John Readman: So, ⁓ yeah, so welcome to ⁓ Leaders on Shopify, Liam. ⁓ If you could by sort of giving quick introduction yourself for our listeners and ⁓ a bit about your background and what you're doing at Visualsoft.

Liam Quinn: Yeah, perfect. Thanks for having me on. So yeah, I'm Liam. I'm ⁓ Director of Innovation at Visualsoft. So I've been in the role about six or seven months now, so relatively new still. ⁓ Previously, I've been in a few different technical roles across Shopify agencies and consultancies for the last 10 years, 10 or 12 years previous. So yeah, quite a lot of Shopify and sort of technical solutions and that side. ⁓ focused background. yeah, now Visualsoft I'm leading. So we've got a team, we've got like an arm of ⁓ technology where we're building out apps or surrounding technologies to the Shopify service offering. So leading that side and trying to basically be on top of emerging technologies for our team and clients. In a nutshell.

John Readman: Excellent and Visualsoft have obviously changed us. You're a perfect guest for this because you've been in Shopify for a long time and you've seen the evolution and growth of Shopify through different agencies and different things. So I'm really looking forward to getting into some of your knowledge or experience sharing that with our listeners. but I suppose Visualsoft historically used to have and still I think do have a bit of their own platform. What was the sort of big shift and why, because if I've read this correctly, VisualSoft are one of Europe's largest Shopify partners now in terms of like the scale. So which is obviously one of the reasons you wanted to get on board and drive that forward. But what was the shift and what was happening in the market? And I suppose why are you all in on Shopify?

Liam Quinn: Yeah, I I've ⁓ joined six or seven months ago really to help that shift. So the decision's already been made before I joined to help that shift to Shopify. ⁓ basically it's probably what ⁓ surprise a lot of people in the market where the econ platform ⁓ competition or landscape for the last five years. has just grown heavily towards Shopify. So Visual Soft had, ⁓ that still has a platform with 600 merchants on there. But over the last five years, it's just, think became clear that Shopify is the trajectory that essentially all brands for online are going to ⁓ for their storefront. So it's not, there'll be similar conversations with. Big commerce, magenta, all of these platforms. And then, the decision was made where it's like actually trajectory wise and from Visualsoft's point of view, still a lot of ⁓ the offering was focused around digital marketing services like other technologies and not purely platform revenue fees. like, actually, it's a good time probably to pivot and try and just... you know, replace over time, replace the platform purely with Shopify and change the

John Readman: Yeah, so suppose you've got 600 customers to go after and pick the ones that are the biggest, the best fit. And I imagine someone at the back end is writing something to easily pull people over from the VS platform onto Shopify and give people that sort of seamless migration into.

Liam Quinn: Yeah, mean, exactly that. There's a bit of a mix on, there's obviously, uh, there's quite a broad range of ICP clients. there's, there's clients that are actually more sort of, um, physical store focused and, and, know, do small amounts online. So, you know, 60, 70 million pounds online, um, revenue brand. there's, there's a couple of different strategies between all of those sort of ICPs, but yeah, I mean, exactly as you said, somebody's in the background where there's a couple of different ways to automate, whether it's just a lift and shift or whether it's automate all the data and all the ⁓ configurations across and then redesign a theme that's more focused for Shopify and with more opportunities to grow in that process of shifting to Shopify. ⁓ So yeah, a few different routes, but yeah, there's a lot of that automation behind the scenes to... to try and migrate everyone across seamlessly.

John Readman: Yeah, and... I think historically Shopify got themselves a sort of name for being the mom and pop shop. And in fact, my daughter's got I talk about probably her business too much on this podcast, but my daughter's got a bikini brand she set up in the kitchen and uses Shopify. And I think they sort of got themselves labeled as the startup scaler, maybe even just startup. Anybody can do it. But I think what we've seen over the last certainly three or four years are the big enterprise players now coming to Shopify. So if you were to talk to an e-commerce director of a big brand now, what does Shopify offer straight out of the box that maybe platforms don't or why would you be recommending Shopify over say the big commons system, Magento, the IBM, then the Saps and everybody else. What is it about Shopify that now is the go to?

Liam Quinn: Yeah, I think that it's a pre visual software is in consultancy where for five or six years, ⁓ we do platform selection. And over those five or six years, the conversation completely shifted from brands coming in and it's like, you know, we're not sure what the next step is. Let's review Salesforce, Magenta, Shopify, others, ⁓ and go through the whole process like feature by feature. find the best fit and it completely shifted in conversation over those five years to everyone's moved to Shopify. I think my brand should be on Shopify. Could you tell me if it shouldn't be Shopify? So it's actually the default starting point is changed because Shopify like functionality wise closed all the gaps to become a Somba Genta. The TCOs really for basically every project that ⁓ that I've seen, every projects is quite broad, but for the vast majority of brands selling online, the TCOs will be better value on Shopify. And the rate of innovation on the platform is just completely different trajectory to the, know, to these ones that we're naming that I don't know, I can't remember what it was a billion dollars of like R and D.

John Readman: Cough R &D yeah, it's something I we I was at additions last year. I don't if you additions last year Yeah in Toronto and yeah, the amount of money they're investing in R &D is just phenomenal and I and I think it's a bit It's a well, it's a bit like sort of IBM in the 80s where nobody got fired for buying IBM It seems to be almost the question is as you just eloquently put it is well Why shouldn't we move to Shopify rather than tell me who's my best one? It's like tell me

Liam Quinn: Yeah. Good.

John Readman: Why wouldn't I do that? And I've seen some examples recently in in certainly in pharma in the UK. Shopify have a policy where you're not allowed to sell prescription medicine on Shopify. All right. So that's just a tease and seize thing. And we've we've spoken to who wanted to ⁓ on Shopify, but they can't because of the seize of the platform. ⁓ So ⁓ even now you look at it like ⁓ not not many people of aware that Tesla every single Tesla car sold globally has been sold on Shopify. ⁓ if you just think of, well, hang on, ⁓ whether you like him or not, one of the world's leading technology innovators has backed this. So I'm sure he got a very good deal. ⁓ But I suppose going sort of forward from that, a lot of people get themselves tied up in the costs of ⁓ running a platform. You've obviously got a wealth of experience of having to weigh this up for brands. ⁓ like how does it stack up say over two or three years versus the big bespoke integration and support and maintenance and then someone will say well hang on Shopify are going to take transaction fees they're going to take these fees they're going to what what's in your opinion the net net?

Liam Quinn: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, again, I don't want to throw out like random ballpacks, for, you know, I've done a lot of work on say fashion brands that are weighing up some of these platforms that we're talking about. And it's probably consistently 30 or 40 % cheaper over like that three to five year period when you weigh up platform fees, transaction fees, like app costs. But then looking at maintenance, you know, your development retainers with an agency say and as historically a lot of Magento retainers would be in the thousands of pounds a month purely on maintenance and security updates and that sort of thing. that those same costs on a Shopify retainer, you're actually growing and improving functionality month for month and can get a lot done with that same That's purely going into sort of keeping it alive and secure. So yeah, I mean, that's a very rough figures that's off the top of my head, know, 30, 40%. But those sort of lines are probably reasonably common. like I've seen fashion brands where somebody internally has decided it should be, they should go headless route or they should go something really specific. And they've spent hundreds of thousands like. In particular, hundreds of thousands to get to a, what are the commerce tools or something, because it's the shiny, um, more niche thing and ended up switching to Shopify because it's costs and complexities have ended up being, um, too much to even get finished. Um, the, the nobody gets sacked thing, it probably has shifted to Shopify because it's lower risk, lower costs typically.

John Readman: and is it because again depending on who you talk to some people go it's just quicker and easier is it genuinely quicker and easier or is that just a myth

Liam Quinn: I mean, everything's relative to what you're comparing it to. But yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, that's the reason why if you've got, let's say again, a few years ago, if you've got a £5,000 a month retainer with an agency, that would quickly get swallowed up with security patches. Whereas now you're sort of £5,000 to an agency a month.

John Readman: just updates and checks and maintenance, yeah, yeah.

Liam Quinn: you're growing in functionality and, and, and features on site. Yeah, a lot more quickly. So again, it's, it's case by case in it, but as a, as a broad statement, like it is that you do get a lot more done for the time that you put into it. and that's, I found that conversations with developers prefer working on Shopify again, to other platforms at times because of that.

John Readman: And if you're... You see... There's two things I want to sort of unpack in there. One is headless and we'll come back to that. And then the other one is I think there has been nervousness of some agencies, like e-commerce agencies, like SIs and potentially developers, because they potentially see Shopify sort of eating their lunch a bit thinking, well, we can't charge these. So if there's owners of e-commerce agencies or people doing, still doing Magento, if people are still doing that, what would you say to them and where's the opportunity for them? sorts of businesses.

Liam Quinn: I mean, it's a fair concern and like, think maybe it was additions that last year where Shopify sort of addressed that where, you know, the rate of their changes, it's quite natural for like a first instinct to be, well, actually the, a lot of the time that the agency would put in is being removed by what Shopify built or the direction they're going. I think their messaging is it opens up a lot more opportunities that are actually doing more things that clients want to do or more interesting things rather than putting time into the more.

John Readman: And I yeah, I completely agree with you. think it's also as the agency, it's your job to be innovating and understanding what Shopify's got coming, understanding which client it fits and then how do you support your clients to embed that. And right now there's, I think there's a bit of a split. Some of the bigger guys are thinking, well, we need Headless or we need a Headless, we'll use Shopify for the My Account and all the functionality Shopify, but we need something sort of Headless. When and if do people need Headless or is that just

Liam Quinn: Thanks.

John Readman: Still the obsession about being bespoke and being wanting to have something different Because there's so much choice now in the the way you could set up the sort of out-of-the-box Shopify themes and everything else Do you actually need headless and I think the answer is always going to be depends right? But when when when does that start becoming a thing? What are the things that people want that they maybe can't get out of Shopify and then they need to invest in a headless?

Liam Quinn: Yeah. Yeah, I think there's some good points in there. And this is another one where Shopify probably intentionally have closed the gap on why. So a few years ago, there would be some real specific reasons why you would go headless. And I think Shopify have like chipped away at some of them and want people to stay. You know, it's better for Shopify if the majority using a liquid theme on the, on the but like, know, standard storefront. ⁓ Having said that, so yeah, some of it that I see now is like brands that want to be different or want to have a unique experience and not have, sometimes it's not the standard path for a homepage, collections page, product page. ⁓ For certain brands, wanna escape that or they want like a really unique experience that, ⁓ either can't be achieved or they think can't be achieved on a theme. Like you still get it where it's, you know, performance, slight speed led ⁓ and that sort of thing, which I think again has reduced, but it's still a reason that comes up that people.

John Readman: No, we've done some testing with other clients and partners and we have seen headless sites are quicker, depending on who built it, how they built it and everything else.

Liam Quinn: Well, yeah, that's big caveat, I think. Yeah. And there's some, there's a few like really strong agencies that specialize in headless do some really good work. And there's like genuine reasons for those brands to go headless. And some of it would be, you know, if they've got in-store experiences and it all ties together in one system rather than having, you know, a site for online and something different in stock. So there is reasons like that. ⁓ I think now most of it comes down to being a sort of premium luxury brand and want the unique experience that tends to be. I think that tends to be the, the overriding reason now.

John Readman: Yeah, and then if we sort of come back to there's 20,000 apps in the app store. So there's an app for potentially everything. And I think that's the other thing I think sort of development agencies and partners get a bit nervous about is like, well, hang on, we'd have charged them to build up before and now they've just downloaded an app. But.

Liam Quinn: Thank Yeah.

John Readman: You've been in this world quite a long time now Liam. What are your sort of, if you're recommending someone to migrate to Shopify and they're wanting to scale their business from say five million to a hundred million, what are the sort of go-to apps that they should be considering, why and what's your sort of experience been around that?

Liam Quinn: Yeah. And I think some of that's really accurate. there's apps for everything. If you're at a certain level or using an agency or that sort of thing, you probably want to avoid 50 % of the apps because it's things that could be built in a lot more performant way reasonably quickly. there's apps for people that are solo. you know, running the store solo and actually you can add the apps and get that from fairly quickly. So in a lot of cases for, you know, for brands, let's say 1 million up using an agency, you would build a, what's it to be like a countdown or a, know, notification at the top of the site sort of thing where you get a lot of apps to achieve that, but actually it's not a huge amount of work. And you would do it more nicely in a more performant way. Go to apps. I mean, we build apps. Like I could plug some of our, again, going back to sort of, in fact, haven't properly gone through it, but visual are like a big part of visual softs go to market is the pause, the pause and physical store route. So we're building apps like strategically that fit around that go to market. So brands that have in-store experiences have apps that

John Readman: Well tell us your top five apps and why they're great.

Liam Quinn: unify their on-site and in-store set up. So for example, upsells, there's a few very good upsells apps on the App Store, but they're online, purely online, the algorithm driving like you could also add this to your cart. Whereas we've built something that's got on-site, but also the same sort of logic you can pull into your...

John Readman: So if I go into the store in the physical world, it knows who I am and then it knows my shopping history and it goes, oh, Mr. Redmond, you can get this today for an extra whatever. Do you want me to put it in? Do you want me to add it to your thing?

Liam Quinn: Yeah, or or... Yeah, it's that, but then also in store, there might be different. So the merchant might have different requirements like, you know, I've got this batch of product at A-store that's expiring. So this week I need to shift all of this that's going to expire or that I'm overstocked in. So you can have different rules and you can focus on certain things in store where the strategy might be different because of stock holding or... or that sort of thing. And then the second part to that is reporting on actually performance of your sales staff in store. So for a lot of brands, they'll either give permission, commission or be sort of reporting on success of their sales staff. So you can measure that directly with who's attempting to do the upsells and then who's completing the upsells on the, you know, at the point of sale.

John Readman: like a leaderboard of yeah yeah

Liam Quinn: Well, yeah, if you're on internet, but the reportings are so that's not so we're focused on that sort of thing to bring the anybody that's got physical stars.

John Readman: And I suppose from a VisualSoft point of view, that makes complete sense. If you get a request from a client to build some functionality, you think, well, hang on. 400 of our other clients would want that. Why don't we actually build that as an app? Then also you could either give it to all your clients as part of your packaging or charge a small amount of money to cover it. And then that also becomes a revenue stream. So I think other development agencies listen to this. It's not just about supporting your clients. It's about actually can we build in this ecosystem to actually generate a recurring revenue stream.

Liam Quinn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. mean, that's yeah. So that's a bigger part of the Visualsoft strategies is that that sits well with the service side, which is, you know, focused heavily focused on that, the POS route. And then it applies to, and I think that it's a growing market on Shopify side, the, the in-store and point to sale merchants. ⁓ So yeah, that fits, but it.

John Readman: I've got a potential ⁓ client for you for that sort of stuff so we'll pick that up ⁓ after the recording. I'll send them your way. but there's some behemoth apps out there. Over your time, who are the go-to and why and what's in it for the merchant?

Liam Quinn: Yeah, send them over. Yeah, I mean, I think, especially at certain levels, say growth from five million up, you there's there's tech stacks that come together ⁓ pretty commonly. it's like your Clavia. mean, basically 90 % of stores are probably using Clavia. ⁓ But yeah, it would be like your Clavia's or there are others, but like Ametri, Mailchimp's. back now, but yeah, mentionable now, who am going to upset? ⁓ things like, like over the last couple of years, order editing obviously has become like the most talked about app that I've seen on LinkedIn. ⁓ if you use that one called order editing. yeah, they've done a fantastic job where it started as just the ability to.

John Readman: You feel like you've got to mention all your partners now, don't you? ⁓ What was that one called? Is it just called order editing?

Liam Quinn: which you couldn't do on Shopify for a customer to edit an order within half an hour. So if you get your address wrong or anything like that, can update it. And then it was literally that like some of these apps just pound for pound, like the merchant could see pound for pound how much they've avoided losing by being able to update that rather than canceling the order.

John Readman: well cancel it or lose the customer and yeah.

Liam Quinn: So they've done really well, like they're yeah, like heavily used now. ⁓ And then it's like, it's probably your search and merchandising. ⁓ So using, mean, Clevoo sold, so that Clevoo used to be ⁓ the big one. So to search spring, but some of these search and merchandising tools that enhance Shopify out of the box by sort of magnitudes of order. ⁓ Yeah, few of that. Probably the search of merchandising tools that would be.

John Readman: Which ones just off the top of head? know that talking to you as an independent, not necessarily as visual soft, but to give the listeners some things to go look at or play with, which one should they be going to look at?

Liam Quinn: Yes. Again, you try and work out who not to upset, but spring advanced commerce. Who, who have we got? You picked is a recent one that we speak to quite a lot and they're, they're like, such as merchandise and they're really strong. Like rebuy. Rebuy is really good. And again, more of a common, a common well-used app.

John Readman: Hahaha ⁓

Liam Quinn: Yeah, there's a few in there. Moral pop into my head as we keep talking. I'll just shut up.

John Readman: Yeah, and I think now if you do have... It'll be interesting to see over the coming years how people join up this whole Omni-Commerce and Omni-Channel approach of spricks and clicks and get... Because the people I think have always done it well is the underlying data behind it all. So I often reference like Charles Truitt. I went into a physical Charles Truitt. I'm on their mailing list. They said, are you on our mailing list? I said, yes, I am. They pulled up my things and said, ⁓ by the way, Mr. Redmond, you qualify for this. And they said, if you buy one more thing, you can have a free jumper.

Liam Quinn: Thanks. Yeah.

John Readman: And I'm like, well, I'll buy one more thing and I'll get my free jumper. I didn't need the jumper and I didn't need the one more thing. But the basket value and my loyalty, I'm now telling you. But what underpins all of that is sort of data and customer data. And I think people in the past always saw, well, I've got my EPOS over here and I've got my website over here and the two can't meet. And I think Shopify I've really thought about the longer term. And also, I think it will enable them to get more into the enterprise and the big retailers.

Liam Quinn: Yeah.

John Readman: technology is sat somewhere on a mainframe using Unix in the corner somewhere ⁓ so I think it's going to be interesting to sort see how that evolves and I saw recently the stuff you did with like sports shoes helping them launch their new store so that's like super exciting

Liam Quinn: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so on that, opportunity on the positive side, it's definitely a growing, it's almost like the Shopify positive side is almost like going back to Shopify five years ago, where it's historically been used for on-site brands that have just done a pop-up or a single shop and it's easy to connect. And now it's sort of matured. They're putting a lot of time and effort into improving the product. And there is enterprise brands and you know, we're speaking to a few brands currently that are 100, 150 plus physical locations. Um, and I think there's some like, yeah, there's definitely some that are well over 200 locations, like 200 physical stores and they're using Shopify pause. Um, and because the, uh, the reason is because of the unified data. like transaction fee might be slightly higher than

John Readman: Yeah. Yeah, people think they look at the cost, but they don't necessarily understand the value of having all these transactions from all my customers all joined up. I'm going to save a load of cost and time and effort of either external data agencies or marketing agencies or support because I'll just know everything about everybody. And I think still some people have got to get their head around that.

Liam Quinn: Thank Yeah. The opportunity then to do exactly the sort of thing you've done where the in-store experience of capturing the customer and not just upselling, but just offering a much better personalized experience to somebody in-store because you know who they are or you know what they've previously bought and that sort of thing. So I think there's massive opportunities on the back of having that data. yeah, I think that will continue to grow. Sports shoes. It was actually a really interesting one. that was that this week, maybe Monday launched, um, physical store with Shopify pause. But I think that highlights actually what I've just said, which is the, the post product itself is maturing and becoming a stroke, you know, independently, a strong option. they're, they're not on Shopify currently, um, on site, but as it, as it turned out Shopify POS.

John Readman: Yeah.

Liam Quinn: for what they wanted to achieve in store and they've got loads of innovation in store. it's actually, again, this really good customer experience, but Shopify POS turned out to be the best option for them to sort of seamlessly start offering that, the experience that they wanted to offer.

John Readman: And I bet when Shopify set off, they didn't probably think, ⁓ we'll be selling pods to just people who aren't even on Shopify. I think...

Liam Quinn: Yeah, I would, again, I would assume that I think, you know, POS originally came out because some of these stores, some of these online brands that tend out to do really well wanted to then open a physical presence. And POS was just, you know, basic because it was pretty basic and it wasn't great for a few years when it came out. ⁓ But it's for that sort of scenario where we're doing great online. We're just opening a store that's going to be quite simple. Yeah, exactly.

John Readman: Yeah, a bit like the Gymsharks of the world smashing it on Shopify online. They need a store. Well, they were probably had some view of, well, I'm just going to take the order via the website. Because actually, if you think about what goes on in the background as well is all that joined up stock control, merchandising, planning, all of that is all then in one place.

Liam Quinn: Yeah. So I think that was, yeah. And that's a hundred percent evolved into Shopify. think Shopify seeing the bigger opportunity of actually the, you know, being the install pause for, and a lot of the pause systems are like pretty legacy. There is some other good like pause systems, but a lot of what merchants are using is really legacy.

John Readman: It's old tech. Some people have got stuff from the 80s and 90s and it's so ingrained in everything and people are just nervous about moving. And also I think what I've seen from, you go into the Apple store, if you want to get a good UX and they're not on Shopify as far as I'm aware, but ⁓ the experience, there's no tills. The receipt is integrated into a printer in the table and you can't even see the printer and everybody in the store is either taking

Liam Quinn: Yeah.

John Readman: the order on an iPad or a phone and suddenly the experience of being in store is like surely everybody should be thinking well why can't we as be as good as Apple?

Liam Quinn: Yeah, well, I mean, that conversation now is one of the more common ones where from stores that had a till that people couldn't find way back in the corner, stuck over there somewhere. And now it's like, actually, we don't want that experience. We want people to be ⁓ engaged with and purchase wherever they're looking sort of thing. Like the represent store, similar to the Gymshark story where represent smashed it online, opened a few stores. And if you go into their store, it's very much like they've sort of got one of every item out to look at a bit like this. Not like Argos, but Argos, for example. And then somebody's walking around, there's almost like a concierge ⁓ experience where they've just got the iPad and it's like, you know, what you're interested in. they basically come out with it all packed up and wrapped without you seeing all of that hard work. And there's a tap on the

John Readman: A bit like the Apple Store, you just look at one phone and then it comes from the back. Yeah, yeah.

Liam Quinn: the machine that's in the person's pocket. And that's it. So yeah, is that that experience is becoming more and more like sought after at least.

John Readman: Yeah, so I did a bit of research on you Liam before the show So and you've been studying AI and you're quite into your AI Obviously Shopify have gone all in on AI. All right, so they've done this to deal with Google and others to develop UCP

Liam Quinn: ⁓ yeah? Good stuff. bits. Yeah.

John Readman: How do you see the world of this changing? And I suppose for the benefit of those listening who aren't familiar with what's changing and how's it changing, what is going on and what does it mean and why being on Shopify is a good advantage right now.

Liam Quinn: Yes, I think there's a few good questions in there. the like being on Shopify currently is an advantage. So they, as you said, they're speaking to somebody. I was doing a podcast actually recently with somebody else from Shopify and it's like, was making the point that sort of everyone wants to make a bit of noise around AI and doing some stuff with AI, but Shopify are like a complete different level where they're putting so much time effort. and money ultimately into the AI strategy that they're sort of all in on the direction of AI. It's not just a you know, a few nice features. It's there see the long-term direction being AI is going to heavily like agentic commerce is going to heavily drive sales in point in the future. actually think some of it's for the not like some of it, they're good at making noise. And I think some of it will be In my mind, it's maybe slightly further along the timeline than like it's not tomorrow suddenly agents are doing 50 % of the sales, but that's the direction they see is heading. And that's what UCP is ultimately. It's the framework where instead of having another round of all the brands having to do loads of work to build something for agents to pick up there. their products or their data, this UCP framework. ⁓ Ultimately, if you're on the right ⁓ tech stack, it's like, and Shopify being one of the few that's native to it, you toggle it basically, there's a toggle on and your product data will be picked up by Google and within that framework. ⁓ But yeah, the benefit. ⁓ the bit that highlights it, because it's easy to say like maybe it happen for years. But I don't know if you've seen like the open claw stuff that there was a lot of noise around. that sort of overnight took off where somebody brought out this. AI agent that can do your pet, you you connect it to your personal. I wouldn't recommend just connecting to all your personal data, but you can connect that to your WhatsApp emails and ultimately, you know, connect that in theory to Shopify and just send it off to do your shopping for you. And it's pretty effective. And that highlights that maybe it will be sooner than maybe Shopify onto something that I don't know. And it'll be, it'll be overnight and people are using that.

John Readman: I think there's two things here.

Liam Quinn: ⁓ That's on the horizon, like that's the direction that is going to be coming across the industry.

John Readman: I think there's two things here. You've already made the move to Shopify and one of those reasons was what we were talking about from additions in Toronto in the summer last year is the investment in R &D. And they were talking a lot about MCPs. They didn't really mention UCP then, but they were clearly already working on the future is this. And I find myself doing it on, if you'd have asked me three weeks ago, I would have been on all in on Gemini. I'm now all back in on Claude. So it changes every week as they sort of there's a bit of an arms race of which ones my current favorite I'm all in on Claude and I'm asking it to do me some research and I'm saying right I'm after this this and this can you go away do some research? So the thing I asked it most recently was our home car charger is broken Alright, so I could spend days of my life looking for the best value price Availability, but you can just go in there and ask it and currently in the UK it then just gives me some

Liam Quinn: Yeah. Hmph.

John Readman: recommendations and then I've got to go click on the links or go find it and buy it. But I don't see a world far away where I could actually instruct it to go and actually buy that for me. I don't think it's millions of miles away. I do agree with you. It's not next week. It's not a minute. But I also think having the option to be able to click the button inside and go buy now pay with shop pay inside that might if there's three products that come back and some of them are like just buy now delivered tomorrow. And it already knows my details. I've already got a shop pay account. I'm already set up in the shop app ⁓ That's probably more attractive than clicking on the other ones where I think ⁓ I've got to put my details in I've got to put my credit card details in I don't know when delivery is gonna be ⁓ And I think it's if we look back years Amazon changed commerce forever All right in terms of just people now Amazon isn't always the cheapest anymore But people still go to Amazon because it's easy and they know when it's

Liam Quinn: Hmm. Yeah.

John Readman: It's gonna arrive and I don't have to put my details in it So it's boom and actually if you if you or I were to go and do UX review of Amazon now Right, it's shocking but we've all got used to using it So I think they're all sort of stuck in this thing is they going in actually improve it It might be really negative because everybody sort of knows how it works It's a bit like when the supermarket moved the wine or the supermarket. It just confuses everybody so but they have forced everybody else to We were talking to and these guys are

Liam Quinn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Readman: Shopify a company that makes bispo biscuits if you're doing some events you need them they call the Biscari they do these lovely personalized biscuits right and they were saying we get people two days before an event phoning up going can I have a hundred personalized biscuits delivered tomorrow but that's just the world we've all sort of got used to isn't it we sort of expect everything ⁓ delivered tomorrow and I think UCP is going to unlock that and

Liam Quinn: I've got to go the hospital. Yeah. Anyway.

John Readman: I'm not sure yet if we're going to end up with faceless, website-less, shop-less retailers. I'm not sure.

Liam Quinn: Well, I I think we are because, and it's a bit like the Amazon model where you could, in theory, you don't need a site or anything. You could just put, know, push your products into Amazon and that's the sales channel and be able to do that. And I think there'll be that where it depends on the, like, if it's something basic or perishable or whatever that, so I think the... On-site experience will still be super important for brand building and like fashion or any industries where actually somebody wants to go and be brand focused and browse and that sort of thing.

John Readman: Aye, aye. Yeah, I agree. think but the interesting thing is if you're a reseller of other people's brands and you've got a good price, good proposition, good delivery. Actually, if I'm looking for, I don't know, size 10 Air Jordans, for instance, and I know my colour, if you haven't got the overhead of a shop or maintaining a website or the marketing and everything else, if you and if if as everybody's predicting, people are going to start their research and shopping journey in an LLM, being able to buy it there, you could probably compete and

Liam Quinn: Yeah.

John Readman: you might have like what they're gonna call dark shops or and you've just got a warehouse with a Stock and inventory system on an MCP and not an empty a UCP straight into the LLM now So I get your model about the Amazon thing. No one's put it quite that succinctly before

Liam Quinn: Yeah. And I think, so partly part of why I think Shopify put so much time into so much effort in that AI side is almost going back to where we started. think they've won the race for the onsite, onsite econ platform, essentially like caveats here and there, but overall they've won the race for that. However, the next, if the next phase is that the competitors are product feeds. like your feed optimize or you, whoever. different product feeds that actually you don't need the whole platform. I just need to feed my products into Google or, you know, into these channels. So the competition's more in the feed platforms rather than the whole econ platform.

John Readman: I'm sure Google will just create a button, a bit like Bing created a button. Bing goes import my Google ads, right, because they just admitted they lost the race. And then Google will just go convert my product feed to be optimal for LLMs. Surely that's happening, if it hasn't happened already.

Liam Quinn: you Yeah, I mean, so well, yeah, so then I think, yeah, that's true. But yeah, think Shopify, one part of your question is like Shopify in Shopify, you're set up. So they've got the open, you've got the open AI integration as well as the chat GBT toggle it on and you're in there. So they're going to stay ahead of wherever I knew these. So might be, it might be in Google or, you know, it might be chat GBT.

John Readman: Yeah.

Liam Quinn: Google aren't going to push anything into. So at least with Shopify, you toggle these on, you're in the right place and your data is going to be pushed into.

John Readman: going to become a whole new world of LLM feed optimization agencies yeah it's like like that's going to become like a thing and if it isn't a thing if you think of a new business setup that's not a bad idea so

Liam Quinn: Yeah, I mean that is, well I think that's already like a service. Yeah, think it's all creeping into some of the services, but yeah, I agree with you.

John Readman: Yeah, so that time has flown by we'll summarize in the show notes all the stuff We go if you want to send me a list of all the other partners that we need to mention so we haven't upset anybody Yeah, i'll put them in the i will put those into the show notes That was really really interesting and if people want to find visual soft and yourself Where do we find you?

Liam Quinn: Yeah, I will do. I'm going to get some sun. ⁓ You'll see me on LinkedIn. ⁓ Get me on there is the best way. Visualsoft.co.uk. ⁓ We're doing events. We've got a few events in different places. ⁓ So the main event in Manchester in early September is a big one. any merchants that you've got, all welcome to that one.

John Readman: I'll put the, if you send me the link, I'll put that in the bottom as well. And then I suppose we're always looking to grow the show. Who are the big sort of brands or interesting people that you really respect and have been on a journey who we should be getting on leaders on Shopify.

Liam Quinn: Yeah, film these across. ⁓ that's a big question. Brand wise, mean, ⁓ yeah, if we go back to the success stories of like Gymshark represent, or Polly, yeah, there's loads of others to mention, there's

John Readman: Who are the sort ⁓ so thanks a lot, Liam, for coming on. Loads of useful ⁓ insights and information. ⁓ And yeah, I'm sure I'll see you a Shopify event soon and we'll share all the notes of people can get touch with you, ⁓ all the events you're hosting. And then again, if you want to send me some of your apps, we can put those in show notes as well. ⁓ And yeah, once again, ⁓ thank you very much for coming on.

Liam Quinn: Perfect, thanks for having me, enjoyed that.