Latest / Leaders on Shopify with John Readman / How to spot a good Shopify app in an age of AI generated apps
Transcript
- John - Leaders On Shopify: So welcome back to the Leaders on Shopify podcast. I'm really pleased. I've got Martin who runs the Native App Company, also hosts the Shopify app podcast. And I met Martin recently at Dot Dev in Toronto, the Shopify Developers Conference. So welcome to the show, Martin. For those who don't know you, could you just quickly introduce yourself, introduce your various different apps and businesses and what you're up to? Martin Cox: Yeah, sure. Great great thanks for having me, John. And yeah, it's great to follow this up so quickly after yeah, hanging out in Toronto together last week and now we're back here and me it's back in my cold little garage in Melbourne and you're back in back in the motherland. So it's good to yeah, good to reconnect. And yeah, I guess you you summed me up more or less like yeah, I'm I'm essentially I'm I'm an e ex agency guy, it seems to be the sort of the the the career path of people. yeah work in Shopify agencies doing the tech stuff for a while and then they get the get the itch to go and yeah try and build their own product and so yeah I've after after 13 years of of starting my own agency and then going to work in another agency have have decided to go out on that journey this year. So I've gone all in on the Shopify app ecosystem. So yeah I've built a a company called Native app co And yeah, we sort of have the motto of building apps that don't feel like apps. So we're trying to build stuff that works really natively and intuitively in the Shopify ecosystem. We've yeah launch launched four apps this year with a fifth actually launching next week. And then to to cap that off, yeah, I also started a podcast a bit like you at the start of the year. I call it my midlife crisis prod podcast. And yeah, every week I sort of catch up with yeah, people in the Shopify ecosystem have sort of started independent. independent apps sort of similar to what I'm trying to do, but generally they're a lot more successful than me at it. And so I've I've yeah, do it to sort of showcase those people who yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: You're trying to learn from other people, which is exactly what I'm trying to do. But we'll get into Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: how to scale a successful app in a minute. Cause I don't think there is one silver bullet or secret sauce now. think maybe if you're in the app store 10 years ago, it was a little bit easier. But what was the big thing that pushed you from running your, but been working sort of client side and agency side into actually being a founder and setting up your own app business. Martin Cox: Yeah, I look I think it's just one of those things that was sort of probably burning inside me for a long time. It was yeah, I had been yeah, I sort of fell into the agency s business a little bit accidentally, sort of started doing a little bit of contract work and then teamed up with a a business partner and ended up, yeah, sort of growing a little bit at a time and then one day, next thing you know, yeah. we got acquired and and moved into a a large and became a a large agency sort of almost overnight. So yeah, it was a very fun journey. But yeah, just I I I'm all I've always been sort of a a sort of I guess a a an independent type of person. I I like, yeah, working in small teams on sort of single problems and yeah, going out and working with lots of other different people. So yeah, it's been been a lot of fun just get getting back to basics, going back to square one and and just just trying to solve problems for people and do it in a way that makes it easier for people to to to do what they do and yeah, it does I guess I've I've got a lot of expertise having worked on the Shopify platform for fourteen years. So trying to take bits of that and and and turn it into product which it's a yeah, it's a it's a it's a fun it's it's a fun job and I'm I'm I'm loving it John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah. Martin Cox: so far. John - Leaders On Shopify: And you, you've been in this world as long as me. and there's been a lot of change. And what do you think the sort of biggest shift in what you've seen in how sort of merchants buy and use apps compared to sort of when you were agency side, what do you think the major shift in all of that has been? Martin Cox: Yeah, look, I think there's sort of been it's been a it's it's been a bit of a roller coaster journey, I think. Like back in the day, like back yeah, eight or nine years ago, like you could build an app that was doing something as menial as like an announcement bar or a countdown timer or like you'd you'd have apps for like really micro little things that really you should be able to just do easily with a few lines of HTML or they should be built into themes and stuff like that. But there was sort of that real widget type based of sort of app business and some people did pretty well out of that too. I in fact I kind of wish I'd got on that got on that that bandwagon at that time and and built a yeah announcement bar plus and yeah made a made a mozzar of that. But But yeah, so that that that era is sort of long gone now, in particular, and even more so with the advent of, I guess, vibe coding and AI and all that sort stuff. but then I guess we've also seen probably in the last few years as the Shopify platform has reached sort of enterprise scale, where you've got really big merchants on the platform. We've also seen, yeah, really big enterprise platforms, yeah, build enterprise tools on on Shopify as well. And some of them have done a really great job of it and helped bring things like enterprise scale search and merch and marketing tools and that sort stuff into the platform. Where I sort of, I guess the bet that I'm taking with what I'm doing is that there's and what I see through doing my podcast is there's also this amazing there's this amazing band of apps and product out there of people that have built this great stuff with small teams. that actually is the most nimble type of product on the platform. Stuff that you can easily set up. You can actually deal with the founders and a small team because they've built such good product that it actually does the job really well without needing to, yeah, sign up to a four year contract and yeah, sign your life away for it John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah, I think it's, Martin Cox: and John - Leaders On Shopify: yeah, it's almost like, and we're not here to talk about my app, but it's like we built it because we were seeing the problem every day. So we thought we'd try and fix the problem and it's not necessarily built as a massive software business to try and just make money. It's more about, on, we know we can fix this problem. We've been fixing it for our clients. Why don't we turn it into an app to help fix it for other people? And Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: I do think there's sort of two types of apps. The other thing that came out at Dot Dev quite specifically is Shopify a bit anti these, what they were calling like thin AI copy, like copycat apps, wrapper apps. they're like, obviously with AI, we were talking before we started recording about our Claude usage and how we're all like obsessed with building more stuff. And for curious, reasonably smart people, they could spin up an app relatively quickly. But I suppose the world now is, you actually going to get approved? And are you ever going to get to that built for Shopify status? So suppose from what you're seeing, Martin, and what we sort of learned at Dot Dev how do you think Shopify is going to deal with this influx of potentially average apps with not much depth behind them, maybe not much customer success or actual real human beings? What do you think the app store is going to look like in, say, a year or two years time? Martin Cox: Yeah, it's really interesting. And yeah, Shopify, like they're they're starting to make some changes to try and get to try and impact what's happening there. Like there was a a week earlier this year where I think there was like 700 apps published into the app store at the same time. And yeah, some people get quite, quite scared and nervous about that. And and fair enough, because it's a big number and it it does sound like everything's been yeah, taken over. But yeah, I think the the key thing for an app is the distribution and the distribution. isn't just great marketing, it's also having the right people behind it. It's having people who not just can answer your questions but also understand your problems. And yeah, you like I I I've I find some days even like I'm I'm jumping on calls with with people to sign up to my twenty dollar app and I end up I feel like I'm doing two hundred dollar an hour consulting for them for for what I what I do. But it's that but that's the level like that's what good app app founders do and the business model of an app is that you're hoping that by doing that you'll end up with yeah for for every person that signs up to your app and that you do have to service them a lot. There's also a few that sign up and pay for it that you don't have to service at that level and that's that's what the scaling of it is. But I think I I think yeah you you need to have not just a product the product bit's easy it's yeah it's getting it out there it's getting it in front of merchants and actually understanding them and working with them and yeah I I I I kind of came away from from dot Dev actually thinking that There's actually really great opportunity still in the app ecosystem. I don't I don't get bothered by the fact that there's so many apps getting published that yeah, it is competitive, that it is hard to get Native installs from the app store. I think the app store will probably become less and less important, particularly for that first six months of an app proving itself. you need to, yeah, find find the customer yourself and yeah, look for scale once you've once you've got that. yeah, got that initial uptake and and people using it, that's when you start to get things like word of mouth and yeah, proper testimonials, not just reviews where people have left a review for you because you answer their support ticket quickly. John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah, you need to almost move from someone giving you a review to advocacy, willing to jump on a video, record a video about how your app changed their world. And Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: then you can start seeing a bit of growth. So I'm very curious, Martin, you've got, is it four apps with a fifth in the pipeline? And why Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: are you building lots of different little apps or they might be big apps, correct me if I'm wrong, Martin Cox: Yeah, yeah, yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: rather than other than one behemoth app that does everything? and just sort of talk us through quickly. This isn't a big advertorial for your apps, but talk us through quickly the Martin Cox: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: individual problems you solve and how they all work together and why four or five apps and not just one monster app. Martin Cox: Yeah, that's it. Well, I won't get into the psychological side of it and what's going on in my brain. That's yeah, that not only do we not have enough time John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah, I was going say, how can you sleep at night? Martin Cox: we don't have enough time and I've I don't know if I'd be able to explain it clearly anyway. So no, look, I guess like as I said before, like I I'd I'd like to try and solve problems that I've seen in the ecosystem before. And so yeah, we we've built, I guess, a philosophy with with Native App Co that we're trying to build stuff that actually lives in the platform and just helps to accentuate what you what what's already available in there. So yeah, like one of our apps, which is a fairly specific function, is our our Store Credit app, which is called Stork Credit, which is always terrible. The subtitles will get that mixed up, I'm sure. But that's essentially what we've done there is just built a tool that allows you to use Shopify's store credit you know automat with lots of automation and and help to scale it because it's a really powerful feature. In the Shopify back end, you can give customers store credit, it can have expiry dates, can be multi-currency, doesn't require discount codes or gift card codes or anything like that. But you can only really do it at a one c customer per customer basis. So we've just built a tool there that allows you to really easily create a promotion where you award a customer with store credit, just the same way that you would issue them with a discount code. and you can bulk import from a CSV. It's only got sort of three or four functions, but we're just finding it helps people if they want to try something different, like run a weekend promotion that's a little bit different to what they've done before, start trying some different promotions in the lead up to back Black Friday or yeah, find a new way to do some of those loyalty promotions that have become a bit stale. We've just built a way that's really easy to do that and doesn't require, yeah, hu anything, any separate databases, any yeah, any any crazy setup or anything like that. And so everything we build, we try and make make like that essentially. So that's I that that's what yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: And how, and which of your four apps is currently the most installed and what are you learning from that? Martin Cox: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It's it's like a it's like trying to name your favourite child I'm finding. I every week I've got a a different favourite one and yeah, maybe some weeks I've got one that I'm not so in love with. But we've we've had we've had the the one that's been really interesting is we've we've built I I'm I'm still calling it a PIM. I'm not sure if a PIM is the right word for it, but we've our product Pelican, which that's sort of probably the biggest of our apps in in the breadth of what it does, but Yeah, it's it's starting to get some real traction with yeah, particularly fashion brands and yeah, stores with large catalogues. And it was built out of a built out of the premise that it's really hard to wrangle huge amounts of data in Shopify, particularly if you've got the data coming from external sources and you've got stuff that's got multiple brands, you've got yeah, mixture of different stuff touching your data. And so yeah, we've we've built a a tool that essentially lets you install it in Shopify. And then you can configure all the AI rules to essentially populate stuff like your product descriptions and your taxonomy and meta fields and FAQs and all of that sort of stuff. And so yeah, we're we're finding it's getting really great traction from from people who just don't have the time to be managing that in spreadsheets and in some cases have been sort of planning to improve with John - Leaders On Shopify: My inner data geek's getting quite excited about that. Martin Cox: a there's a niche for it, definitely. It's there's there's the data geeks out there. There's yeah, no I'm I I feel like I'm gravitating them all towards me now. It's been it's that's been fun. It's probably been yeah, my my it's something I've always loved doing is just getting in a spreadsheet and mucking around with this stuff. But now I've yeah, now I love it even more because you don't need to have a a massive spreadsheet and matrixify to to get stuff into your store, you can actually get the data in there and then yeah, which build systems and workflows and yeah, stuff to actually a automate it. John - Leaders On Shopify: The one I'm thinking of is probably, just about to launch and they probably wish they'd found this app. Maybe they could customer anyway, but they're so an online cycling retailer, but they sell Martin Cox: Mm-hmm. John - Leaders On Shopify: thousands of different brands. But then each individual product has so many different variants and elements and components. So it Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: might look on the face of it like one bike, but then there's six different variants of the bike. And then there's actually 12 different sizes. and then they could have different combinations. So if you think ultimately, when you start looking at the combinations of gear sets and wheels and that, it's just an absolute, it's not quite as bad as building a car configurator, which we once did for Jaguar Land Rover, so they could configure that, which was a real data challenge. But now that sounds really super cool. So one of the big things, which I think excites me, I'd be interested to see what it is for you, but I think a lot of app owners are nervous about is Sidekick All right, so Martin Cox: Mm. John - Leaders On Shopify: at Dot Dev everybody was like, future's Sidekick. If you're an app builder, do you see Sidekick as an opportunity or a threat? do you sort of go of the world that actually over time Shopify is just going to build everything itself? Martin Cox: Yeah, I definitely don't think the last thing you said there's anything to worry about. I don't think Shopify will ever get to the point where they build everything themselves. I think they will continue to try and set the tone for what what should be built and that's what they're really doing with Sidekick at the moment. And yeah, that was obviously a big theme of of everything at at Dot Dev. And you know, actually I spoke with Jonathan Zazoff, the the Head of Product at Shopify, and he was very talked a lot about Sidekick and how that's going to yeah, how how to do it well. And yeah the the the the main thing they want is for people not to have to be logging into fifteen different apps. They don't want people to have dashboards that live outside of Shopify. They don't want you to have to connect an MCP for every single app that you have. And they want people investing in that Sidekick interface because that way someone can log into their Shopify store and they can interact with your app and their content that's in Shopify and yeah, their other apps at the same time and and and they're they're trying to make that a better user experience for merchants. which I think is John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah. Martin Cox: a I I think is great. I also think though that it's going to still be up to the app developers to work out where the best interactions are and how to how to manage that because yeah there's still things that belong in an interface. Like you can a chat's great, but a chat's not going to be the end game for everything we do. There's still things where it's better off to press a button and have some tick boxes to click and yeah, have some have some old fashioned things to interact with and that that's gonna be the best way for doing some stuff. So John - Leaders On Shopify: I come from, I'm driving this thing is the world doesn't need more dashboards. However, Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: the latest feature we've just released, which everybody loves is the PDF feature that PDFs your dashboard and emails it to your boss. And I'm like, why Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: doesn't your boss just log into the interactive thing? Well, the boss won't. So, and I've been pushing back on this feature for so long and everybody's like, no, the Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: customers all want a PDF. All right. So you're absolutely right. Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: as much as the future, a lot of it will be chat. People still have just, I suppose the human brain's trained to do stuff in a certain way. And a lot of people still interpret data with a dashboard. So they wanna see a dashboard. Maybe they're not ready to just chat and get their insights. So, Martin Cox: Yeah. yeah, absolutely. John - Leaders On Shopify: and in sort of all of this going forward, how do you, do you see Shopify? Potentially just go right the only way to publish your app now is to be built for Shopify and actually we're to get rid of everything else because that could be a really quick and easy way to clean up the app Martin Cox: Yeah. Mm. John - Leaders On Shopify: store support apps like yours which are Native and built for Shopify within the app store or Martin Cox: Mm. John - Leaders On Shopify: if they made the built for Shopify bar too high Martin Cox: Yeah, I don't think so. I don't know if that's something that needs to be changed too much. Like I think they've almost now with like the build awards that they do at at at Dot Dev every year more every year, like that sort of elevates a bunch of apps to the very top. Like I think they've got they get a big badge on their app listing and yeah, they get the bomber jacket and stuff and that's pretty cool. And I think everyone kind of is aspiring to that now. So that's like a the I think that John - Leaders On Shopify: We'll both be on the stage next year, Martin. We'll both be up there with our bomber jackets. Martin Cox: We'll see. I I bumped into about a hundred other different people who are also going to be up on the stage next year. So I think it's getting competitive there now. But it's I I think I in terms of built for Shopify, like I think it's a good yeah, it's a it's a it's a good benchmark. I've but I've seen like lots of other different opinions around what they should change and what they shouldn't. I I don't know, I I still I think it comes back to like that the built for Shopify is sort of something you get once you've got some runs on the board with your app. That's pretty much what it is. You get you and and I think the the barrier to getting in the app store, I don't think that that should be necessarily raised too much because most of those apps that get launched, they're not going to go anywhere anyway. That's that's there's a lot of people who do it. Some people do it just for a bit of fun, some people do it because they think they've got the million ide dollar idea, but they don't, and that's entrepreneurship. That's that's absolutely fine. And I I don't know, I think the the the key for me is that that innovation still needs to happen and I I think the the thing I probably took away from last week was a thought that it's not just that There's all these great apps that are struggling to get the built for Shopify. So there's probably great apps out there that are absolute diamonds in the rough where you've got a developer who's built something that's actually solving an amazing problem built by an amazing developer with a massive amount of care for it. And they probably just aren't ever going to get the distribution because they don't have the don't have the network, don't have the platform, don't have the the maybe yeah, aren't in the right location to to get in front of merchants quickly John - Leaders On Shopify: Thanks. Martin Cox: with it. And and that's what that I I think there's actually probably a lot of that out there in the ecosystem as well as a lot of AI vibe coded junk from someone who only found out about Shopify yesterday. John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah. And with that, completely agree. But from what you're seeing and learning from your podcast and absolutely share that, cause I saw you do the podcast live at Dot Dev share that and we'll share it with our community. And we can like put that out as well. Cause I think that's really great content. But what are you seeing work in terms of like app visibility, app distribution? Cause I agree with you. The app store is not dead, but it's harder to rise to the shop in app store SEO. And how do you think if you're an app store developer listening to the podcast now, how do you think people are finding apps? Where are they hearing about apps? And how should you promote your app? Where should you start? And then I suppose, how do you scale that? Martin Cox: Yeah, I don't know. Like I've I've I think it's not so much I think you need to find people before you like that's that's what people find rather than finding apps. I don't think you're gonna search for, yeah, GEO app and necessarily just get f stumble across something and install it. I think you've gotta find people and you've got to find that initial distribution. Like that's that's part of why I've I like I I've worked pretty hard at like with building my own podcast and trying to find any little event that I can get a spot to speak at or any opportunity I can get to go to a breakfast or some drinks or whatever. Like I I that that's the hustle you need to do and you need to be able to get out there and be passionate about what you built built, I think. That's the that that's the real key to it, I think, more than trying to look at John - Leaders On Shopify: That's what it is. And I completely agree. think it's a bit old school, a bit like almost like it might sit in an app store in a marketplace and it might all sit online, but actually the way people are going to find it is actually that human interaction. So we've absolutely seen the best growth we get is after an event where we've had the opportunity to speak or where we've had, I've been in a room talking to actual merchants or partners. It's not necessarily spending loads of money in the app store on ads because people may or may not be looking for what you've got. And also there's so much choice. So how do you stand out? Martin Cox: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's yeah, and and there probably was a time where like you could probably get some cut through with a bit of luck and just by yeah, finding a category that didn't have anything in it yet. And there maybe is still a little bit of that. But yeah, like if you find a really niche category and maybe you could work your strategy could be a really strong keyword play or something. but yeah, I'm I'm I'm not smart enough to do that. So I've just had to go the old fashioned hustle way of doing it. John - Leaders On Shopify: I think you are Martin, but like too quickly. So agentic commerce, there's lots of people talking about doing it, but nobody's actually really doing it. Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: So is that gonna be a thing? And if it is gonna be Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: a thing, what sort of products are our agents gonna be buying for us? Martin Cox: Yeah, it's interesting. Like I think it's it's it's like anything new. Like I I I used a term this morning somewhere like it. We're probably, I think, in a bit of a VHS or beta wall is gonna come up at some point. Like there's all these new protocols like UCP and Shopify's global catalogue and yeah, different MCPs and obviously Chat GPT and Claude seem to be one's popular one week, one's popular the next. And so I think it's still moving so fast and evolving so fast. And I saw like like Kurt Elster El Elster who has his his podcast as well, and he posted a report this week on like looking at some of his biggest clients and yeah, the actual percentage of people using agentic like some purchasing through agentic channels. It's Still like point one percent or something like that of sales, but it's growing John - Leaders On Shopify: And I just keep going with these numbers of like 18 times growth. But if Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: you were at one and now you're at 18, that's 18 times growth. And I think we're coming from Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: a very low base and there's a lot of sensationalism. But yeah, Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: I'm not 100 % convinced, but I think it will be, it's a bit like in my mind, years ago, everybody said the internet was going to kill the high street, right? It's Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: just given consumers another choice of finding stuff and buying stuff. Some people will do it, some people won't do it. And in my mind, it's just giving consumers another way to try and discover your brand and your products. And you need to make Martin Cox: Mm-hmm. John - Leaders On Shopify: sure you show up there, but I don't think it's gonna replace your website, is my view. Martin Cox: No no, I don't think anytime soon. And I think it might push it might replace your home page will probably become less relevant, which it probably has already anyway. Your yeah, your checkout will become more important and the behaviour on site will change. But I think the the the two key things I took away from from last week are, yeah, firstly that the you're actually got the things you can do now to be better at the Better at agentic commerce are also the same things that are good for SEO. So having good content on your site, having yeah, good, easy to understand FAQs on your product pages, and just having good structured data and things in the fields where they're meant to be, which were all just basic SEO principles, they're actually still the things that that they will win at SEO, which is also still generating a huge amount of traffic and also will help with those help with those new mediums as they come along as well. So you've got lots of opportunity there to to just get those things right and as the yeah that that 0.1% becomes 0.5% becomes 10% becomes 20% it'll it'll it will happen to and it'll evolve but having those right fundamentals and that's that's kind of what I'm backing with like just building a tool that helps people manage their their data really well is if you've got a good shaped catalogue then whatever happens around it will actually benefit from that and you're yeah, you're set up for doing that and so get John - Leaders On Shopify: It's a bit like in the gold rush, the person who made the money was the person selling the picks and the shovels. And actually, if you can focus Martin Cox: Yeah. John - Leaders On Shopify: on organizing the data, then over time, whichever AI wins, if you've got a really good solid data foundation, and again, that's something where sort of backing is, you've got to structure and organize and join together all your data, because as all of this evolves, the data is going to be the foundation and the value of what you've got. So no, so in this, right, so I ask everybody this when they come on a podcast and I'll give you an opportunity before we close to promote and talk about your individual apps. So you can't say your app. What are the like, if you're a merchant listening to this, what are the sort of three standard apps that you think most merchants need or are sort of best in class? Martin Cox: Yeah, absolutely. Like I'll I'll just give a few that I really look up to. Like, yeah, one that I I've have a huge amount of respect for the Discount Kit on Shopify. So yeah, and and Sammy won what he him and his crew won one of the build awards last week. Like I think that to me they sum up, I guess, what I'm trying to build with my apps, the apps that don't feel like apps. They just built a tool that lets you do any kind of discount that's possible with Shopify functions without having to make any API calls or have anything outside of Shopify. And the the way they've built their interface is just just tremendous. So yeah, they're they're one that I sort of the off the top of the bat that I I really have a huge amount of respect for. I also, yeah, like I I I love the people that build stuff in that real niche as well. So yeah, like people doing great stuff on on POS. And so yeah, like I'll there's a great story of a guy and his and his wife Adam McCarmel who they've got an app called POS Cafe that they run out of s out of Australia. They live in Queensland and yeah, they they service cafes all over the world to help them use Shopify PO So they've found like an absolute niche problem. It's not going to be relevant to most of the people listening to this, but it's I think it's a good example too of the type of opportunities that still exist out there now because yeah, they they they found a a a group of people that don't didn't have something to do what they need and they went in and cornered that space and they've built built up a a great business slowly but surely and I think that's where a lot of the great opportunities are now is looking at that POS, looking at B2B, looking at yeah, yeah, other ways to to help help grow and and and in areas where there's actually lots of money to go through the till, but not so many people thinking about it. John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah, no, that's super good. And in terms of sort of merchants and brands, who do you think is doing a really good job on Shopify? Martin Cox: look, I think I I love seeing the like there's still I love seeing the brands that are still emerging on there. Like I think there's still a lot of great I I I get surprised like through a lot of the people even that I'm talking to that like the fashion brands and stuff who have really small teams that manage to to build really yeah, really great content and really great sites. I I think I think ones that build like really that that that have I guess really great clean experience and good service and yeah, like there's there there's there's a there's Brands that I come across that I'd never heard of before. Like I've I I was talking to someone this week who's running a business selling independent independent education books and they've managed to pull in a database of hundreds of thousands of books and make made them available to to their customer base in Ohio and they've got a nice little niche of of people that purchase from them and I it's those are little stories that I really love. And so yeah, I think there's that the the innovation's happening absolutely everywhere. And sorry, I've I've hedged my bets and not given you too many specific examples there. I should have just said I should have just John - Leaders On Shopify: No, no, no, I respect that. Martin Cox: said Patagonia and yeah whoever else is the the top brands. John - Leaders On Shopify: Yeah, Gym shot. Everybody always says, everybody always says Gym Shark right? yeah. So Gym Shark for represent and it's like, yeah, come on. Martin Cox: Yeah, yeah, sorry, I should have said Gymshark. John - Leaders On Shopify: I actually prefer your answer because there are some really interesting founder businesses that have found their niche and then found Shopify and have just put the two together. And so look, I could talk to you all day, Martin, about apps and about Shopify. But before we close, if you could do a quick one line somewhere on each of your apps, what it's called, what it does for merchants, so that people listening to this can find it. Martin Cox: Yeah, sure. I should have my elevator pitch r good after last week, but I'm still terrible with that. but yes, I talked about I talked about Stork Credit already, which is our stalk, yeah, our our stalk credit automation tool. S S T O R John - Leaders On Shopify: How do you spell that? You're worried that the note's not in Martin Cox: S T O R K Credit. So yeah, yeah, it's got a little stalk. They've all got a little animal icon with a yeah, that I I I designed in Gemini. It's pretty It's pretty, pretty special. I've got the merch from them. We I did the badges last week with all the animals and yeah, I just I yeah, John - Leaders On Shopify: I those, I've got one, I've got one. Martin Cox: I just I just went to the toilet before and my kids have got them sitting on top of the toilet now. So that's but anyway, what what else we have? We Fish Wish Lists So yeah, that was the sort of the first app we built. It was just essentially just built building the wish lists are probably a dime a dozen in the Shopify space, but we've built one that, yeah. Nate everything Native to Shopify stores all the data in Shopify and sort of caters for some of those other More edge case stuff like building for B2B and POS and markets and all that sort of stuff. So we've got some really good use cases where that's being rolled out. Product Pelican I talked about quite as well. So that's essentially our yeah, our our product enrichment tool and does also does merchandising and stuff like that as well. and then our last one is Omnibus Owl. So that's a mouthful of a name, but it it's essentially for it's particularly relevant for people in the EU zone where they've brought in laws under the Omnibus. bus law where you need to actually have track your product's pricing and so yeah we've built a tool there that allows you to do that make sure we yeah tick off all the regul regulation but I actually think it also delivers it's good for customer customer trust and transparency to be able to show show your price history as well and yeah I'm trying to plug it in other parts of the world as well but it seems like people are only really interested in it to tick off the compliance box. So there we go. John - Leaders On Shopify: Well, if you send us a link to all of these, we'll put them in the show notes, and you mentioned you're building something else. Are you ready to share what you're building next? Martin Cox: I'm gonna leave it. I'm gonna keep suspense. Not that it's probably that suspenseful, but yeah, we're John - Leaders On Shopify: Well, when you when you launch we'll get you back on and and Martin Cox: Yeah, nice. John - Leaders On Shopify: and we'll go through and then if people want to find You where can people find you and how can they engage you and also give the podcaster a plug? Martin Cox: Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, I'm everywhere now. I'm I'm hustling hard. So yeah, I'm on all the LinkedIns and Twitters and all that sort of stuff. and yeah, the Shopify App Shows the name of my show. So yeah, you can search it up. I think there's it comes up pretty well when you when you search for it. So yeah, I'm not not too hard to find. And I'll yeah, give you the the web it's just nativeappco.com appco dot com for our apps. So yeah, not too hard to find. John - Leaders On Shopify: Well, look, that's that's been great. I really appreciate really appreciate your insights and the chat. Thanks for coming on, Martin. I'm sure we'll get you on again. And yeah, and we'll speak soon. And thank you very much. Martin Cox: No, thanks John. It's good to yeah, good to be on the other side of the mic and yeah, h had a lot of fun. So thank thanks heaps.