Latest / Talk Commerce / The Future of Magento with Sanne Bolkenstein
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:02.158) Welcome to this special Hyva episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Sanne Bolkenstein She is with Hyva. Sanne, go ahead. Give us an introduction. Tell us your day -to -day role and one of your passions in life. Sanne (00:16.339) Thank you. Yeah, I'm the commercial director at Hyva so I'm mainly responsible for partnerships and overall commercial strategy. And apart from that, I'm also doing a bit of HR activities. Since our team is expanding, we need some increasing amount of work there. So those are my main day -to -day activities. Apart from that, I'm also a board member from HOS in the Netherlands, so the industry organization for Magento here in the Netherlands, organizing Meet Magento Netherlands this year. And one of my passions, I would say, the biggest, one is wine. I love wine, particularly French wine. I've got quite a collection at home and so yeah that's what I like to occupy myself with if I'm not working. Brent Peterson (01:06.958) Wow, we are gonna get along great. Yes, perfect. Sanne, one thing I forgot to tell you or ask you about is I do this thing called the Free Joke Project. I'm just gonna tell you a joke. All you have to do is say, all you have to do is rate the joke one through five. Sanne (01:09.491) I thought so, yeah, it's a good conversation starter. Sanne (01:27.507) Okay, one being the lowest and high to five the highest. Okay. Brent Peterson (01:31.822) Yeah, so some people actually give it a 4 out of 10, but you can do whatever you want. Sanne (01:36.651) Sounds good, sounds good. Brent Peterson (01:38.99) So here we go, and this is a good one, and yeah, you'll like this one. Here we go. I asked my German friend if he knew the square root of 81. He said no. Brent Peterson (01:55.022) It's a thinking joke. Sanne (01:56.595) All right. I'm processing the joke. The square root of 81. Yeah. of course. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Brent Peterson (02:03.246) It's nine. Yeah, sorry. It's in English sort of, yeah, it probably wasn't a fair joke to say anyways. Sanne (02:15.187) think, I know, I would definitely rate that high as I like language jokes in general. So I would say 4.5 Brent Peterson (02:22.19) perfect. All right, good. First 4.5. Thank you. Sanne (02:25.523) You're welcome. Brent Peterson (02:27.726) All right, so let's tell us for our new listeners, tell us a little background on Hyva how important it is in the Magento community. Sanne (02:36.211) Sure, so Hyva has been around for three years now, so we're still relatively new. And we started as a front -end theme for Magenta 2. So our founder, Willem Wigman is a Magenta developer himself. And just like many other Magenta developers, when Magenta 2 came around, he became increasingly frustrated with the standard frontend that comes with it called Luma, basically because it has a lot of outdated JavaScript in it, making it not ideal for performance and also difficult to work with. So the development times for Magenta 2 became increasingly longer, especially compared to Magenta 1. which makes it difficult to explain to customers why they have to pay more for essentially the same. So out of these frustrations, he started looking for alternatives. And nowadays there's lots of alternatives like PWA or Headless Solutions, but those require actually completely different skill sets because most of them are React based and Magento developers, well, not Magento and PHP, so that's quite different. So he basically came to the conclusion that what he wants was just a native magenta tooth on that that works. And since that wasn't around, he started building it himself during COVID when we were all locked up in our house anyway. And that's how Hyva came about. So the Hyva themes is the first product that we launched and it's still our main product, the most successful one. replacing the existing luma front -end with a new one called Hoover. Sanne (04:14.291) It's extremely lightweight. It only has two dependencies as compared to Luma, which has over 200, making it very performance and easy to work with for developers. So development time is much less, performance is much higher, total cost of ownership is less. So overall people are very happy. Developers love working with it. So that's also our tagline is e -commerce made happy. We want everyone in the ecosystem to be happy. So that's our goal. And since then, we've launched a couple of of additional products, amongst others are checkouts for, well basically the same thing, the next big kind of thing for conversion for merchants was checkout. So we wanted to optimize that, so we did a complete rebuild of the Luma checkout, but then the HubaLays are based on MageWire, which is a technology developed by one of our own colleagues, Willem Portman. making the checkout much easier to work with so you can build different kind of checkout experience for different kind of users and also much more performance. thereby increasing conversion rates for merchants. And then the last product that we've developed last year was Hiva Enterprise, which ensures full compatibility with Adobe Commerce, B2B and Sensei to cover like the whole suite of Magento users, Magento and Adobe Commerce users that there is. And then we've also enriched the HUVA theme with a UI library with predefined components that work out of the box with HUVA to make HUVA development even more easy and fun. Brent Peterson (05:55.022) Wow, that's all you're doing? I don't want to get too technical, but I think it's important that users understand, or let me just, I'll back up a minute. It's my thought that 90 % of the Magento sites out there, and getting less because the ones that have Hufa are fast, but 90 % of the Magento sites out there are most likely very slow. And I had a conversation with Yisa. Yisa? Sanne (05:56.659) Hahaha! Brent Peterson (06:24.718) Reed Smell last week about that even if you do implement React or you do a PWA front end or you decide that you want to redo Luma to be performant, it is gonna cost you more in developer time than simply getting the Hufa license and installing it. So, I mean, how do you react to the... Sanne (06:43.187) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (06:54.734) to people who are, how do you react to people who are saying, well, maybe we should just go with PWA Studio or I do wanna just stick with Luma. Sanne (07:07.411) so those are two different things. PWA studio is actually in, put in like maintenance mode by Adobe. So they're not actively like getting new clients for that. They're not further developing that product. So I would, for that reason alone, advise against going for PWA studio. There are of course other PWA, solutions out there, but I would say they could look very specifically for. the use case, like what problem are you trying to solve? If performance is your main issue, going with a React -based frontend is not going to necessarily solve that issue. So if that's the only thing that you're looking for, indeed, as you said, HUVA is a much more cost efficient and quick way to solve that. If you are looking for other capabilities, like having an app. like experience that's also available offline or something like that, then yes, it would make sense to look at PWA. But like I said, it's a very specific use case that's not necessarily one -on -one, something you can copy on the existing magenta market. If you decide to stay with Luma, I really wouldn't know why you would do that. I know that... When we first came to market, there was a concern for instance around extension compatibility, like not all the extensions that are out there were compatible with Huba. But at this point, we've matured into a product that is becoming the default standard in Magento development. And so, yeah, it's not a silver bullet. Like you say, it's not going to solve all your problems instantly and you never have any issues. But it is the best starting point. for having a performance shop and for passing core buck finals if you work with Magento. So in my opinion, I wouldn't know why you would choose anything other than Hoover if you choose Magento. Brent Peterson (09:06.51) Yeah, and I realize it was a little bit of a leading question. I apologize for that. And of course, after watching this seasons, couple of seasons of Ted Lasso, I also know that Dutch people are very direct and just get to the point. So I should have just gotten to the point. The one big thing that I'm always frustrated with is Adobe's stance towards how they're putting Magento out there and that there isn't a solution anymore. Sanne (09:09.931) That's okay. Sanne (09:19.059) Yeah. Sanne (09:32.499) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (09:36.878) out of the box for a front end. That's performant. And the current theme is literally 14 years old. Sanne (09:41.059) Yes. Yes. Sanne (09:47.987) Yeah, that's a frustration that is shared in this community. I think it's important to realize that Adobe is not an e -commerce company. It's an enterprise corporate software solution specialist that is much more focusing on digital experiences than e -commerce per se. At some point they... wanted to enrich their portfolio for reasonable reasons with an e -commerce leg and so they acquired Magento. But if you look at the overall product suite that they have and the overall revenue that they generate, it's only a minor part of what they do. So, it doesn't have the same focus for them as it does for people like you and I who work with Magento on a day -to -day basis. I think that's a very important principle to keep in mind when you think about why is there not a sufficient front -end strategy? Why are they lagging behind in this aspect? And then the other, and I think the great thing about open source is that when the solution is not fitting or when something is lacking, other people are... free to build one themselves. And that's exactly what we did with Hoover. So we saw that there was an opportunity, or William saw that there was an opportunity there because there's a need for a functioning native magenta to front end and there wasn't one available in the market. So he decided to build it himself. And I think that's the wonderful thing about open source is the innovation that brings with it and the continuous drive from a community to make. something better that works for everyone. Brent Peterson (11:36.238) Yeah, I do. I want to switch gears a little bit and just briefly kind of dive into MageOS. When the fork happened, I was against it. And recently, I have completely turned my view around and I'm completely for it now, especially after hearing what Adobe says at every single Meet Magento conference and then what they do. Sanne (11:46.195) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (12:04.046) after each Magento conference. And again, I'll be very direct. They do nothing. They say a lot. They show up and they're very, they're very conciliatory towards our community. They're very open to saying they're willing to change. They're wanting to do something. But then when they go home to their office, they do nothing. So I believe that MageOS is sort of the answer and solution for Magento going forward in the long term. Sanne (12:10.323) Yeah. Sanne (12:25.107) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (12:32.878) And my biggest, the biggest thing that I see that needs to happen is innovation within the core product. And if you look at other platforms, what they're doing within their core, there's this thing called artificial intelligence or machine learning. And other platforms are embracing this and a lot, and at least one has it in its core already. Sanne (12:40.211) Mm -hmm. Sanne (12:44.499) Mm. Sanne (12:51.155) Mm -hmm. Sanne (13:00.243) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (13:00.366) and Magento is doing absolutely nothing. And Adobe Sensei, as you mentioned earlier, has never really taken hold in the Adobe commerce space and it's not available at all to Magento users. So tell us a little bit about the background of MageOS and how that would benefit somebody who's wanting to just simply do a Magento store without necessarily using or without Sanne (13:02.867) Mm -hmm. Sanne (13:09.107) No. Mm -hmm. True. Brent Peterson (13:30.35) even looking at Adobe commerce. Sanne (13:34.067) I think the beauty of MageOS is indeed, as you said, it's kind of the community taking matters into their own hands. So instead of continuing to rely on this company that is backing the software, the community kind of rallied around the product and said, OK, if we don't get corporate backing, we're just going to do it ourselves. And... all the things that you mentioned, like, yeah, of course there's a lot of innovation and there's a lot of that that should be incorporated into the core of the product if you want it to stay relevant for the future. And that's exactly the kind of guarantee that MageOS gives Magento users because it is a true open source project. There is no company behind it. Like there's not one company behind it. Obviously the community consists of companies. But it's really to make sure that Magento stays a relevant player, not only now, but also in the future. Because there are so many great aspects to this product. There are so many great aspects of open source that is important to have in the e -commerce landscape. If we don't safeguard that. we will turn into a SaaS solution landscape. And to me, that would be a huge loss for everyone in the community, especially the merchants. I think diversification of options, of platforms. is ultimately good because there's such a wide variety of users, there's such a wide variety of use cases, so it's good to have options, it's good to have choice, and that's what MageOS is offering to merchants. So it's a Magento solution that ensures relevance not only now but also in the future. Brent Peterson (15:29.55) When do you think we will see that first iteration? Right now it's just a mirror of the Magento code base. When do you think we'll see that first iteration with some changes that are substantive for features within the code base? Sanne (15:36.339) Mm -hmm. Sanne (15:47.923) I can't say when. I can see that there are some developments within Adobe where they're moving even more up market. So more into the Salesforce demand where space, I would say. And that any merchant that is not in that same category, like revenue wise, is just simply irrelevant. But that there's features that they currently offer either within Magento or in Adobe Commerce that are relevant. for that group, for that group. So say anything, you know, a merchant that does less than a hundred million in revenue per year would still need some of those features, but it is not interesting to Adobe anymore. And I think that's when there's a need for major S or well, someone at least to take that and to incorporate those features. into Majo S from Magento and thereby yeah part ways from the Magento as it is now and I do think that's going to happen like relatively soon but I can't say exactly when. Brent Peterson (17:00.686) I want to talk a little bit about the Magento community. I don't have a stake in Magento anymore. I don't have an agency. I don't have any Magento customers. But yet I find that I'm the only one from this side of the world, from the US side, talking about Magento on an ongoing basis. And it seems like there's a different thought about the community in Europe. Sanne (17:03.794) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (17:29.71) than it is compared to the US. And I realize you're in Europe, so you have a different perspective on it, right? So I just want to vocalize that point that there is a difference between the way Americans see Magento and the community itself. And I know Mark Schuess said it really well in one of my writings. He said, it's the same 100 people that are showing up to every conference. Sanne (17:33.235) I am. Sanne (17:46.419) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (17:57.806) And we're not necessarily growing. Where in Europe, it's a continually evolving process. I mean, can you first just comment on that, but then do you have any advice for us Americans to try to get people more involved in it? Sanne (17:59.955) Mm -hmm. Sanne (18:15.635) I think that yeah, that's true. The magenta community is definitely growing in Europe. One of the things that I'm really proud of what we do here in Analyst is that Meet Magento is organized by, it's really a community effort. So there's, in the organization team, there's like six or seven different agencies who work together. So they are essentially competitors, but they work together because we understand if we grow the pie, you know, the pieces of the pie for each and every one of us is also going to grow. So it makes more sense to work together than to compete, basically. And I think that's overall the sense that I get. There's a lot of trust. There's a lot of trust in the community. There's a lot of trust in the skills that people have. There's a lot of innovation taking place. Of course, we are an example of that. But there's also other companies popping up, like for instance, RUMVision here in the Netherlands who focus only on performance monitoring or doing making ways in the magenta community. So there's a that's also a reason why people trust the product and trust the process, so to say. And then, yeah, there's that, I think, kind of intangible. feeling that you just want to, it has a social aspect as well, which makes it fun. And I think that's very important to cherish. Even though Marxists could be right, like yeah, it's always the same hundred people showing up, yet there is also something to say for the dedication that these people show, that they do show up every time. And it makes it clear that there is a need for that. And I think that social interaction is very important. Sanne (20:03.539) but it is at the same time also important to advocate it externally as well. So that's why I'm personally always trying to get more women, for instance, involved in the community by actively inviting them, like creating that open space, making sure that everybody feels the positivity that we bring with us to a conference or to an event or gathering, because it's contagious. It's what makes people... want to be part of that. And also, again, they advertise a network in their own network. So it spreads that way. So my advice would be to come to these conferences in Europe, see how it differs maybe from the US, and then just start small by organizing your own gatherings, meetups in the US. Brent Peterson (20:58.158) Yeah, that's good. There are two that happen every year still, and that's fantastic. So Meet Magenta New York is, I think, scheduled this year in October. And Meet Magenta Florida will be next year in, hopefully next year in February, which is also, I think Meet Magenta Florida is such a great event and it's so much fun and it has that imagined sort of feel. Yeah, and there's been an effort to sort of revive some kind of... Sanne (21:06.899) Yeah. Yeah. Sanne (21:20.051) Definitely. I love both events. Brent Peterson (21:25.646) pre or post Imagine conference around the Adobe Summit, which hasn't seemed to have a lot of traction. I went to last year to the event before the Adobe Summit, but I feel like there has to be something that is Magento specific and maybe in Las Vegas event that's outside of, you know, one day event that's next to Adobe Summit could be something exciting. Sanne (21:50.963) Yeah. Brent Peterson (21:52.142) I like what you said about though, that the community feel and that aspect of meeting somebody and having community with other people. And I think that's the part that I miss the most about going to a lot of Magento events and having that community. And maybe the advice is to invite people to, and maybe the other part. Sanne (22:08.915) Mm -hmm. Brent Peterson (22:17.742) The other problem in the U S is the fact that it is so big. It's like, it's hard to, it's not as easy to get to one place to the next. It's not a train ride from one city to the next. It's a flight and hotel and now New York hotels are so expensive. So it makes, it makes that journey a little bit more expensive. and I think there's a big commercial aspect in the U S too, to everything, especially from partners. I hear partners always saying, what is my, and we used to put on a lot of magenta events in my past. Sanne (22:28.723) Hmm. Sanne (22:32.659) Yeah. Brent Peterson (22:48.11) your dog is much bigger than our dog, by the way. That's no, don't worry about it. That's fantastic. that the commercial aspect is important for the American partner because they think they have to get ROI out of every single one of these events. And I think that the, the way, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the way the Europeans go about it, or at least the Dutch especially is that they're, they're. Sanne (22:52.275) Sorry. Sanne (23:04.603) Yeah Brent Peterson (23:15.79) bringing together a whole bunch of people that have a lot of solutions that everybody can draw on and that they share at these events and that those solutions are usable and attainable just in the open source perspective. Sanne (23:32.723) Definitely. It is though, of course there's a commercial aspect to it. It's great, but it's nice to meet people and have a good time and have some drinks and food and laughter. But if there wasn't a commercial aspect to it, I mean, none of us are in this business for charitable reasons. And for me, Magento, when we started organizing it last year, we were also very much aware, like, OK, we have zero buffer. So it needs to be completely profitable, or at least we need to make sure that it doesn't cost us any money because we don't have any, which was also a little bit stressful, I should say. So there is a commercial aspect, but I think it's. here we view the commercial aspect is more than just like the direct translation into sales after an event like that, which is very difficult to measure. And also the effects of these events in my opinion are always like way more long term. Brent Peterson (24:45.326) You're great. Don't worry about it. Sanne (24:45.363) Sorry about that story. Yeah, so it's not just sales, but it's also team building, right? Like bringing your teammates to an event where they gather new ideas, where they get inspired, where they make connections, where they find like how much they enjoy working in this space. That's in the long term, it's beneficial for you as a company as well. It's also the context and networking. Like at some point, you don't know when, but at some point it might be relevant that somebody you've spoken with at a conference like a year ago, two years ago, needs your help or like you could do something together. So it's also, that is also taken into account when considering the ROI of an event. And... On the other hand, if I, I mean, I love US conferences, I do, but if I see like how much it costs and how much I try to imagine like how much it must cost to organize an event like that, it's a whole different ball game than here in Europe. And so I, that's why my advice is like, start small, start small. Sorry. Brent Peterson (26:01.934) Yeah. Brent Peterson (26:06.286) Yeah, I think the idea of a smaller event is something I've been really wanting to do more. And now I think we have an opportunity, especially between Majo S and Magento Association, to have these sort of meet Magento mini events. And the old idea of a meet Magento event used to be, you have to get four or 500 people. And if you don't get that many people, it's not successful. I feel like the new model should be, let's get 50 people that are in a room that are talking about it and it'll start from a seed and grow it. Sanne (26:17.587) Yeah. Sanne (26:36.467) Exactly, that's also what we say with me at Magenta Netherlands when we brought it back after five years. It's like you have to start somewhere and what you do is the facilitation of bringing people together. So you need a venue, you need some drinks, you need some food, a stage where people can give presentations and that's it. It doesn't have to be super fancy. It doesn't have to be... like super corporate because nobody in this industry is and nobody really cares about that either. It's about bringing people together. And if you do that and you make it a success, and that's also what I said, like that's why we aimed for 150 attendees last year. I said, that's going to be very easy to achieve. But if we say if we aim for that and we make 300, it's a huge success. If you aim for 500 and you have 300, it's a failure. So it's also a matter of perception. Right. And then you can indeed grow into something bigger and you will find that people will be happy to contribute to that as well because they've already seen the value of they've been there they see that yes this is bringing me a lot and it doesn't have to cost the world. Brent Peterson (27:41.806) Yeah, that's perfect. All right, so we have a few minutes left. Tell us anything fun and exciting happening with your Hoofa, with the Hoofa project. Is there any new products coming out that we should be looking for? Sanne (27:52.979) I think the main thing that you should be looking out for now is how we continue to build on the community. So we've recently taken on Rebecca Brockton on board, who's also a familiar name in the Magenta space. And she is pushing out content like crazy, which I'm very happy about. And her newest project, her latest project is the Hoover hotcakes, which comes out every week on LinkedIn. It's a newsletter. It tells you all things Hoover, but also in more about what's happening in the Magenta community. and I'm a big fan of this initiative because it really is bringing the community together again, it's growing the attention for Magento and it's also just a very fun read. Brent Peterson (28:37.198) Yeah, I agree. My only criticism is that it shows a cupcake and that's different from a hotcake. So there's a little bit of brand confusion in my head when I see it. I really want to have a nice, delicious cupcake when a hotcake is more like a pancake in the US. Sanne (28:53.939) It might be because she's British that there's something going lost in translation there. Brent Peterson (28:57.07) Yeah, I feel as though there should be like, there should be stroopwafels in there. Sanne (29:04.691) Yes, well, that's a very particular thing that we don't like to share too much. Brent Peterson (29:12.558) Right, yes. Sanne, before we close out, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything that I'd like. What would you like to plug today? Sanne (29:22.835) I would like to plug the actually diversity within e -commerce. It's another thing I'm very passionate about and something that I mentioned. I'm trying, I'm actively trying to get more women involved. But I think overall it would really benefit our whole industry if we have more diversity. So whether it comes to race, gender, sexual orientation, doesn't matter. I really think that if everybody tries to open their minds and welcome new people in, in the end we will all benefit. Brent Peterson (29:57.774) Yeah, that's such a good point. And I know that the first part of that is just being aware and myself being a white male. I am much I realize that it is that it is a lot of just other white males that are doing even this podcast that you need diversity and that diversity is so important and it brings so much more. I don't know another word for diversity. It brings a different aspect to the entire picture of how not only the community, but how the product works because products are also not just for one group of people. They're for all sorts of people. So that's, I love that. Thank you so much for that. Sanne (30:40.947) Yeah, if you look at the typical industries or verticals that Magento is strong in, it's things like fashion, home decor, care products, and a lot of those, and customers, consumers are women. So building products for women, by women, helps probably also for better product market fit. Brent Peterson (31:09.166) Thank you, that's perfect. Sanne Bolkenstein, thank you so much for being here today. It's been such a great conversation. Sanne (31:11.027) Yes. Sanne (31:17.331) Likewise, thank you very much for having me.