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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
Turning Intuition into Growth: Martijn Wijsmuller on Navigating E-Commerce Success
What if you could transform your career from corporate to entrepreneurial success? Martijn Wijsmuller did just that, leaving his role in Communications at Heineken, to co-found Shopify agency, Ask Phill.
In this episode of The FODcast, Martijn shares his inspiring entrepreneurial journey—from cutting his teeth in his uncle’s fashion business in Australia to finding business inspiration in China’s vibrant markets.
Martijn reveals how his sharp focus on Shopify for niche industries powered the growth of Ask Phill across Europe and the US. Plus, we learn more about his approach to juggling multiple ventures; trusting his intuition in decision-making, and the crucial role of working with passionate partners to drive success.
💡 We also chat some more about:
- The early challenges of building Ask Phill from the ground up
- Why targeting the right market is essential for scaling a business
- The power of collaboration with skilled partners
- How agility and strategic hiring fuel business growth
🎙️ Don’t miss out on Martijn’s invaluable insights—tune in now to learn the secrets behind his success and how you can apply them to your own entrepreneurial journey.
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Welcome to the latest series of the podcast, where we bring you the latest insights into the future of digital commerce. In season six, we continue to interview some of the most respected professionals in the industry as we broaden the topics to cover what it takes to build a business within e-commerce, navigating through business change, as well as the future of technology within digital commerce. As we continue our journey to have one of the best podcasts within commerce, we ask you to like and share within your network if you enjoy our content. Hello and welcome back to the podcast the Future of All Things Digital Commerce.
Speaker 1:Today, I'm pleased to welcome Martin Weissmuller, entrepreneur and co-founder of a number of businesses, most notably Arsville, one of the Netherlands' leading Shopify agencies. Welcome, martin. Thanks. Good to be here today. James Brilliant, thank you for joining me. Today. We'll be covering everything from how you got started, the challenges you face, the lessons you've learned and the future of digital commerce. This is going to be packed with key takeaways. I'm not sure I will do the full introduction justice, so over to you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and the companies that you founded.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks. So my name is Martijn, 35 years old and from Amsterdam, and, yeah, I started the business of AskPhil back in 2016. We're an e-commerce agency focused on shopify and we work with fashion, lifestyle, beauty brands all over europe and also some us brands that help them implement shopify, do the design, the development and then optimize their businesses, and over the years, we've also invested or co-founded some of the DTC brands, like parfumadocom, perfume subscription service, travel, techa briefcase brand, which has been relaunched recently, and a couple of others.
Speaker 1:Nice, and this, one of the reasons why I'm looking forward to this conversation is we'll probably focus a lot on AskPhil, but, as you've mentioned, it's not just AskPhil that you've co-founded or invested in. It's a number of businesses all within Comas that are all seemingly quite different in the services or products that you supply. So I'm looking forward to dissecting this and looking at the similarities between them, the differences, how you learn and develop and continuously stay ahead of the game. So, yeah, look, I guess let's jump straight in, I guess. So, yeah, let's start with the entrepreneur in you. So what drove you to set up ask phil in the first place? And and what drives you to to co-found all these businesses?
Speaker 2:because, uh, time is tight yeah, yeah, I think that um, starting as phil, yeah, really came um kind of out of nothing. So I used to work at Heineken after my studies. I worked there for two and a half years. It's a Dutch beer brand. I kind of had the dream to make of my passion my job. So I chose Heineken.
Speaker 2:But then after a while I found out that in the company with the size of Heineken I could not really make a difference at that stage and, uh, it was not creative enough. So I decided to quit my job there and then um actually go to australia to my uncle. He he had a business himself and he was a distributor for fashion, uh, fashion and, yeah, fashion accessories in, uh, in sydney. And I joined him to help him for four months on a project and I essentially had to introduce a new brand to the market, set it up and set up a ecom store for him. Um, it was a great way to see what it takes to be an entrepreneur. So my uncle was running the business by himself and I really enjoyed the way how he did it and it kind of sparked an idea in me. But after the four months project there I promised my wife to come back to Amsterdam, even though my uncle asked us to come over and live there and work there for a longer time.
Speaker 1:Did your wife travel with you to Australia as well?
Speaker 2:No, no, she stayed in the Netherlands. So I had some time off for four months. It was a lot of fun. I saw the end was closing in and I was thinking like, okay, I'm essentially jobless, I need to go to Amsterdam, what are my plans? And I was flying through Guangzhou that's one of the biggest cities in China, I think the third biggest city and I knew there was the Canton Fair that's the biggest cities in china, I think the third biggest city and I knew there was the quantum fair. That's the biggest import export fair in the world. And I also knew that another mate of mine from amsterdam, who I knew from the time we were djing together, also quit his job and he was in like a similar situation, thinking about his next step. And we said let's meet up in china, the land of opportunities, see what's uh, what will happen, uh.
Speaker 2:And we went to the fair for it was a big fair three or three and a half weeks and then we really started to bounce off ids, uh. But we had no plan. So it was the one day we saw phone cases for iPhones. We were like, oh, we're going to import those to the Netherlands and sell them. And the other day we were looking at like EV scooters, electronic scooters, and we're like, okay, we're going to import this. It's going to be big in Amsterdam. But then, yeah, we had a lot of ideas. But then we were flying back to Amsterdam and we're like, oh, we still don't have a job. What are we going to do? And then we came back on Thursday and then we said, ok, let's start on Monday, and we just sat down in the apartment of Paul, my co-founder down in the apartment of Paul, my co-founder and we just started.
Speaker 2:One of the ideas we had was to make a digital city guide, because back in 2016, people, when they would travel to cities, they would use TripAdvisor to get around town. But we witnessed in China firsthand, like, if you're in a city, there's no Google, there's no Facebook, you don't know your way around town. You'll need some advice from your hotel. So we made this digital city guide which every hotel could curate for themselves. And that was yeah, that was our idea. And we started pushing. We hired some freelance developers, we did the designs ourselves and we launched. Within three months, we started selling the product to hotels in Amsterdam. There are quite a lot. Amsterdam is quite touristic.
Speaker 2:But then we found out like, yeah, you'll need a lot of cash to build a real SaaS tool and scale it. So we started doing business on the site because we had this network of freelancers and people who knew how to build websites or applications. And then, yeah, we had friends of ours and people who had their businesses. They needed a new website and they would come to us. And that was the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like after a couple of months, we found out like, okay, maybe we should pivot away from our digital city guide. It was a good idea, but I think we need to invest a lot to make it a success. Well, on the other side, the digital agency was quite an easy way for us to get started and build a more sustainable business. So that was actually how we came to the digital agency space. And then, within that space, we also realized we needed to specialize. So, being a digital agency and specializing in everything, that's not really good pitch. So at the start, we would do portfolio websites, e-commerce websites, online marketing, email marketing. Then we said, okay, we like commerce, let's focus on that. Let's pick one platform Shopify. Luckily, back then it was quite new in Europe Not many agencies in Europe. In the UK there were already quite some, but in Amsterdam not at all. And then we said, within commerce, let's focus on brands, the type of brands we'd like to work with, so fashion, lifestyle, beauty brands, and that's kind of how we found with AskPhil.
Speaker 1:Like it. It's certainly a good choice picking Shopify. Obviously, it's gone on an absolute rocket ship since 2016, particularly the last sort of three or four years. What made you pick Shopify? Because it wasn't a a known platform at that point no, no, that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. That's also how we um. So we tried a couple of different platforms like woocommerce was big back then magento, shopify and, because we were not that tech savvy, um, we really liked Shopify because it was easy to set up, it was easy to if you use templates, it's like a no-code application almost. It did have its limitations, but back then it was for us an easy way to get started. But at the same time we also were a friend of mine was starting another business called Parfumado.
Speaker 2:It's a perfume subscription service and he approached us. He said, okay, I'm looking for technical co-founders who can help us build the platform. He already engaged some other investors who had their background in the perfume industry. He was going to run the company, but then he needed a technical partner as well. So for us, that was a moment where we said, okay, let's build this on Shopify. And after that project we found out how versatile Shopify already was. So we, for example, subscription service was not possible within Shopify back then, but we found out you could build around it if you wanted with custom applications. So that was actually a pretty big project. We nailed at the start of AskPhil and then we found out how powerful Shopify was.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool, I guess, because you've been able to use your role as a functionalities um or how easy it is to use, but also from the art school perspective of this is how easy it is to actually implement um and what have you. So you've got to be able to use um you both businesses in sync with each other to understand the platform capabilities, which is cool. I just, I just love the fact that you've uh, if you've, you've left your job at heineken, you've gone to australia for a few months and decided to go to china on the way back and you've got all of these ideas about starting a business. And then you, you come back and you end up doing something completely different off the back of your trip to china, specifically in the digital tour guide, to then say, well, actually, do you know what? Let's go and create an agency.
Speaker 1:And obviously neither yourself or uh or paul um were like the developers per se. You've hired them in through the initial freelancers and it's just. It's purely that entrepreneurship that kind of got you from uh first day after leaving heineken to the starting of ask phil and perfumado. I think that's a really cool story. It just goes to show that you never know what's around the corner. Does it you never know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, indeed what you're saying. It's like. I think that's the fun thing of entrepreneurship, and if you're opportunistic and optimistic and you're open to new ideas, there's always a new opportunity around the corner. At the same time, that's also a challenge. Being an entrepreneur, you probably also know that if there's a new opportunity, you like to jump on it, see if you can make a business out of it, but at the same time, you need to stay focused.
Speaker 2:So we did this Parfumado project quite intensively the first two years and after the two years, we helped the team to hire the first developer, select a good CTO and then start building their own tech team, just to have them being more independent and less dependent on us as an agency. Also for them to build a more valuable business, I think, in terms of how investors look at it. But it was, uh, during that time we had more of these ids which we tried out, so some of them more successful than others, uh, but I think that's, yeah, what I said. That's one of the nice things of being an entrepreneur trying things out, but you need to stay focused to ensure you're in face your time in the right, right place yeah, and that's as I touched upon at the start.
Speaker 1:Time time is, uh, is very tight and there's only so many avenues you can pursue at any one point in time. Um, so, yeah, I guess how. How do you know then, when? How do you kind of, uh, assess the situation to know when is the right time to say yes and when is the right time to say no?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's. That's a good question. I'm not, uh, fully sure. I don't really have a method for it, it's more of a gut feeling. So, obviously, number one is like it needs to be fun. It needs to be a fun group of other entrepreneurs or people involved. They need to be serious about it. It needs to have potential. I think that's that's key. So if we don't see the potential, it's not worth pursuing. I think, yeah, I think those are the key things and then I think if those three boxes are ticked, then I will make time for it. Those three boxes are ticked and I will make time for it. But there's a there's a lot of things passing by, like, or IDs coming in or people who want to start something.
Speaker 1:You really need to pick your battles because, yeah, like you said, you can only invest time once and that's it, and I'm sure when you've got people coming to you with these ideas, they're obviously super passionate about the ideas and this is going to be the next best thing, and it's sometimes it's hard to cut through the noise and be like, okay, uh, is this actually worth time and money, what? The one thing I really like about what you said, then is it's about gut feel, and I find it really interesting having conversations like this, because there's so many different processes and frameworks and qualification criteria for almost everything that we do, but more often than not, when it comes to a lot of decisions that we have to make as human beings, we trust our gut. Um, which is it's. It removes all of the, the process that we put in place to try and make the right decision, and you go with does this feel right? Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1:Cool, let's go ahead. Yeah. So, um, cool, all right. So let's look at the um. I mean the three main companies that I know you're you're involved with now is is us fill, the agency, you've got parfumado and you've got um travel tech, which is a travel bags business as well. Now, yeah, there's obviously a few similarities in there, but how do you, how do you like, um ensure that you're giving all the businesses the the best of martin out there? How do you? They will require slightly different skill set, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think, like with sql, that's the the main focus, so most of the time goes there. And then now, since january last year, we hired two directors to replace me and my partner as a commercial director and operational director. But now we're more involved strategically and deciding um or creating the vision together with with the team and pushing forward, and then we freed up some time to do these projects more intensively. Um, but I think in almost all cases is that we are involved for the um, for, let's say, the e-commerce knowledge as well as the technical knowledge, and we're not involved in day-to-day operations. Um.
Speaker 2:So, for example, travel tech, uh, we, there was a brand which already existed for, I think, around 15 years. It had its ups and downs throughout the years. We would always say it's a brand. It used to think, with the uh, with the relaunch, we were really coming in to advise them on the yeah, doing the rebrand, the positioning, and then the online part, the e-commerce part, and that's also where our knowledge is. And, of course, in terms of operating and structuring a company, we have had our learnings with Asphil throughout the years. So we always try to advise them, but we're not at the steering wheel ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So it's very much a case of just working to your strengths and say yourself and your co-founders know where your strengths lie and you focus entirely of where you can add value and you bring in or work with others around you that bring the value outside of your roommates it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So personally, I'm always quite excited about marketing sales, seeing how we can increase revenue, so I would say that's the where I can add.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, add value for those companies awesome and would you say that's one of the most important things when it comes to to um, working with investing in a new business or what have you is is looking at the people that you're going to be co-founding potentially, and just okay, how can? How can my skills enhance theirs or how can theirs enhance mine, for example?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's always good if you compliment each other, so that's key. You need to have some key specialties within a founding team preferably, so you don't have to hire them early on. Yeah, it's good to have it in a founding team so you can be bootstrapping a bit more in the early days. But, yeah, I think one of the most important characteristics to have, or which you should have within the time team, is really the urge and the willingness to push forward and make it a success. It's like the foundation of a good business, I think.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I mean, there's going to be tough times ahead, so you need to all be having the same vision, the same end goal and be prepared to do what you need to do to get through it. I think that probably leads quite nicely onto the next question, which is going to be focusing around some of the lessons that you've learned, and I guess you face different challenges at different stages of the journey of a business. So the challenges you might face at the start of the business are going to be very different to the challenges that you face as a business scale. So why don't we start with some of the lessons that you've learned in the first few years of founding a business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's always. I always enjoy thinking back to the early days, so, and there are a lot of lessons to be learned, especially in those early days. It's like, yeah, I think one of the important ones is getting your, trying to get your first customer in. That's the hardest part, especially being in any business. But if you're in a service business, you need to have some proof that people need to hire you, and I think the only real advice there is fake it till you make it it's. They will never. If you're too honest about at the start, like I never did a project, I want to do it for you. It will be hard and that's something we we practice quite well at startup, as Phil. So we, like I said, we came back on a Thursday, a Monday, we were sitting in Paul's apartment and then we're like, okay, if we don't have an office, we're not a Thursday. On Monday we were sitting in a false apartment and then we're like, okay, if we don't have an office, we're not a business. So then that same week, on Thursday, we rented or subletted, sub rented an office, but on the most fancy canal in Amsterdam. We got the office Amsterdam. We got the office via friend and we got a good deal on it. We could move in immediately. So within a week we had our own office on the most fancy canals in Amsterdam.
Speaker 2:Without having a real plan what we were going to do. We installed a big whiteboard and we started writing down names of businesses we want to work with and we just started called Outreaching and one of the fun strategies we had in the start was like bringing in a client and they would face us, but behind us was the, the whiteboard, and we would have these. But behind us was the whiteboard and we'd have these names like these are clients or almost clients. So we kind of gave the leads or the potential new business the idea we were already working with some of the bigger names from the area here. So fake it till you make it is an important one.
Speaker 2:Then the second one is focus. Like I said at the start, you will do anything to get money. So that was our thing. We're like okay, we need to start a business. If someone asks us to do their email marketing, we would do it. If someone asks us to try and build a website for them, we would do it. If someone asked us to try and build a website for them, we would do it.
Speaker 2:But I think eventually we found out like after half a year. If you would ask 10 of my friends what is marketing doing, they would all have a totally different story about the business we were in. Some would say, oh, you're in the city guide business, the other ones were talking in online marketing. The Some would say, oh, you're in the city guide business, the other ones were talking in online marketing. The others would say design. And I think what we saw with focusing on Shopify from early on and on specific industries that kind of also gave us that name in the market. So if someone would hear Shopify in fashion, lifestyle or beauty, they would say, oh, you need to go to ask Phil, so that, uh, that helped a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just quickly. Where, where did the name ask Phil come from?
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, that's uh. When we went to China, so, like I said, there's no Google, there's no Facebook, there's no real way to get around town and, as starting entrepreneurs, we were staying in like the cheapest hotel in Guangzhou. So we looked for the cheapest hotel and bookingcom went there and, as you might know, yeah, almost nobody speaks English there, so it's really hard to get around town. But the hotel manager he was actually able to speak English and we were his first European guests who were speaking English. So for him, a great opportunity to chat with us and said like, okay, guys, if you have any questions, here's my business card and you can always call me.
Speaker 2:So we would end up in taxis or in restaurants, lost in translation. And they were like, we have this business card and his European name was Phil and we said we have to ask Phil. So he turned into our personalized city guide kind of, and that's also where the idea came from. When we came back, we called and asked Phil, it's going to be a city guide and it's going to help tourists to get around town. But when we transitioned into a digital digital agency, we said like, yeah, this name is also great for digital agency because, yeah, we help people to get around the digital space. Give them the right advice to uh. Yeah, to be successful yes, it's cool.
Speaker 1:I really like the name and this the backdrop to it. The story is absolutely wicked as well. So, that trip to China really, really, was the starting point of the business, right? And does Phil know how successful the business has become? And does he know that he is now famous?
Speaker 2:No, the worst thing is, we haven't been back since. So it was, yeah, we haven't been back since. So it was, uh, yeah, we haven't been back since. And uh, we were discussing uh last couple of weeks, like in april, I think, from top of my mind, april, there's the canton fair again. We should go back, stay at the same, uh hotel see if he's still there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I completely resonate with the first points that you mentioned there. Just around kind of faking it till you're making it and the other exaggeration may be required here and there just to try and get your point across. And what have you I mean as someone that's co-founded a business, as well as trying to get those first couple of clients through the door is hard and everyone's always wants to know why they should work with you. And when you're sat there and you're saying, well, haven't got any clients, you're not, you're not really giving a good account for yourself, are you right? But, uh, um, but I love it so, okay, so the business has started. What, what? Uh, you get kind of to the the point where you you've got a few clients on board and you're growing and you want to start scaling. So, um, what challenges do you face? Now the business a a little bit more mature. What have you learned?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. So we really started with only two years of working experience at another company when we came out of university. So we had no management experience, no idea how to build a business at all, but we were opportunistic and optimistic. We were opportunistic and optimistic. We were just, um, we felt like, okay, let's get, uh, let's get as much people in the agency as possible for the lowest amount of cost. So we started hiring interns. So we had like a small army of interns, uh, to work with us, to to work on projects, and I think that's it's a great way to start learning. But in terms of quality and time it takes to yeah, time you need to invest it's. It's a lot of time, and I would say it's better from the start to hire better skilled people although it's a lot of fun with interns, because usually there's still students that like to go out a lot um but for us yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it was, uh, that's one of the things like finding the right people and people who are better at the things you do than than yourself. And and then we, we started, uh, hiring our first team members and usually, yeah, we were with around eight, nine people in the agency and that already felt like, oh, we make these big steps, we optimize our processes and we're ready to start growing. And that was just before COVID hit. So I think it was March 2020, from top of my mind, when COVID started. We just moved into a new office quite a big step for us financially and then COVID hit and then suddenly we had no leads coming in anymore for the first two weeks no emails, no phone calls and we're like we're going bankrupt. What's going to happen? Yeah, we had no idea what was going to happen. And then suddenly the phone didn't stop ringing anymore. We only got new leads coming in because everyone had to move online All the more traditional retail businesses. They need to take the step online.
Speaker 2:But also shopify was gaining a lot of momentum, getting more popular, and that what happened was that we had all these clients waiting in front of the door started wanting to start a project, but we didn't have the team. So but, like I said, we were optimistic. We were like, okay, let's sign this deal, let's say we can start in two months and then, uh, at the back of that, start hiring people, sourcing people for the project. And we did that for two years straight. So we started with around 10 people and then after the first year we were suddenly with a team of 35 people. And then the second year of COVID we grew from 35 to 65 people. But most of that was remotely. Most of the people who came in started immediately on projects, remotely. Most of the people who came in started immediately on projects.
Speaker 2:As you can imagine, people were not onboarded correctly. No real structure for this size of a company. Paul and me were both managing the whole company still, so we didn't install a management team. We were just like, okay, buckle up and let's see what's going to happen. And that was for the for the two years. Like, I think one of the learnings there was like, if there's an opportunity, be uh, yeah, be willing to take the risk to try and grab that opportunity. So for us it was a big accelerator and I think we got a good head start compared to other agencies who were maybe more. How do you say that risk averse? Okay, yeah, I need to say that Riske first. Okay, yeah, and I think it's important. So we grew in those two years a lot. But we only started thinking about structure afterwards and we hired an external advisor or a mentor a friend of ours who came to put an org chart in place. We didn't have an org chart at all. We had no reporting lines.
Speaker 1:So at what point did you get an org chart put in place?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a week after our advisor started he was like the first thing he asked. It was funny. He's not from the industry, he doesn't know anything about digital. He came in and the only question he asked was like where's your org chart? Or like we don't have an org chart. It's like okay, how do you steer your business? Yeah, we just do it.
Speaker 2:The first thing was putting an org chart in place. Then next step okay, let's get a management team in place, because you cannot do everything. You need to transfer some of the responsibilities to your management team.
Speaker 2:So this was in 2022, right, yeah, so the business is now six, six years old, 65 people approximately yeah, yeah, okay, and and I think for or for most people who are longer around in business, it's it's like basic knowledge that you need to have an org chart and a management team, but for us it was all completely new.
Speaker 2:But I think that we enjoyed getting these insights and also were able to make the transition quite rapidly. Our team was very agile and willing to change, also because I think the average age back then was like 27. So, together with the team, within three months we like fully transformed the company into, yeah, a more mature company with the processes, with the structure, and the good thing was that usually these times of let's call, turbulence, uh, can bring some challenges. And it did bring challenges, but luckily only internally. So our clients didn't really realize what happened, what was happening within our agency, because the the projects were delivered on time with the right quality, but at the back of it. For example, some projects we had to double the amount of resource on it, but we were not charging the client, so we were paying the growing cost, let's say.
Speaker 1:So behind the closed door was chaos, but in front of the customer it it was uh, yeah, completely fine and uh, there would be none the wiser, yeah, so so look just just quickly then on that point, so, um, you mentioned, uh, a lot of there's maybe at the time there's a lot more companies are going to be slightly more risk adverse with regards to their growth and, um, compared to to you guys that, ask phil. But in reality, is that that kind of um risk-free approach to just growing and bringing on board customers as and when, like as often as you could during the covid years, is ultimately what's what's giving you the platform for success? So I guess my question to you would be if you had, were presented with the chance to, to go back six or seven years and do this again, would you do anything differently specifically for the growth of?
Speaker 2:ask phil um with the knowledge. Now I would, I think, the. On the one hand, preferably I would have the structure in place before the growth, but I think structure also holds growth back in some cases. Yeah, so what we did during those two years was yeah, was a combination of I'm not sure if I can find the right word but also having like a very immature mindset, just like, okay, let's do it, let's yeah.
Speaker 1:immature, opportunistic, not thinking about the risks or the results of growing as quickly as we did on the carefree approach just yeah, just bringing it, bring it all on board, not thinking about the potential risks, like you said. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I would do the same. Yeah, but even knowing the pain we had in the time after, I think also for the team, it was not the optimal period. So we never before that we didn't really have churn within the team. And then in that period, you see, obviously people are getting stressed and some people left the company. There were a lot of new people coming in and I think since we brought the structure, it became more relaxed and we churned and diminished. That's, that's the thing I think okay, yeah, that doesn't.
Speaker 1:I mean that doesn't surprise me, I guess, when I mean agencies are known to be quite stressful environments anyway. Uh deadlines to here. You're dealing with customers that can uh can be tough sometimes and there's always more work to be done. So I can imagine without that kind of uh structure and process in place it can be a little bit more. It does take a certain type of person to work in an agency as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely but I mean, ultimately, it's all, it's all lessons learned, right? If you don't, you don't, you don't experience it, you don't try it, you don't know what works and what doesn't work, and, uh, it seems like it's worked out all right for you in the end, which is, uh, which is good. Something I think it's worth coming back to, though, is, and that is you spoke at the start about how you hired an army of interns I think it was your phrase and, um, you then look to hire more strategically around people that can, uh, do the work you need them to do, and, and I guess, but ultimately, what that is is easing the burden on yourself.
Speaker 2:So how important, would you say, hiring is, both hiring the right type of person and the time in which you hire them um, I think, yeah, we really found out that hiring the right person is key to make your business success, and hiring the wrong person is like one of the most expensive mistakes you can make in running an agency. Um, so I think that that are two big learnings and I think the um also timings, especially being in agency. Also timings, especially being in an agency, if you have opportunities to come up, like the example of during COVID, that you need to find the right people quickly because you don't want to be working on that too long. Yeah, because it will slow down your business eventually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's obviously a topic that uh that comes up a lot in the conversation that we have given, uh, given the industry that we we focus in um, but it's so important if you make one or two wrong hires and it can have a really uh detrimental effect on on growth, on brand, on all sorts. So I'm sure we've all learned that the hard way though, right Us included.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think having the right people on the bus that's super important for what you're saying, like the quality and the brand. But I think, most importantly and the brand, but I think most importantly we are building like a how do you call it? We have a high-paced business. Where we're in In the agency world, we try to achieve the highest quality possible, really pushing the boundaries. And then if you have team members who are less engaged and they don't have to drive like other team members, it really spills over to the other team members. They're like why is this person on the bus with us? Because they don't have the same mindset. And then it could be a risk that your A players leave because you have a B or C player in the bus. So that's even a bigger risk of mishiring someone that the good players leave because they're like oh, this is not my blood type yeah, yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm sure we'd all love a business of A players, but we know that's also incredibly tough as well. I'm sure we'd all love a business of A players, but we know that's also incredibly tough as well. So just on the note of hiring when you hire and I appreciate this will vary slightly depending on the person that you're hiring and their level and a lot of other nuances However, do you generally look for the technical skill set or the attitude and the mindset?
Speaker 2:What's the number one for you? Uh, attitude and mindset. That's number one, and I think we uh, yeah, I think that's just the key. I think if, if someone has the right mindset, you can teach them anything, uh, but if someone is very smart but he doesn't have the right, uh drive or mindset, you cannot teach drive or mindset. It needs to be within a person. And it's actually quite funny like when we started, we, and when we weren't that known as an agency yet it was hard to find the right people and we were already there. We were quite quickly satisfied with someone who's come in and say I want to work here. But, funny enough, like Some of the, the most, like the best hires we did were people who came in without any experience or almost non-experience, but they had the right drive and they learned themselves along the way or they got teached by others in the company, but it's quite fun and interesting to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Joe, again, that's a point that I can really relate to as well, as we've uh, been on a very similar journey building our business from from zero, and you interview a lot of people, um, and I would say, a number of the best people that we've hired have come in with little to no experience and they just wanted to make it. They've wanted to make it happen and just it's just, yeah, it's um, it's really interesting, um so, um, awesome, so so, attitude, mindset, uh, that is the, the number one yeah, yeah, definitely let's go back to 2016 2017 when you made the decision to go all in on shopify, which has proven to be um be a very successful decision for you.
Speaker 1:We're now nearing the end of 2024, and the commerce market has changed substantially over that period of time. How do you see the commerce market further developing over the next five years? What does it look like for you?
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot that's going to change, I think, but in general, so I think with the the rise of ai, I think the velocity of innovations in in every industry, it's going quite quickly. If we speak specifically about our business in e-com, I think the, for example, yesterday I saw an article that Perplexity, which is kind of a chat GPT tool, will now have a feature where they integrate all products from Shopify stores in their search queries. So you can say, I'm looking for a brown bag for women of this age, and then it will show you all these products from different websites where you can then purchase it with like one click.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that was announced yesterday. So that's and that's going quite quickly, so good, um, a different way of exploring products, um so other than the traditional one of using google, but a smarter way to do it it's called perplexity.
Speaker 1:I'm not. I'm not familiar with that, so I'll go and check that out yeah, perplexity is a one to check out.
Speaker 2:Uh, I think there will be some movement in uh the type of channels where people uh buy. So, obviously, if your online store, you have your marketplaces like amazon, but you see a shift towards social channels. Obviously, meta have had their Facebook shops and Insta shops already for quite some time, but you see the importance of the content creator industry on TikTok. So, for example, I think in the UK you already have TikTok shops and in the US.
Speaker 1:They're really pushing that heavily at the minute as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think in the rest of Europe there's no TikTok shops yet, so I think that will be coming soon and that will also move the consumer from maybe online stores more to purchasing on the social platforms. I think the nice thing of Shopify or I think Shopify saw this coming a couple of years back and that's why they moved their positioning as being a web store provider to more being in a unified commerce provider they want to be the operating system for any brand who want to sell something, either being online on their online store or offline in their boutique with the Shopify POS, but also connecting all these social channels to Shopify and that Shopify is kind of the operating system for your commerce business.
Speaker 1:I believe Shopify is doing quite well as well, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they saw it early on and they really positioned themselves as a unified commerce tool. I also think that the future looks less complex. So when we started in 2016, you had all these big Magento builds, salesforce builds. I think nowadays you see companies like 80% of the conversations we have is companies who say we want to make it simpler, we want to minimize total cost of ownership, it needs to be streamlined. So I think there will be less complexity with all the innovations going on.
Speaker 1:A few big claims. You're certainly not the only person to talk about the rise of um, social shopping and and obviously, tiktok, and what have you, I mean, I I also agree. I think that's going to continue to to take up market share and any brand that isn't um, investing the right amount of time and resources into social channels and what have you, I think, will probably start to fall away over the next couple of years. I had a guest on recently who put a bold claim out there, saying that TikTok may even become the predominant shopping channel for many in the next five years, which I thought was a bold saying, which I thought was a bold saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not on TikTok myself. I once downloaded it, used it for two weeks and I was so hooked that I deleted it and decided never to download it again for self-protection. But I can align with those thoughts, I think. Yeah, let's see what the legislation will do and how open the US and Europe will stay towards TikTok. Yeah, but if it will be the same legislation as it is now, then I see that move as well.
Speaker 1:Going on yeah, well, I'm the same as you. I have the app, but I stopped using it. I have so many friends that are like, yeah, I got this off TikTok, I got that off TikTok, so, yeah, we'll see. But cool, okay. And then just finally, where do you see Shopify headed? It's taken an enormous amount of the market share over the last couple of years. Is that going to continue, as they really push enterprise? What are your thoughts on Shopify.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. If I talk about the European market, I think that's a big growth market for Shopify. So in terms of brands who used to be on Magento and Salesforce, we see them coming to Shopify. I almost never hear brands which are on Shopify who move away. So that's in terms of movement between the platforms. I think the Shopify as a development team of more than 4,000 developers only working on the platform itself, I think that's incomparable to, let's say, the commerce teams at Salesforce or at Magento or Adobe. So I think the rate of innovation with Shopify is much bigger than their competitors and their move upmarket to more enterprise clients. That's going quite successfully and aggressively as well. So I think they're on the right path. The Shopify wave is in full effect and I think all their investments of the last couple of years are now paying off for them. I think you also saw the earnings release three days ago and a stock jump of 25%. I think they are on the right trajectory.
Speaker 1:It just seems to be flying. I very rarely hear a bad word said about the business, the platform, the people in the ecosystem, the partner. That part of the ecosystem I built is absolutely amazing as well. Um, uh, so yeah, no, I, I mean, I, I agree, and I think the one thing that I would add is I hear about shopify in almost every conversation I have, which which wasn't the case three or four years ago. So I think that will continue and they'll start to eat, to wear a bit more. But I know time is tight and we're coming to the end, so I think it's probably a good place to wrap things up. I feel like I could probably sit here and ask you another hundred and one questions, but we don't have the time to do so. So, yeah, thank you very much for joining me today, martin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation and just unpicking your brains about how your business came around, some of the challenges that you face and all that kind of stuff. It's been really cool. Thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot. It was fun, excellent. Well, I hope you've all enjoyed it as much as as much as I have. Thank you again for tuning in and listening and I'll see you all again soon.
