By Maria Derchi
This week, eCommerce legends of renowned brands like Gilt, Bonobos, Glow Recipe and Hims & Hers came together in Miami for OpenStore’s inaugural OpenStore Live event. In attendance were 55 Shopify merchants representing over $75 million in annual revenue from across North America. Refresh Miami had a front row seat to the action-packed summit to bring you some key takeaways.
The day kicked off with a panel of three eCommerce business owners discussing the path from ‘Startup to Exit’. What they shared:
- LOOK FOR PAIN POINTS: Miguel Facusse, founder of Jack Archer (which sold to OpenStore in 2021), originally came up with the business idea by reading Reddit threads. He searched on ‘male fashion advice’, then filtered by ‘I hate it when’ to discover what the biggest pain points were. A common pain point was consistency so he set out to create a product that would outperform competitors on this basis of quality.
- UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMER PERSONA: When deciding on a name for his brand, Facusse favored ‘Apparel Engineer’ over ‘Jack Archer’, however by using a tool called SquadHelp, he discovered that the latter tested better with his target market and so Jack Archer was born.
- BUILD STRONG SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIPS: Ryan Barr, founder of WP Standard and OpenStore Drive customer, credited a big part of his success to building strong supplier relationships that led to his ability to negotiate lower order minimums and have payment terms extended to his business.
- FOCUS ON YOUR BEST SELLERS: Brendan Brosnan, founder of Yogaste, hyper-focused on his 10 best SKU’s to better understand what his customers loved about them and optimized the business around that.
The crowd then heard from Jack Abraham, founder of Atomic, on his entrepreneurial career path, before welcoming Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, co-founder of Gilt and GlamSquad, to the stage. Her advice for business owners in the room? Find places where you might have an unfair advantage and leverage your network and experience.
Given the audience, it’s no surprise that OpenStore tapped Kaz Nejatian, Shopify’s COO & VP of Product, for a fireside chat with Keith Rabois, founder and CEO of OpenStore. The discussion highlighted Shopify’s innovative culture (“Shopify deliberately zigs when most companies zag”) and their openness to making mistakes along the way (“We value being wrong so we can learn”).
Hilary Coles, co-founder of Hims & Hers, and Sarah Lee, founder of Glow Recipe, both stressed the importance of creating native, “scroll-stopping content” for each platform in your marketing stack and making it distinctly your brand. Their key takeaways for entrepreneurs: “Learn to do things yourself… get your hands dirty”, which helps you speak the same language as your team members, Lee says, while Coles recommends protecting the part of you that says How hard can it be?
Attendees also joined breakout sessions throughout the day covering topics such as how to optimize user journeys, influencer marketing success stories, building authentic brands and staying relevant to customers. Biggest takeaway for Lester Mapp, attendee and Shopify business owner of Doral-based Coffee & Motivation Company: “The things you struggle with at home by yourself – you’re not alone.”
Bringing the afternoon to a close was a fireside chat between Rabois and Andy Dunn, co-founder of Bonobos [pictured at top of post]. Dunn shared insights from the early days of growing the business (“When you think about Net Promoter Score, you can get another 20-30 points by having strong customer service”), raising $128M in venture capital (“At the time, it felt like it was required to figure it all out. But what we’re learning now, it’s not the right way to do it anymore”), what he’s up to now (kidswear brand Monica & Andy, which he launched with his sister, and Pie, a app focused on curing the loneliness epidemic by making it easier for you to spend time with your friends and friends of friends), and his thoughts on building Bonobos in New York before it was considered a strong tech hub (“The company should be based where the founder wants to live”).
But the most powerful part of the conversation centered around the importance of mental health. Dunn, who was originally diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his 20s but largely ignored the diagnosis, described a manic episode he experienced outside his New York City apartment in 2016, where he thought he was a combination of the President of the United States and Batman. Unfortunately the night ended in his arrest for the assault of his then-girlfriend (now wife), Manuela, and her mother.
Thankfully, this episode led to him coming to terms with his diagnosis and getting the help he needed. He details his struggles with bipolar disorder in his book, Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind, a book all attendees went home with.
After the event, Refresh caught up with Frank Kosarek, Head of Sourcing at OpenStore, to get his thoughts on how the day went. “I was thrilled to see the turnout at OpenStore Live. Our goal is to give back to the Shopify community however we can, and we were excited to do so in sunny Miami with an all-star roster of speakers and attendees.” Given the success, Kosarek expects to host many more OpenStore Live events in the future, although no specific timeline has been set.
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- Cue the kombucha: OpenStore’s recently expanded office is oh-so-Miami
- We’ve got the data: Refresh Miami unveils Miami Tech Dashboard
- Traba raises $22M led by Founders Fund; more expansion on the way
- VC slowdown rocked South Florida in Q3, but see which 10 deals bucked the trend
