Latest / Talk Commerce / Live from Ecomm Forum Jason Nyhus from Shopware on Agentic Commerce and B2B Sales Transformation
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:00.11) Perfect. All right, welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce Live from the e-commerce forum in Minneapolis. Today I have Jason Nyhus Come on, man, old friends. should be able to say my name. can't say anybody's name. can't say my own name. Jason, tell us your role. What do do at Shopware This might be my fourth or fifth time on this pod. I love, always love being a part of it. Thank you for having me. So I, General Manager here at Shopware, responsible for our North American business. That's awesome. So Agentic Commerce, that's the talk of the town. How are we coming with Agentic now? Speaker 2 (00:35.278) Well, you know, it's interesting. Obviously, we're in an AI bubble. Everyone's kind of talking about it. Every company in the world is kind of AI washing, describing themselves as an AI first company. There's a lot of kind of noise in the industry. so, ShopWare's view on AI is really kind of in two parts. The first part is we think about AI really taking a lot of the blue collar work that the white collar people in e-commerce do and automating it. simplifying it and giving them more time to do the more strategic and valuable things. And so we put AI everywhere in and creating products, editing them, imagery, descriptions, every aspect, campaign management, used AI to automate. However, the second aspect of where AI can really play a big role is in a lot of ways could be tailored towards B2B. And Agents at Commerce is the big unlock here, we believe. And so So, just to give you an example, sales reps who work for a manufacturer probably spend about three quarters of their time not selling, doing all sorts of other corporate mandated things, with 25 % of their time selling. And so we view Agents at Commerce as a way to really give the sales reps more time to sell by introducing these agents that automate a lot of the blue collar work that they have to do that's not selling. So, man, that was a long-winded answer. But that's kind of our view. That's great, yeah. So the word on the street that I'm hearing is Shopware has found their footing in the US. yeah. Tell us the momentum you have. I'm hearing only good things about Shopware and we're hearing more and more merchants moving to Shopware. Tell us about some of the momentum that's happening right now. Speaker 2 (02:27.502) Yeah, so I think the best place to look is people to do their own research and look on sites like Built With and look at shopware in the United States. And what you'll see is there's a couple thousand merchants now running on shopware in North America. And it's a byproduct of three things. Number one, we're an open source product. And so anybody anywhere can take our product, install it, run it, and basically get world class capabilities for free. And a lot of people are doing that. And that's a benefit. of us being in the market, us being on Gartner and Forrester, and the like. And so we've had a tremendous amount of people finding us and installing and running us. The second thing is really around European clients who, now that we've got a flag in the US, really say, now that ShopWorx product is able to be a North American-centric experience, they're expanding with us, which is really, really great. And then the third is the hard work by my team and our agency partners launching a bunch of new stores. And so sites like Uppababy and Dunham Sports and Albany Fasteners and Boo Ally and hundreds of others are all now running on shopware and it's been phenomenal. at this point we think we're the fastest growing e-commerce platform in North America and it's been a hell of a lot of fun. And the credit really goes to the community and the ecosystem that supported us the whole way. You know, had an opportunity last week to talk to the e-comm manager at Eagle Crusher who is now on ShopWare. he had nothing but good things to say about the ShopWare team, but also about their agency partner. Is it sort of a uniqueness that you have that you get to know your customers so well? Because I think a lot of people think about other bigger platforms that are just there. They drop in a sales rep who gives you the deal and then you never hear from the sales rep until you have to renew your license. What's the unique, why is shop where, why are you spending so much time with your customer? Why are you just selling him stuff? A little bit sarcasm there but. Speaker 2 (04:27.542) Well, that sounds, that's, yeah. Well, you know, the truth is we're still subscale compared to some of our competitors. And so there's a level of intimacy that you can deliver when you're small and scrappy. But I tell my team really three things. In order to buy shopware, you probably need to be in a complex use case. There are a lot of other solutions that are really good and great at solving the more kind of straightforward use cases. And so frankly, those aren't really our customers. And so because there's natural complexity in the sales cycle, it requires someone getting into the nuance and the details of what makes these brands special. And so the example you gave on Eagle Crushers is a great one. Above the Fray, man, they know the AEM space, the American Equipment Manufacturing space. They know those merchants. They know their pain points. They know the people. And so we're lucky enough to have Above the Fray as a wonderful partner of ours. And so when we go in, there's three things that have to be true to buy shopware. The first thing, You gotta love our people. Okay? And so we do a lot around making sure we hire people that you like and trust. Second thing, you gotta love our product. And again, it really comes down to understanding their use cases and making sure that our product fits them. If it doesn't, we'd rather not have the transaction. And then the third, you gotta love our friends. And so we think if you line those three things up with a partner that we like and trust, our odds of success are very, very high. And frankly, through that journey, we get relationships. We build them. I have a great story. Probably almost eight years ago, met the Haman Brothers at a Magento unconference in Cologne. And they showed up and gave a presentation and they around and answered everybody's questions. They weren't there to sell shop or they were just there to participate in the community. And I think that shows some uniqueness in what you do and what they do as a company and how they approach not only to their clients, but of the community. Speaker 1 (06:30.8) So talk a little bit. I shop where is really big in community. They have a they have a community day They have a world events that happen all over the place one that just happened with shoptoberfest Which I find in in very entertaining and of course I've been there doing podcasting, but tell us a little bit about that event Well, I think you nailed it with the community point. There are, put, six ways to make money in e-commerce. One is the software, second is the hosting, third is payments, fourth is marketing service, fifth, professional services, and the sixth is an app store where you can monetize all the relationships and plugins. And there's probably a seventh with things like training and certifications. But largely speaking, those are the seven ways to make make money in e-commerce. And ShopWare has decided that we're going to make the lion's share of our money through the first one, which is being a world-class commerce product. And we're going to leave it to the community to be world-class at the rest. And so what that ultimately does is it fosters the fact that we all need each other. And the fact that the companies who focus on being great at delivery or great at payments or great at something else can ultimately continue to be more competitive on price, provide better services, because they're focused on it. And so that's kind of the view of the world we live in, is if you're world class at one aspect of the value chain, you find partners for the rest. And that led us to this concept called Shoptobufest. And frankly, the origin of it actually comes from a Minneapolis event that we're at right now, Econ Forum. Stefan Hamann was visiting me a couple of years ago, and I took him to this event. And he just absolutely loved The fact that this event, Ecom Forum, doesn't take itself too seriously. The fact that it's trying to be the glue to connect the twin cities, e-commerce world. And the fact that Irish Titan really takes the back seat. And it's more about the ecosystem or the community than it is about Irish Titan. And so those were all the things that Stefan witnessed firsthand. And after that he said, hey, I have a crazy idea. Americans love Oktoberfest. Why don't we create Speaker 2 (08:49.824) event called Shoptoberfest. And Stefan Hollein, self-proclaimed the nerd of the business, has probably one of the best marketing ideas I've ever heard. And so now Shoptoberfest is RIT. We've had two in a row and it's been amazing and we were thrilled to have you with us. Yeah, and I you know one of the things that you touted is no commercials. It was like that. It was there was no commercial There was no speaker up there giving us a spiel because they had to for five minutes or you know It was it was really a fun event and I will say that I learned a ton you learn a ton from the Leaders in the industry and there's tons of merchants there that were educating people on what they're doing today on e-commerce and it Gentah came up and all those other great topics, so No, Speaker 2 (09:34.062) Well, what happens generally is people speak in these high-level generalities around AI or these trends. And what you never actually get to is the practitioners, the merchants themselves who are dealing with a problem. so Shoptoberfest was designed to have them be the star of show. So it's 10-minute TED Talks by eight merchants, and it's their lived experience inside of organizations with change management, adopting of AI, you name it. it's, frankly, it's my favorite event of the year. Yeah, that's great. Jason, it's been such a great time. What are you getting from the e-commerce forum besides the fact that you spoke to... Yeah, well, man, I couldn't like the spirit of Irish Titan more. They are, you know, I'm in the Twin Cities, so this is my backyard in Minneapolis. And there's something unique about the industry, or our community. We've got some of the biggest companies in the world, Best Buy and Target and Medtronic and 3M. But there's nothing that really creates the glue that connects the community. And so the fact that Irish Titan is willing to invest a tremendous amount of money and energy and Everyone is welcome. And I just, love the ethos and the spirit of that. I say community, Darin loves to say ecosystem. They're one and the same. But Irish Titan puts this on not because it's good for them, because it's good for the community. And so I, at any chance, will be a part of that. Yeah, cheers to that. Jason, it's been a great conversation. Thanks for being here today. Speaker 2 (10:58.14) Hey man, you're the man. Thanks, Brent.