleaner than it sounds: a customer adds a $2 or $3 donation at checkout, those donations pool, and the charity receives a gift card at full retail value redeemed in-store. One hundred percent goes through. GoGenerosity charges merchants a monthly SaaS fee on top. Before all of this, Rohan ran three restaurants in Mount Maunganui through COVID, survived, and then decided to start a tech company instead.

Today, we're discussing:

• How the GoGenerosity checkout model works in practice and why 100% of customer donations reach charity partners [05:03]
• The Hume mystery shopping data: 98% of shoppers were more likely to return to a brand running GoGenerosity than a direct competitor [15:26]
• Why one in six customers at Rohan's best-performing store donates $5 every single visit, and what two years of that data actually proves [18:07]
• The no-login product philosophy: why GoGenerosity deliberately has no merchant portal and sends monthly reports by email instead [28:38]
• Why raising capital too early nearly killed the business and what a two-year enterprise sales cycle actually costs a startup [47:35]
• What Rohan's psychologist told him on Christmas Day 2023 and how he kept building through a serious burnout [44:16]

Connect with Rohan McCloskey | Explore GoGenerosity | Connect with Rosa Willis | Connect with Nathan Bush

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Ecommerce is still a young industry, and it's moving faster than anyone in ecommerce can keep up with. Nobody has all the answers, and the pressure to act as if you do can leave you in a precarious position.

The ecommerce leaders who go furthest aren't the ones who faked it. They're the ones who asked for help early, while they were still learning, and kept doing it the whole way along. The asking was never the weak part of the story, it's what makes them the leaders they are today.

The best operators do three things differently when it comes to asking for help.

In this playbook, based on the most honest conversation we've had on the show with Grant Arnott, who built Power Retail and Click Frenzy, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about asking for help before they need it:

• Ask while you're still learning, not just when something has already broken
• Build the network in the calm, because the worst time to find your people is the moment the problem is on fire
• Treat asking for help as a leadership move, because ego is what is holding you back, not the question

This episode touches on depression and some dark moments. If anything here is close to home, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is on 1300 22 4636.

This episode is supported by Shippit. 38% of shoppers buy more with an accurate delivery estimate, yet most retailers fail to deliver on that promise at checkout. Shippit's State of Shipping Report shows you how to fix it. Click here to find the Shippit report.

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The Lad Collective has shipped roughly 15,000 ads in four years. Around 10 of those have been unicorns. Mark Broadhead, Head of Creative and Growth, runs the Meta engine behind one of Australia's fastest-growing bedding brands, now 200,000 customers deep and expanding into North America.

Mark joined as the founders' first employee, moving from his own vintage clothing business into the warehouse in Logan that The Lad Collective was running out of at the time. Four years later, he sits across creative, paid media and the brand's creative testing system. He's also one of the few people in ecommerce posting honest thinking on Meta account structures and AI in production on LinkedIn, which is what made him a must-have guest on the show.

This episode picks up from The Lad Collective Story with founders Bill and Ed Ovenden in episode 160. 

Today, we're discussing:

• Why Mark doesn't study other bedding brands for inspiration [11:50]
• The Unicorn Rule: 15,000 ads, 10 hits [27:3]How The Lad Collective uses content pillars to scale one idea across many formats [36:20]
• 205 live ads, 260 campaigns, and the move toward 1,000 live creatives [18:08]
• The customer-driven UGC pipeline that feeds itself [40:39]
• The role of AI in ad production with Higgsfield and Kive [46:46]
• The Robert Irwin partnership and what it means for the US push [44:48]
• Working with Shelley Craft and how big partnerships balance the lo-fi brand [42:30]
• Why Mark will put almost any piece of content into the ad account [41:18]

Read the full Showpo case study from our partners at Convert Digital → convertdigital.com.au/showpocasestudy

Use the code from our partners → 🛍️ Shopify | 📧 Klaviyo

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Most ecommerce teams are still arguing about channel split the same way they were five years ago. Meta versus Google, who gets the budget, who gets the credit. The argument usually gets won by whoever's most confident, not whoever's most right.

The deeper issue is the data underneath it. Every ad platform is built to over-claim, because the more credit it takes, the more budget you hand it. Add up what Google, Meta and your email tool each say they drove and you'll sail past two hundred percent of your actual revenue. They're all counting the same customer, so the debate gets run on numbers that don't add up.

The brands getting this right do three things differently.

In this playbook, based on a conversation with Paula Mitchell, Digital GM of Freedom, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about choosing the right marketing channels using data:

• Match the channel to the job the campaign needs done, not a fixed Meta and Google ratio
• Stop trusting the platforms' own numbers and judge the whole engine on one honest top-line metric like MER
• Buy independent measurement, but size it to your business instead of reaching for a full modelling platform too early

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Craig Mildenhall did not start in ecommerce.

He started in loyalty. Years at Loyalty New Zealand. A stint at adidas in Europe, running global loyalty and consumer engagement. And somewhere in all of that, he figured out something most digital leaders are still catching up to: the data tells you what happened. The customer tells you why.

As GM of Digital at Kathmandu, Craig has spent two years rebuilding one of Australia and New Zealand's most loved outdoor brands from the platform up. New site. New loyalty program. New way of working. And a four-month Shopify migration launched right in the middle of a flash sale.

This one is full of practical stuff.

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Most businesses struggling with profitability aren't spending too much on ads. They're holding too much stock. The wrong stock. Stock bought on gut feel six months ago, sitting in a warehouse, tying up cash that could be doing something useful.

Talea Bader is the co-founder of SKUTOPIA, an Australian fulfilment operation that's been building its own AI and robotics platform for eight years. He runs fulfilment for hundreds of businesses, from early-stage brands all the way through to enterprise, which gives him a view of what's actually happening inside these businesses rather than the version operators tell themselves.

He's seen a business turning over $700 million move from significant losses to tens of millions in profit. Not by changing their marketing. Not by redesigning their website. By changing the way they managed inventory.

Today, we're discussing:

• Why inventory is your biggest P&L lever, and most businesses go looking for profit in the wrong place
• The difference between gross margin and delivered margin, and why most buying decisions are made off the wrong number
• Why inventory reordering is still super manual, spreadsheet based, and driven by ego instead of science
• How to know your weeks on hand before it becomes a crisis
• The $700 million business that moved from significant losses to tens of millions in profit through better inventory management alone

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Dominique Moretti rebuilt the I.AM.GIA website from scratch in 12 weeks. Open rates sit above 50%. The re-engagement flow beats the welcome flow. And 90% of I.AM.GIA's revenue comes from the US. This is how she runs two global fashion brands with one lean team.

Dom is Head of Ecommerce and Digital at A&S Labels, the Melbourne company behind Tiger Mist and I.AM.GIA. She started there as a graphic design intern twelve years ago, grew with the business, left for a stint at Calibre, and came back in a bigger role. She's also a Klaviyo Champion 2026. Nathan sat down with her at K:SYD in Sydney before the doors opened, the third of three conversations recorded there.

Today, we're discussing:

• How Dom scrapped an I.AM.GIA website project mid-build, changed agencies and rebuilt in 12 weeks [12:09]
• Why she moved from headless to Shopify Native and what drove that decision [13:13]
• The re-engagement flow with no discount that's now outperforming the welcome flow [28:33]
• How to maintain 50-60% open rates for two fashion brands in 2026 [30:46]
• The app strategy: push notifications, Tapcart AI flows, and why apps beat SMS long-term [00:00]
• What TikTok Shop in the US actually requires in terms of product data, SLAs and live consistency [43:09]
• How Dom is using Claude and Klaviyo MCP for weekly reporting across all channels [37:29]

Use the code ADDTOCART20 for 20% off storewide at tigermist.com.au and au.iamgia.com/  (excludes EV x TM Collection).

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