Leaders on Shopify with John Readman

Recent episodes

1. How FireBelly's Mary-Anne Danarzo builds brands that scale on Shopify

   Jul 30, 202639 min

   Mary-Anne Danarzo, founder of FireBelly, talks about building brands from the ground up, and what it actually takes to scale them. Mary-Anne shares how a career that started in mobile phone accessories sales led to an agency that's helped brands like Color Wow scale on Shopify all the way to a L'Oreal acquisition, including a Magento-to-Shopify migration that doubled their conversion rate overnight. In this episode, we talk about why nobody actually owns conversion rate inside most businesses, the difference between quantitative data and getting on the phone to real customers, and Mary-Anne's approach to building "brand brains". They also cover the AI tools reshaping ecommerce creative, why Shopify keeps winning against platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud for fast-scaling brands, and what medium-to-large brands get wrong when they hesitate to migrate.

2. Scaling a Shopify brand from £1M to £30M: what actually works with Quickfire Digital

   Jun 24, 202642 min

   What has eight years of working with scaling ecommerce brands taught Nathan Lomax? In this episode the co-founder of Shopify Platinum agency Quickfire Digital, sits down with John Readman to talk about the patterns he sees repeated over again on Shopify. From bot traffic skewing metrics and creating the illusion of a conversion problem, to brands obsessively acquiring new customers while ignoring the ones they already have, Nate is candid about where DTC brands go wrong between £1M and £30M. He also talks about decision paralysis, the temptation to in-house too early, and why some of the fastest-growing brands he's seen simply stopped procrastinating. The episode also covers Quickfire's own journey, from doing social media for a local chip shop to becoming one of a handful of Shopify Platinum agencies in the world, working with Tala, Reebok, Juicy Couture, Beaver Town, and Wrexham FC. Plus: honest takes on headless builds, the AI noise versus AI reality gap, agentic commerce, and how to know when a client relationship isn't working for either side.

3. How Smol scaled to £45M and why they left Shopify to do it

   Jun 1, 202648 min

   When do you know it's time to leave your ecommerce platform? Neil Campbell, Chief Growth Officer at Smol, has been through it. His direct-to-consumer cleaning brand built a £45M business on Shopify, with every customer on subscription, starting with a free trial, and then made the call to leave Shopify. In this conversation with John Readman, Neil breaks down the full Smol journey, from early days on Shopify with Recharge as the subscription engine, through to the point where they were building so much custom development around and beyond Shopify that leaving started to make more sense than staying. He shares the moment Shopify's new checkout rollout forced the decision, why being half-in on a platform is often the hardest place to be, and what brands considering the same move need to think about before they take the leap.

4. Why every brand is moving to Shopify and what comes next

   Jun 1, 202643 min

   Why are brands that went headless or bespoke quietly migrating back to Shopify? Liam Quinn, Director of Innovation at Visualsoft, one of Europe's largest Shopify partners, has watched the platform go from startup tool to enterprise default. In this episode, John and LIam get into the real cost comparison of Shopify versus Magento, Salesforce, and the other legacy platforms, including why brands that chose the headless or bespoke route are quietly migrating back. Liam shares what a £5,000 monthly agency retainer used to buy versus what it buys now and what the app ecosystem actually looks like for brands trying to scale past five million.

5. He sold 1.7 million pairs of shoes online last year, here's what he wishes he'd known sooner

   Apr 21, 202632 min

   How do you grow an online shoe business to £65 million and what nearly breaks along the way? Stuart Paver has been selling footwear online since 1999, making him one of Europe's earliest ecommerce pioneers. In this episode he gets honest about the hidden costs of scaling online retail, why warehousing becomes your biggest headache, how AI is already transforming product photography, and what 25 years in the game tells you about surviving whatever comes next.

6. The Shopify secret nobody talks about (and why AI could cost you 4% of every sale)

   Apr 21, 202647 min

   The infrastructure secrets behind scaling stores, why AI just crossed a critical quality threshold, and the hidden 4% cost lurking inside the future of ecommerce. Keith Matthews, founder of one of Ireland's leading Shopify Plus agencies, joins John Readman to reveal the infrastructure secrets behind scaling stores, why AI just crossed a critical quality threshold, and the hidden 4% cost lurking inside the future of ecommerce.