Managing 45+ Shopify Stores with Dov Quint of OpenStore

How do you scale and optimize 45+ Shopify stores without losing your mind—or your margins?

In this episode of Shopify Happy Hour, Dan Cassidy sits down with Dov Quint, Storefronts Lead at OpenStore, to explore the playbook he’s built for operating dozens of DTC brands at scale.

You’ll hear:

• How OpenStore standardizes tech stacks without sacrificing performance
• Why A/B testing offers (and pricing) is non-negotiable
• Creative growth tactics like cashback offers that boosted list opt-ins by 40%
• What Shopify brands are doing to navigate tariffs without raising prices
• A smart strategy for post-purchase revenue (that won’t annoy your customers)
• How AI is being used for CRO, analytics, and review mining
• Why Dov is leading a mission-driven eCommerce delegation to Israel this fall

Plus, hear Dov and Dan crack a Blue Moon and discuss ASMR marketing and whether your mom should test your website (spoiler: yes).

🎧 Tune in for a masterclass in operational excellence, CRO tactics, and why sometimes the best feedback comes from your mom.

Show Notes:

🍻 Drinks of the Day:

• Dan: Blue Moon (bottle)
• Dov: Blue Moon 19oz can with bonus ASMR pour

📍 Guest Info:

Dov Quint
Storefronts Lead, OpenStore
Mission Lead, Israel Tech Mission
Connect on LinkedIn

📘 Books Mentioned:

• The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

🧰 Tools & Tech Stack Shoutouts:

• Rebuy – Smart upsells & cross-sells
• Okendo – Reviews, UGC, and surveys
• Replo – Landing page builder
• Fermat – Embedded shopping experiences
• Fondue – Cashback instead of discounts
• Onward – Post-purchase insurance + experience layer
• IntelliGems – A/B testing for price, offers, landing pages
• Microsoft Clarity – Free heat mapping tool
• Heatmap.com – Revenue-based behavior analytics

🛍️ Brands Mentioned:

• Jack Archer – DTC men’s performance apparel brand
• Jolie – Luxury filtered showerhead with powerful DTC funnel
• Brez – THC-infused sparkling beverages
• HexClad – Hybrid cookware (Jason Panzer mentioned as Tech Mission guest)

✈️ Israel Tech Mission (September 2025):

• Curated trip for eCommerce founders, execs, and investors
• Dates: Sept 14–18, 2025
• Led by Dov Quint in partnership with Israel Tech Mission
• Application link: https://tinyurl.com/ITM-for-eCommerce-Leaders
• Includes: meetings with Israeli tech leaders, Air Force base visit, NOVA site, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv
• Featured guest: Jason Panzer, President of HexClad

Transcript

Dan Cassidy (00:01)
Welcome to the Shopify happy hour on the Shopify happy hour. You'll hear from founders, operators, and experts on growth marketing strategies, lessons learned from the trenches and other nuggets of e-commerce wisdom shared over a different drink each episode. Today, I'd like to welcome Dov Quint, who manages over 45 Shopify stores at open store and is also leading a pretty amazing mission for e-commerce leaders to Israel later this year. Dov, welcome.

Dov Quint (00:29)
Hey Dan, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dan Cassidy (00:32)
Awesome, awesome. So we were talking about the name pronunciation Dove verse Dove. So it sounds like that's a common question.

Dov Quint (00:36)
Yes.

It's an icebreaker every call that I have so you cheated a little bit you asked me before we got on what what the right pronunciation is but Yeah, I've gotten some interesting things I've heard bill sometimes not when people when people when I say my name over the phone or over a video call Maybe maybe not seeing my lips moving somehow it comes through as bill don't ask me why I've got another friend Who is named Dove as well, and he said the same experience, so I'm not hallucinating But yes, it is an uncommon name. It means bear in Hebrew

And yeah, it's a great way to start conversations. It's a great icebreaker, right?

Dan Cassidy (01:11)
I mean, it's harder to have a better name that translates to anything other than bear. That's fantastic.

Dov Quint (01:16)
Yeah,

I don't have a last name. It's just Dove, three letters. It's like Cher or Madonna. Keep it very simple. We don't even need, and my last name's pretty cool too, but we'll save that for another time.

Dan Cassidy (01:25)
Nice, good stuff. Yeah, I've always gotten David. So growing up, I always got David. And back in the years back, there was the Partridge family and so David Cassidy. So growing up, every teacher was always calling me David. I'm like, it's not that hard. There's an end, it's not that hard. But I love it. I love the Bear translation too. So, well, let's get things kicked off. So, best part of the show, what are we drinking here?

Dov Quint (01:47)
I'm ready to go, I my Blue Moon. We're just past noon, so it's okay to start drinking this thing. I cracked open the 19 ounce can over here. It's not cracked yet, but we're gonna do it together. When you're ready, you tell me. This is your thing, I love this.

Dan Cassidy (02:00)
Fantastic. So you've got the can. I'm going OG with the bottle.

Dov Quint (02:03)
You need the actual sound of the opening, right? That's the big thing in all the videos that the kids are doing these days. I don't know, my daughter shows me.

Dan Cassidy (02:11)
So we just did,

why do you say that? Cause yesterday we spent a lot longer than we should have doing, it's called ASMR and I don't know what it translates to, but we're working with a brand that does restickable photos. So for like 20 minutes, we're sticking these things to everything. We've got the mic right next to it just to get that satisfying, you know, peeling sound. ⁓

Dov Quint (02:17)
You got it. Yup.

You got it. My daughter

taught me about ASMR, so we'll do this. We ready? I guess only I can do it. Yours is already... Yours is a twist and it's already off. It's not going to make much ASMR sound. Okay, we're ready. Here we go. Did it come through good? Yeah. Okay.

Dan Cassidy (02:37)
Well, I got I got too excited. I already popped it. So let's hear it. Let's hear your

That's the thing, alright, and then

we'll do, so I'm gonna do the pour.

Dov Quint (02:46)
That's some ASMR. like that. That's good. Satisfying. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (02:49)
It's very but quiet, but

it works. All right, Dove, cheers. Thanks so much for joining.

Dov Quint (02:53)
Cheers,

man. Thanks for having me.

Dan Cassidy (02:54)
Such a good beer. what about so what about belt? So talk to me about like if you're gonna drink What are you typically drinking? Are you are you a beer guy? Is that number one? What's what's your preference?

Dov Quint (03:04)
Yeah, it depends

on the venue, right? what's going on. Are you at a ball game? Are you over the barbecue? Those locations, I would say a beer is my drink of choice. Maybe somewhat more of a social gathering. I will go for a scotch or a tequila, but definitely a beer fan.

Dan Cassidy (03:21)
Yeah, I'm at heart a beer guy as well. I drink basically anything that's wet, but yeah, beer for me is just, especially Belgian beer. And what's great about Blue Moon is it's super light, it's crisp, and it's a good like entry level, it's a very good entry level beer for, and I mean that with like tons of respect, I love Blue Moon, but back in the day, if people are not interested in drinking beer, say if people are just like.

slamming buds and you get them a blue moon. They're like, oh my God, beer can taste really good. And this is such a good example of that. And it's just a delicious, fantastic, refreshing beer. It's starting to warm up here in Wilmington. I think it's like, you know, 90 or something today. So this is perfect for the season.

Dov Quint (04:02)
It's a good description for me also. I do enjoy beer, but I'm not an aficionado. I don't know all the different types of tastes and go to all the different breweries. Not my thing. I've a brother who's very into that. So he could speak to that better. But for somebody who just likes to dabble and be refreshed. But there's a big trend I think you've seen probably in the non-alcoholic beverage space that's going on right now, which is really fascinating to maintain some of the social aspect of drinking without the after effects, if you will. It's pretty fascinating.

Dan Cassidy (04:28)
It's,

it's crazy. We've had a fair amount of brands on here that are either in a functional or THC and the category is blowing up. We at our, was at a restaurant with the team yesterday and a random restaurant on French street, downtown Wilmington, this old kind of like Southern fusion place on the chalkboard. had THC infused whatever. And I was like, wow. It's, it's becoming more and more of a thing.

Dov Quint (04:53)
yeah, it's coming.

Yeah, there's a company down here in Florida up in Palm Beach called Brez. I don't know if you've come across them, but they're the big ones in the space doing amazing, really cool, interesting stuff. So yeah, I think it's very early innings for that category. And I think there's a lot of opportunity as that stuff starts to become more regulated and legalized across the country. It's just going to continue to blow up. So yeah, in the meantime, we'll hold the blue moon. you've had Aaron on, so you know Aaron. Okay, cool.

Dan Cassidy (05:16)
for sure we had Aaron on. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, he was on I think it was like

episode five or six and great guy and they are are blowing up blown up. Awesome. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, let's talk some Shopify stuff. I'm I've been super interested to connect with you because one I want to hear about well lots of things that you're working on but let's just start with like for managing over 45 Shopify stores. What does a

Dov Quint (05:25)
probably. Yeah, okay.

Dan Cassidy (05:44)
As typical as you can think about it, what does a typical day look like for you when you're managing all of these different brands?

Dov Quint (05:51)
Yeah, well, let's just start with saying there's no playbook for this that I know of. I don't know any aggregator, which I know is a little bit of a dirty word, but I don't know if it's the best way to describe sort of what it is. Right. I don't know any aggregator in the Shopify space that has this this quantity of stores. And so, you know, it's there's like I said, no playbook for how to do this at scale and for how to manage as many stores at scale and support them across the board. There's obviously, you know, an industry in the Amazon space, which has a little bit of a

of a history and a little bit of a dumpster fire for some folks in that area. Shopify is fundamentally different, in my opinion, from an aggregator perspective, but still has many similar challenges. And it is a challenge, especially when you're trying to do it. In order to make the model work, you need to ensure that you don't scale up human capital and resources as you continue to acquire stores. The trick is being able to support many stores under one umbrella without doing it efficiently with the same amount of people or smaller amount of people.

You know, one big thing for us that we realized pretty early on is standardization is key, but standardization, but not at the expense of performance, right? And so if I need to manage 45 stores on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, and I need to support them and work on optimizing them, I want to be working on the same set of tools. And so one of the common things that we would do when we acquire a new store is we do an audit of the tech stack and we go down the line. And to the extent that we can in the most reasonable fashion possible, get

all of the stack on the same stack that we're using for the rest of the portfolio that we've diligent and decided is right for us. There are some exceptions on a brand by brand basis, but I'd say 95 % of it is the same stack. so once you do that, you're setting yourself up for success a little bit better, but it's still challenging because you still got to keep eyes and ears on everything going on and movements that are happening in performance. So it's definitely been a unique and different challenge than I've faced before in my career.

Dan Cassidy (07:35)
What's a preferred or typical tech stack that you're working on?

Dov Quint (07:40)
Yeah, mean, so listen, it's there's a lot of experts out there that will tell you this is the tool that's the best for this given thing. I think a lot of that depends. I can tell you some of the tools that we use, things like Rebuy, Okendo, Replo. I'm not I'm assuming the listener should know what some of these do. So maybe I'll give a little one line of Rebuys and upsell and cross sell app. Okendo does reviews, Replo and Fermat or a couple of landing page builder tools.

Onward is a post-purchase insurance and experience, shipping insurance and experience tool. Fondue is a cash back tool that we've used. So, you those are some of the ones that come to mind. There's obviously a bunch more. takes a village. But, you know, some of it also for anybody listening and thinking about this, think one of the mistakes sometimes that merchants make, and I'm guilty of this sometime even myself, is that we get drawn in by the shiny object syndrome.

And we think that, you know, if only I had this thing for my business, it would make it successful. And so you got to be really careful when assessing these things, especially because they cost money and time and in determining like, is this really what you need? Some things are not appropriate until you get to a certain scale. It's just not going to make a difference until you've cracked product market fit. doesn't matter what review app you use, what upsell and cross sell tool you use, right? You need to just understand that there's a need in the market and then the customers responded.

And then for different stages of businesses, for sure these tools can be very helpful and important, but they're not going to make a, you know, the way I would say is they're not going to make a failing business successful. Yeah. I'll drink to that.

Dan Cassidy (09:11)
That's a great

way to look at it. When we're auditing new Shopify brands, the other thing we see is because Shiny Object is for real, right? There's always another squirrel to chase. There's always new tech to add. But that stuff can, in addition to it being costly and sucking up some resources, it can slow down.

Sight speed, right? So a lot of times we're doing an audit, we're seeing all these apps and we'll talk to the brand owner. We're like, well, why are you using this? And most of the time they're like, well, I don't even I didn't know I had it. I didn't know I had that, you know, I installed it, or somebody at my team installed it three years ago, and we stopped using it. And it's still there. And it's always nice just kind of cleaning things out and starting a little bit fresh. So okay, so when you are onboarding a new brand, let's say today is day one, you onboard

Dov Quint (09:38)
I don't know.

Dan Cassidy (09:57)
brand X, whatever that is, what are you looking at in terms of highest priority opportunities to improve that business?

Dov Quint (10:07)
Well, mean, listen, that question can be answered across different functions of the business. know, in my area of storefronts, so the front end of the website, right? You just want to do a deep dive into the funnel. You want to understand what's happening from the time the user arrives on the site all the way through to checkout, if they get that far, right? So, and it's got to be data-driven and it's got to be, I mean, it's always going to be a blend of data and gut type of thing, but really follow the data because that's where a lot of the gems and the secrets are to be found. So start at the top, understand

you know, first, where the traffic is coming from, right? Because the traffic from different sources will behave differently and might require different experiences, different messaging, different content. And so I think the number one most dangerous thing that I see merchants do is they'll look at conversion rate as an overall number and they'll say, my conversion rate is X and that's either bad or good. Somebody told me that that's bad or good, right? But, you know, the underlying data, once you start segmenting by audience, by device type,

by new versus repeat visitor, right? These are really where the nuggets are to be found. So you got to do that. And then you just got to go down the funnel. understand where they're coming from, understand what pages they're landing on. Are they going to the homepage? Are they going to PDPs, collection pages? Are they going to dedicated landing pages? Where are you sending the traffic? And then once you have that segmented, you start to look at individual metrics there, right? So the traditional funnel is, what's my bounce rate, right, of the users who come to a page?

what percentage of them don't take another action before popping and leaving, how many get to the PDP and then view a product page, how many then go and add to cart, how many go from cart to checkout and then checkout to order, right? And so that's like the traditional sort of, know, the funnel that we would look at and try to understand as a starting point what exactly is happening. From there, there's a host of other avenues and directions to take, but that's like the most fundamental way to start assessing the performance of a storefront.

Dan Cassidy (11:53)
And what are you using to track those analytics?

Dov Quint (11:56)
Yeah, so I mean, there's again another example of lot of tools being out there, right? I think GA4 is like the most common, it's free. It's also not the most user friendly, but if you can get that set up on a basic level, and this is also, this is a great example, Dan, of where understanding where you are as a business and what you're trying to accomplish. When you come in day one, if you're trying to create proof of concept for an idea for a product, you don't need a fancy tool that's gonna cost you money, right? You just don't.

You just need GA4 to be properly implemented and to get the views that you need to do things that I just described. And that's it. Right, once you get to other levels and you want to get a little bit more nuance and you want maybe something that's going to be a little user friendly, that's going to make your workflow a little bit more efficient, but you can afford it because you're at a certain level of sales and profit and it's going to, you you can reinvest that different story. But I would say day one GA4, you know, is basically what you want to do is even though it's probably not.

The best tool out there. It's free is free. It's a similar thing with another tool that actually is provided by Microsoft. The tool I don't know if you've ever used called Clarity, which is a heat mapping tool. You familiar with that tool? ⁓

Dan Cassidy (12:57)
No, we've

used a hot jar and others, but not not clarity.

Dov Quint (13:01)
Right, so you got HotChar, you've got a new one that I'm a fan of that we use on our biggest brand called heatmap.com, right? And they're gonna give you more power and more visibility. Heatmap's specific superpowers, revenue-based heatmaps, not click-based, which is a big difference. But clarity is free, right? And so again, depending on who we're talking to here, you're just starting out, clarity is the way to go. It gives you what you need to get from zero to one.

You know, get a little further along, we can have a conversation about some other stuff.

Dan Cassidy (13:31)
Awesome, so okay, so we'll do a little live pop quiz. So let's say you're onboarding a new brand and you discover that the conversion rate specifically for cold traffic is not, let's say you would expect it to have been much higher and you want to improve that. What would be a few steps that you and the team would take?

Dov Quint (13:36)
OK.

Dan Cassidy (13:54)
in order to improve conversion rate for people who have never heard of the brand, they land on the site and they're just not taking the action you want.

Dov Quint (14:03)
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things that we look at, right? We try to understand, again, it starts with where you mentioned cold traffic, but even cold traffic can have differentiation within it, right? I I was looking at some data this morning around the difference in performance from paid search and paid social as an example, right? Paid search is a more qualified level of traffic. It's a proactive search that somebody is doing on Google. Paid social is a little bit more passive. They're being targeted. They're scrolling their feed.

Right. And so even within cold traffic, there's a, you know, top of funnel traffic. There's a difference between where it's coming from and what the, you know, the quality of that traffic. But things, you you want to look at, you want to look at mentioning the heat map. want to understand once somebody arrives, how much time are they spending? How far down the page are they scrolling? Where are they clicking? Those are going to give you hints to determine and try to understand, you know, where there might be areas of opportunity.

Offer is another big thing, Offer, understanding, are you, again, especially for acquisition, what's your offer? What's your intro offer? it a percentage off your first order? Is it cash back, which is an interesting, we did a bunch of stuff recently on this on one of our brands around running a test about that, which had some very fascinating results. Is there a bundle offer? Is there a free gift with purchase offer, right? These are all things that.

depending on the category, depending on the product, depending on your margins, can make all the difference. So we'll play around a little bit with that and come up with some hypotheses around that. again, data is your friend. You can make assumptions, but you want to look at the quantitative data. There's also qualitative stuff like talk to customers, do surveys, either get on the phone with them, or there's opportunities to do surveys on your website.

immediately after post purchase for the people that did buy. We do that on some of our sites as well where we're asking them, you know, what made you buy today? What made you almost not buy today? Right? And you'd be surprised like that customers will actually respond and they'll answer and they'll give you the feedback. And there's a lot of gems that are in there. You know, but you just, just got to ask. And certainly if you incentivize them, then you'll get an even better response rate. But I mean, it's like, you know, if you were, if you were running a retail shop, right.

you would speak to customers, if you were running a good one, where there were human beings walking in and you had somebody on the floor, right? You're having those human interactions. You got to think of, even though obviously there's a lot more traffic that's coming to your website and you're not going to talk to anybody, everybody, you have to talk to some sample size to get some feedback. So think those are some good approaches to try to learn as much as you possibly can to then come up with an action plan for what to do next.

Dan Cassidy (16:29)
I love it when we're working with brands that either, so we work with retailers, brick and mortar retailers that also sell online and sometimes brands that will do in-person events. And we're always saying like how much of an advantage that is because the personal one-on-one interactions that you'll have face-to-face with people are invaluable because they will tell you information that's really hard to get online. Heat mapping, all that stuff is fantastic, but having that face-to-face interaction, you can get some really cool nuggets of wisdom or just calling customers or doing what you're talking about post-

Dov Quint (16:54)
yeah.

Dan Cassidy (16:58)
a survey that's a really smart move.

Dov Quint (17:01)
There's also the mom test, right? Show the thing to your mom or, you know, extended like to friends and family, right? Like, I mean, this is the obsessive part about being an entrepreneur or being a merchant. Just like, you you're with friends and family over the weekend, like hand them your phone, right? Say, okay, here's my site, go through this, I'm watch you, right? Those types of things, right? You just gotta keep sort of scratching and clawing until you figure it out.

Dan Cassidy (17:24)
Love that, the mom test, fantastic. ⁓

Dov Quint (17:27)
I didn't make

that up. That's a real thing. You've heard of that before. I hope. No?

Dan Cassidy (17:30)
Well, the mom test, also like the eight year old test, right? especially for copy, because if you're explaining, let's say a product idea or some new offer and grab the closest eight or 10 year old niece, nephew, son, daughter, whatever, and explain it to them. And if they're like, what are you talking about? It's time to go back to the drawing board and retest.

Dov Quint (17:33)
Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Love that.

Dan Cassidy (17:54)
Cool, okay, so for when you're coming up with new offers, and I wanna hear more about this cash back offer that you just started implement with one of your brands, what does it look like when you are testing those? Like what is the most efficient way to test new offers? How are you doing that?

Dov Quint (18:13)
Yeah, mean, so listen again, this is this we set this up nicely in the beginning. It's really going to depend on your size. So if you get to a certain level where it makes sense to invest in an actual A.B. testing tool, you should do that. Right. Because when you get to a certain traffic level, you know, let's call it it's going to vary. But broadly, I would say, you know, I would say 10000, 20000, 20000 sessions a month, I think probably. But if you ask the guys who actually run the tools, maybe they'll have a different answer.

They may say invest sooner, but you want to actually A-B test. There's a tool that we use called IntelliGems. That's our tool of choice for A-B testing. And you want to run this test the right way. mean, the down and dirty way to do it is what we would call a period over period, right? And you'd basically just take a week where you try to hold all other variables consistent. Macro, you can't control it. You can only control what you control. But micro on your site.

Avoid promo periods, avoid periods where you're launching a new product, avoid periods where you're doing anything that might, you know, meaningfully impact the results and the performance. And for, you know, do one week on one week off type of thing, again, depending on your traffic, might take a little bit longer, but the longer it takes the period over period tests can be harder. And just do one period one way and one period the other way. With the tool like IntelliGens, and there are others out there, that's our tool of choice that we love.

you're going to be able to do this on a 50-50 split test during the same period of time. And that's the best way to do it because it holds constant for the macro things that are going on. So if you've got a new product launch, if you've got a promotion, maybe not if you have a promotion, but if you've got a new product launch or you've got other things happening or anything, if you're very meta-driven as far as the traffic you're driving to your site, meta, as we all know, is a black box. We don't really know what's going on in there all the time. But if you're doing this 50-50,

You know, you're going to be safe as far as all that stuff is concerned too. And you just put them side by side and you try to understand which performs better. Now, you know, then the next question is what metrics do you look at to dictate performance? And so different people have different methodologies for this. Usually, you know, for us, it's a form of gross profit per visitor. You could try to get marketing data in there to get to the contribution margin level.

I think most of the time, gross profit per visitor is going to get you to the extent that you need. If you've got your COGs set up properly in Shopify and you plug into tool like IntelliGems, they're going to give you a nice, beautiful dashboard that you're going to able to look into every day and see how everything is progressing. You'll just do a side-by-side 50-50 test and you'll see which one performs better.

Dan Cassidy (20:41)
Fantastic. Yeah, I like that you gave a few different ideas, one using tech, you know, a tool where you can do A-B testing as sort of more of the, let's say, gold standard. But if it's a brand that's just starting out, you know, take one month if your traffic is low, run one off, right? And then next month, try something different next month. And the challenge is going to be, you know, minimizing any variables and seasonality and macroeconomic stuff. But it's better than not testing anything. OK, so what are some of the offers you've

Dov Quint (21:07)
Yep. yeah.

Dan Cassidy (21:11)
seen that would be part of your, you know, let's say if you're, if you're trying to get a new offer for a brand, what would be some that you've proven with your, brands that are your go-to offers you would test. And I'd also love to hear more about the, the, the cashback offer that you just, that you just have been talking about.

Dov Quint (21:31)
Yeah, yeah. So listen, it's not I mean, I'm this is not anything that we, you know, have invented, right. But I think things that have worked for us and work for many people. Gift of purchase, right, is nice because everybody loves to get something free, especially if it's something where you can convey real value that they'll be getting for free if they spend, buy a certain thing or spend a certain amount of money, get them to a certain level of spend, you know, for for new customers and repeat, you know, a shipping threshold as well.

is definitely something to test. do want to mention also, this is less offer, I would be remiss if I did not mention. And again, this is something you can do with the different methodologies that we use, whether you're big or small, but price testing. Something that's especially, think brands are forced into this, maybe not even to test, but they've just been changing cold turkey because of what's been going on with the tariff situation. And they just can't, they wouldn't survive if they didn't raise prices. But even in times of stability,

you'll start out and build a brand and you'll assume that this is the right price, but you may be leaving money on the table. And funny enough, sometimes there's a lot of room available because you don't realize that your product is conveying a certain value that's a bunch higher than where you are. actually may, pricing it higher may even help conversion. The assumption is, I'm gonna price it higher, it's gonna hurt conversion. may even help sometimes. So I should mention that. That's not technically an offer, but that's pretty important. So gift with purchase, bundling,

buy two, get one free. Again, it's gonna be very specific to what you're selling. It may not make sense in some categories and some products, but for some it makes a ton of sense. Supplements as an example, it's gonna make a ton of sense to do something like that. it really varies. think those are some of the best ones that we've seen. You can also go with the traditional percentage off your first order. That's always something that a lot of people do. The cash back thing that we did was pretty interesting. We could talk about that for a minute here.

So, traditionally on one of our premier brands, a men's apparel brand called Jack Archer, we've had 15 % off your first order, 10 % off your first order. We've, we've volleyed around a couple of different number amounts. By the way, you can also try dollar off for certain products, especially higher value products, dollar off instead of percentage, right? If you sell a thousand dollar mattress, saying a hundred dollars off is going to be way better than saying 10 % off.

Right? So that's obviously, and you know all this stuff, which is why for the people listening and not seeing you're nodding along, I'm sure many others are doing the same. But the cashback was interesting because basically what it enabled us to do, instead of offering a discount on order number one and losing that margin, by offering cashback on a future order, it allowed us to offer a higher number in the pop-up. Right? And so...

What that did was it drove our email and SMS sign up of that onscreen pop up 40 % compared to the percentage off. So even if your site performance ended up being a little bit lower during the period that you were running this A-B test, which, by the way, it was not, and I'll explain that in a second, even if it was, it still could pay off because you're building your list so extensively. that list is, I mean, you gotta understand what the value of that list is, but if you have a strong CRM campaign,

The value of getting 40 % more names on the list, and this is just during the test period, but when you look at it in absolute numbers, we're talking like many, many thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands additional names annually is huge. So it drove the list sign up. It made our first order margin profile look better because we're no longer giving away 15%. And so even though conversion was sort of flat-ish,

to maybe down slightly. Like when you put it all on the wash, was, you know, it's more than makes sense for the brand. And then what happens is that the user in this case gets to decide whether or not they want to have cash back to the brand or they want to use a Visa gift card. Visa gift card in this case is actually worst case scenario because that's straight money out of the bank. But a lot of customers don't even come back to claim anything.

but there's an argument that that's actually not great. You want them to claim the cash back for the brand if you want the LTV component. But there's things you can do to optimize that, send them follow-ups, send them reminders, win-backs if they don't come and claim it initially. And then a certain percentage choose the cash backs for the brand itself, like I said, which is our preferred solution because we gave away zero margin on order number one, we are more than okay giving 25 % on order number two if it gets them to come back again.

You know the deal for many brands, it's not most brands. If you can get them to come back a second time, it increases the odds that you're gonna get them to come back a third and a fourth time. And so that was a very interesting test that we ran and won against our control. we had planned to do this before all the tariff stuff, but especially in a post tariff world, it's incredibly helpful from a margin perspective. So that was a very interesting one.

Dan Cassidy (26:14)
I love that you're getting super creative with it because I kind of, I love it but I hate it that the 10 or 15 % opt-in offer just always works. And for us, it's a typical, if we're building a new offer for a brand, let's say they're just starting out and the de facto is 10 or 15 % off because we just kind of know it's gonna work.

And then we can run that for a bit, gather some data and then start getting a little bit more creative. But you know, gifting bundles, all that stuff is great. But I love the cash back thing, especially with, I mean, 40 % is pretty ridiculous. Yep. Nice. So you mentioned tariffs. this is, we're in, so today's May 16th, 2025. It's been a bit of a roller coaster. What are you guys doing?

Dov Quint (26:50)
Yeah, it was huge.

Dan Cassidy (27:04)
to I guess minimize any cost impact and potentially take advantage of where we're at with everything. How are you guys managing that?

Dov Quint (27:13)
Yeah, so listen, mean, everybody, like we referenced a couple of minutes ago, everybody's mind, I think, initially goes to got to raise prices, right? Got to raise them immediately. And certainly that's an approach. It's one that we have not done yet. I mean, you know, as a general rule, again, tariffs are no tariffs. think we've we've we've stuck to this and I think it's Good advice for any brand. You should be testing your price a couple of times a year, in my opinion. You know, spread it out every six months or whatever, because markets move and

things change, macro environment changes, economy changes, consumer mindset and confidence changes, right? And so, I think sometimes people are too, very, and I get it, it's nice to keep the consumer in mind, but people are worried oftentimes, well, but they're going to have plotted at this and then they're going to see it at that and they're going to complain. I think sometimes we're a little too close to those things. And again, especially if you're building a larger business and there's a lot of traffic, right? There's just customer...

are not paying that close attention to certain things like that. In some businesses, it may certainly apply that to be the case, but I think sometimes we overthink that piece of it. So certainly price testing your products if you're not going to just raise the prices immediately. Obviously, the supply chain, right? mean, you know, the problem is that that takes longer. It's not, you I could just go to my Shopify admin and change my prices in five minutes. I can't change my supply chain in five minutes, unfortunately.

That's a little bit of a longer haul, but I think for brands that were thinking ahead and that had the ability to do so, they've been on this already because they knew something like this was potentially in the offing and it's always good to diversify anyway. But obviously, your supply chain. We've been doing some of that as well. Then there are things you can do on the storefront as well that I think are really smart.

you know, price, you know, besides for changing prices, right, that can help offset some of these things too. So I just mentioned the cash back as an example. There's another tool that we use, right, because in the cash back example, you're going to benefit by winning some of the margin back. So if I don't want to raise prices, but I want to win some of my profit back, right, if I can do this without hurting my conversion on my website, right, then I'm winning back some of the margin. So instead of making it worse for the consumer on the price side, this is a different tactic. Another tactic that,

that we've used and listen, everybody's got their own opinions. I can only speak to what works and what's been tested for us. The post purchase shipping insurance category, right? So this is a hotly debated topic. A lot of brands think it feels scammy and they don't wanna do it. And I have felt similarly at points in my career of overseeing and running these stores over the last couple of years.

The tool that we're using right now, I think I love because it takes a totally different approach to this and it's more of a full experience post purchase as opposed to just shipping insurance. so this company Onward, they basically pack more value into the premium and you're seeing a lot of copycats doing this now too. They were one of the first and we've been with them for a while now of packing in a satisfaction guarantee and a free returns.

and even a cash back component to that premium as well. And so, you know, when you're checking out, of paying a couple dollars on top of your cart for just shipping insurance, you're getting all these other benefits. It's almost like the way I think about it, it's akin to like Amazon Prime for like an individual D2C order.

Right, like I'm paying, you know pay Amazon, it's not exactly the same, but I think the analogy sticks, you're paying Amazon Prime, I don't need to know, it's not what it cost when I first signed up, I don't even know what it cost anywhere, so I think it's like 140 bucks now, right? And you're getting all the benefits, the two day shipping, and all the benefits that you get with it. So here you're paying $3, whatever it is, but you're getting all these benefits that, you know, back in the D2C heyday, when everybody was funded and it was acquisition at all costs, these were things that you would get.

you know, just for, just for, these were costs of doing business things as a merchant and that the customer was getting them for free, quote unquote. As things have changed, I think that the model's evolved and now you have to, you know, you're basically paying a couple of dollars for these things, but I think it's well worth it because, you know, the benefit is truly there. So again, another example to get some more money, more money in your pocket, right, from a regular order. And it's a traditional insurance underwriting type of thing, right? Like, you know, some of it's going to have to go.

towards paying for the lost items or for the returns and things like that. But you're going to make some extra money that way. There are also post purchase solutions on the thank you page. I'm sure you're familiar with these, the Rocks of the world, the Discos of the world, right? Where you can earn a couple extra dollars. There's no monthly SaaS fee. Again, brands will say, but I don't like that experience. I have a higher end experience.

Okay, you can continue to be stubborn and stick to your guns, but you're leaving money on the table. And it's another area where I think we overthink these things too much, right? I think the customer doesn't care all the time or not as many of the customers care as much as we think they do. And when it's life or death with your brand, you got to make some compromises. And so those are some tactics that I think have worked for us to get some extra money on the table for any margin that we're losing with.

tariffs.

Dan Cassidy (32:09)
Love the insights there. Yeah, to your point, I think in general as humans, we're all wrapped up in our own little worlds and we're focused on ourselves mostly, right? Even if we're caring about other people and we're good natured people and we're generous, we still most of our day we're just wrapped up in our own little mind. And so when brands are thinking about, know, there's a tiny little piece of copy, you know, three scrolls down on welcome email number four, it's like,

Nobody cares. What really matters is what's the offer and what is the overall vibe and feel? Is the frequency enough? It's not these tiny little things that most people aren't gonna recognize or even realize what's happening. So you mentioned Onward as the post purchase kind of insurance and satisfaction app. What are you using for price testing? Are you just changing price in Shopify or using tech to track everything?

Dov Quint (32:59)
Not Intel, IntelliGems,

IntelliGems also. Yep. That's actually what they were built for initially. They've expanded the product since to be able to test landing pages and on-site edits. But yeah, that's their bread and butter.

Dan Cassidy (33:03)
Awesome, awesome.

Gotcha. What are you using AI for right now?

Dov Quint (33:15)
Not enough. For me, this is like a passion project to try to really understand as much as I possibly can how to use this to our benefit. I think there are applications across the board, whether it's marketing creative, whether it's landing page builders, whether it's understanding, like we discussed earlier, customer feedback through surveys or reviews. These things, they take time, right? And like traditionally you'd have an analyst who would

go through them and try to pick out the pieces of data right now. I can upload all my reviews to, you know, chat GPT and say, you know, identify the trends and write five potential headlines for ad copy for me based on the things that customers love the most about my product. Right? These are huge game changers. So I haven't cracked it completely. You know, for anybody listening, if anybody's got some tips and tricks, I'd love to hear some of them. But this is where it's going, right? I mean, this is where this is all headed.

I think Shopify has clearly said that this is where they're headed as a company, you know, on a practical level. I don't know if you've played around with Sidekick, which is their own internal tool, like within your Shopify admin. That's pretty cool and helpful and getting better every day. You know, so it's just, it's all about, I mean, it's overwhelming, I got to say, because there's just so much out there and so many applications. But I think anybody not playing around, and I think you just got to do it by learning. think anybody not playing around is going to be left behind.

And really, mean, this is another way to build alpha in your merchant, in your brand, excuse me. Again, like we talked about ways to offset tariffs. Another way is you gotta look at your overhead and you gotta look at your team. And I'm not in the business of trying to, for anybody to lose their job. There's two ways to think about this. So one way is, nobody loses their job, but the team needs to start using AI.

more often to make them more effective and more efficient and that will make the business better. The other way is, mean, whether we like it or whether we don't like it, another way is just to say, I have this 50, 60, $70,000 a year person that is doing these very manual tasks, right? And I can automate this with AI and save a bunch of that money. Again, don't like hearing anybody losing jobs, but I think broadly AI, I'm not an expert on this stuff, but when I've read from

A lot of people that are, think broadly it's not gonna result in a lot of job loss. There's actually gonna be job creation. But on the very micro level of how to use this as a Shopify merchant, I think that that's potentially one outcome that may happen.

Dan Cassidy (35:44)
Whenever I get overwhelmed with AI, I will actually consult my good friend, Chachi VT, and literally just use it and say, I'm overwhelmed with how to use this right now for X, and Z. Can you advise, give me a plan? How should I be thinking about this? What are the opportunities? And then it just, boom, and I'm like, look at that. We've gone meta and using AI to help me use AI more effectively. It's pretty cool.

Dov Quint (36:04)
Right, right.

Are you using any, besides for ChatGPT, are there any tools that you're using that you've found to be very helpful?

Dan Cassidy (36:12)
So for image creation, ad creation, there's a whole bunch out there. Video a little bit, but I still think it's a little bit early. The biggest way we are using it, nearly everything copy related. We are using it a ton for strategy. We are using it a ton for research, although we have to double, with everything we have to double check, but it's getting better and better. mean, know, six months ago, if I was gonna ask,

but chat GBT a question I was gonna verify very heavily. And now it's like, it's 99.5 % of the way there. We started using it for legal contracts. And that's been very surprising with how amazing that is. All the...

Dov Quint (36:54)
great example, mean,

used to pay a lawyer how much money to write up a contract, Or to review a contract from somebody else, take a look at this and tell me what I need to be looking for, right?

Dan Cassidy (36:59)
Mm-hmm.

So

exactly, so there was one last week we reviewing and ChatGBT gave a very convincing argument about this one direction to go in and I was basically like, well, what about this? And then it kind of reversed paths very quickly. So that's where it's, you know, it's kind like what you're talking about where.

At this point, we're still running the show and we need to use AI for efficiency gains and to increase output per person. You know, at some point it's gonna, well, it's continuing to impress me and surprise me and get better and better overall. So yeah, I'm just trying to stay ahead of it. But for all those things, and I think a year from now, the answer will be very different. Like all of this stuff plus.

all image creation, all video edits and lots of video content creation. So we're thinking about this in a couple of ways. One is how can we use it so we can be as efficient as possible? But two, how can we also scale the unscalable human element of things so we can go, we'd be ready kind of on the other side. Cause at some point like people are going to be sick of the robots. And so there's going be that human connection. Awesome. Well, let's shift gears a little bit. First of all, I'll say,

Blue Moon is such a good beer. It's so tasty. I'm sipping on this all episode and I forgot how delicious this beer is. thanks so much for the recommendation. Such a solid choice. Let's also shift gears in topics. So let's talk about the Israel Tech Mission. What is it and how did you get involved?

Dov Quint (38:16)
You're enjoying it still? Yeah.

Yeah, so listen, mean, after October 7th, you know, somebody who has lived in Israel and has a lot of friends and family that are there and it's a place that means a lot to me. You know, it's obviously been somewhat of a dark, a very dark time for the country and our people. you know, it's sitting in the US, it's been hard to figure out ways to help. I think in the beginning,

You know, it's send money, send, you know, send supplies and we do all those things and try to help out. But for me, I tried to personalize this a bit and thought about ways that I contribute in a different way. And it's something unique and special to me. so, you know, for me, it's like, it's a blend of personal and professional passion. This e-commerce mission that I've been, I've had in my head for longer than I'd really been willing to admit. It's probably, the idea is over a year old and it's, it's, it's, it's,

challenges and twists and turns along the way. But basically the concept is, there is a nice and growing, continually growing community, specifically in the software space in our world, in our Shopify e-commerce world of SaaS tools that have been built there, the Yacht-Pose of the world, Triple Whale has a big group there.

A number of other tools that are there that are building really cool stuff and building a community. There's even a big brand side community that's starting to get going now as well. And so I thought to myself, you know, how do I how do I blend these two things together to bring a group of people from the community that I'm a part of here in the US from a business perspective over to Israel where they can, you know, it can serve two roles. We can try to facilitate these relationships on a business level, but also to bring people.

to Israel that maybe have never been or haven't been in a very long time that want to be there on the ground, learning, meeting people, understanding the country and the people in real life and not from behind the screen and on some social platform where God knows what the algorithm is telling them. so, I've been thinking this up for a while. I have a lot of people that I'm friends with and have done business with there.

I then I basically met Israel Tech Mission. So Israel Tech Mission, and I sort of hooked up with them and partnered with them. And what they've been doing very soon after October 7th, led by a guy named David Siegel, who is former CEO of Meetup.com. He basically started this organization a couple months after October 7th, specifically to bring different business groups over there for the same idea that I'm talking about, but in different tracks. So they've brought a...

you know, a real estate group, a legal group, they're doing a women's trip, they've done a post exit founder trip, all these different types of business tracks to bring them there to meet with high level execs, businesses, government officials. And so they've got like the logistics down. And so I don't have to worry as much about all those things, which would have taken a lot of my time. And so I've really focused on trying to make the connections within our community to identify the right people who are interested in and want to attend. And so, yeah, we've got

a great growing group of e-comm executives, operators, investors, some agency folks that are coming, like yourself, that are coming in September that were really excited for September 14th to 18th. And yeah, I mean, it's going to be four jam-packed days of meeting with companies, going down south to one of the two kibbutz that was affected by October 7th, going to visit some soldiers on an Air Force base, going to the NOVA Festival site.

day in Jerusalem, a couple days in Tel Aviv, but it's going to be a pretty special and I dare I say life-changing experience. least that's what folks that have been on previous trips with Israel Tech Mission have said. So yeah, it's going to be pretty special and I'm very excited for it.

Dan Cassidy (41:55)
And there's some heavy hitters that are gonna be part of the group as well and from an e-commerce standpoint.

Dov Quint (42:00)
yeah, so Jason Panzer, who's the president of Hexclad, he's our lead guest on the trip. Somebody who's very passionate about what's going on. yeah, and so some other executives from other companies, the list is still growing. We've got executives from Goat Foods, from Overtime, from, like I said, yourself, a couple other agencies going, and it's a growing group. So anybody that's interested, we'd love to talk to you and love to have you join us on the trip.

Dan Cassidy (42:25)
So what's the best way for anybody listening or watching who is interested? What's the best way for them to get in touch?

Dov Quint (42:31)
Yeah, so you can either contact me directly. can. There is a link to a form or an application which I don't know if we can maybe share in the show notes afterwards. I'm not going to stare here because it's not going to be easy to type down. It's not an easy that easy to remember, but it's yeah, I mean, reach out to me. Reach out to Dan. Look up my page on LinkedIn. I've done a bunch of posts on my profile about it and you'll be able to see exactly what you need to know to get in touch and find out more.

Dan Cassidy (42:58)
Fantastic. Well, I'll give the personal the personal note. So I connected with Dove months ago when I first discovered this trip and the group is amazing. The itinerary is just jam packed with looks to be an incredible experience from a personal standpoint, a professional standpoint. So everybody in the group.

really good people, smart, ambitious people. It just seems like it's gonna be an incredible experience. And the fact that there are still sounds like a few spots open is pretty amazing. So yeah, the trip is mid September. So if anybody's interested, we will put it in the show notes so that anybody interested can reach out and learn if they would be a fit if there are still spots open. Okay, so let's go through the speed round. We're gonna go through a few questions each answer about 30 seconds or less. So kind of what pops up.

So what is one of your most recommended books?

Dov Quint (43:53)
So there's a book, I mean, there's, I have a nice bookshelf and library behind me. So I've got a lot of choices. It really depends what you're looking for, but I'll just share one recently that I, maybe share one or two. One recently that I've really enjoyed is a book called The Five Types of Wealth by a guy named Saheel Bloom. I don't know if you've come across that one. Yeah, it just talks about, they are, let's see if my memory serves correct, time, social, mental, physical, and financial, right? And these are the five areas of your life to really

Everybody thinks of wealth and think about money, right? But there are other types of wealth in these other areas and to really live an enriched, healthy and wealthy life, you need to sort of focus on these five areas. a big fan of his. I've subscribed to his newsletter for a number of years now. And this is the book that he recently came out with, which I've really enjoyed. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the Nike founder, is a classic that I really enjoyed. mean, like for a brand that so many of us know and are familiar with and are likely customers of.

understand the history and the evolution and where it started and where it is today like a true globally iconic brand is just very, very inspiring. So those are two that come to mind. on the next one, we can go through some more in other categories, but those are two that come to mind.

Dan Cassidy (45:02)
What's an under-the-radar product or brand you have used and like but most people don't know about?

Dov Quint (45:08)
That's a good one. there is a brand called, and this may surprise some folks because I don't, know, it's, I'll just speak more to the brilliance of, think, the brand. don't know personally, you know, I think it's more female oriented and it's a gift that I bought for my wife, but I just love this business and I think the founder is brilliant. It's a company named Jolie. It's a shower head. Familiar with it? Yeah.

So there's a guy named Ryan Babenzian, who's a great entrepreneur who started a sneakers company previously called Greats. And just, I love the concept because just everything is so well thought out and it's a beautifully designed product. It's a totally differentiated product. It's basically a shower head that filters your water. And his top of funnel capture was brilliant. Do know what he did or what he does for the top of funnel capture? Are familiar with this?

Dan Cassidy (45:55)
It's been a few months that I checked it out. What's the offer?

Dov Quint (45:58)
So he basically, well, it's not so much to offer. This is another unique, we can answer our earlier question. He basically, it has nothing to do with the product or a discount itself. It is a free water report for your local area because he basically tapped into like the EPA. EPA has like an API, say that five times fast, EPA API. The EPA has an API for water health or levels based on zip code.

you enter your zip code and it sends you a water report. And oftentimes that water report is not very good and not very complimentary. And so, boom, you're hooked. I'm gonna get this thing because it affects my skin, it affects my hair. Again, as a male, I'm probably not the target audience, but I did buy it for my wife. And again, it's a functional product. like just the whole experience from top to bottom was so elevated, the delivery, the box, the installation instructions, just like A plus. then,

like any econ business, it's got a great subscription model because you need to buy a new filter every quarter or whatever. So just, I mean, just nails it on every level. And an example of a guy who's built a business very quickly with not a lot of people. I think he grew the business, if I remember correctly, to 50 million with less than five people. So just A plus, amazing, inspirational.

Dan Cassidy (47:11)
I was a fan of greats. I've got a couple pairs of their shoes that were incredibly well made. So did your wife notice a difference with the filter in place?

Dov Quint (47:19)
Yeah,

she's been definitely happy and complimentary of it and I haven't asked her recently, I think we're still ordering the filter, so if that's any indication. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (47:26)
Gotcha. Great. Great.

Nice. All right. Tell me about your favorite shopping experience online or offline.

Dov Quint (47:34)
am I allowed to say our own brand, Jack Archer? A little personal plug there. yeah, listen, think there's a lot of great experiences out there. I would be doing a disservice if I didn't mention our own brand. I think for our audience, Jack Archer is a great example of knowing your audience and knowing

keep it simple, right? It's a male audience, Not to be sexist or anything, but men are a little bit more, you know, it's a different type of audience and a different type of methodology to attract them and to convert them and to convince them, right? And we've got a lot of cheeky advertising that's fun and differentiated and how we speak to our audience and get them, you know, to stop the scroll. And then when they get on the site, like very straightforward, not complicated funnel tells you what you need to know. It talks about size and fit.

makes the buying experience really, really simple and straightforward. So I know that's a little bit of a cop out, but I'm going to go with Jack Archer if that's all right.

Dan Cassidy (48:25)
Not at all, think you should say that. nice. What's one thing in life you do better than most people, and how do you do it?

Dov Quint (48:28)
Good.

I think just like the ability to sort of like zoom in and zoom out on a situation and understand like high level strategy as well, the macro and the micro. I think there are certain people that are really good at one or the other, right? And I think it's a challenge to be able to shift between different, especially for a Shopify merchant, right? We talked about all these things that we've talked about during this conversation, right? It's missed the forest for the trees type of thing, right?

I think being able to like navigate and switch between both of those views and keep them both in mind at the same time in any facet area of the business to be able to maintain the long term view while also prioritizing the short term impact I think is a necessary thing for a Shopify merchant. And I think personally it's definitely something that I pride myself on being able to do.

Dan Cassidy (49:16)
Fantastic. Where can people connect with you to learn more?

Dov Quint (49:19)
LinkedIn, Twitter, I try to stay pretty active on both those places. I'll say this piece as well for folks, because for me, this was a personal experience about engaging on those platforms. Dan, know you engage on those platforms. You could probably speak to this too. But for a long time, I think I was hesitant because I was worried about how I would come off, how I would look or how people would interpret. I think over time, I've realized

people don't care as much as you think they do. Similar to what you were saying about dealing with your brand. But like anything in life, it's a balance, right? But I can just say that I have found extreme value. I think this relationship perhaps came through that. think the other relationships that I've acquired in this space. so twofold. Number one, if you're looking to connect with other folks and learn and engage, it's amazing what it can do to build your network. And I think also just even if you don't wanna

explicitly connect with people if you're a little bit more close, just the knowledge and the education that exists on these platforms. If you're building is just like huge and has been a big part of how I've grown as well in my knowledge of the space.

Dan Cassidy (50:23)
Fantastic tip and I would agree wholeheartedly from my perspective. Dov, thank you so much for sharing all of your insights in managing over 45 plus Shopify stores, your experience and opportunity that you're sharing with the Israel Tech Mission and the upcoming trip in September for e-commerce folks and the beer recommendation for Blue Moon bringing me back. I love this beer and thanks so much for joining us on the Shopify happy hour.

Dov Quint (50:46)
Thanks for having me Dan, cheers.

Dan Cassidy (50:47)
Cheers, cheers.