Print on Demand's Real Playbook w/ David Hooker

Shop: The Sales Channel You Shouldn't Ignore

"If I don't see that purple button at checkout, bye-bye." That's what Shop's buyers tell Kenny Cohen, and it's a clue to why Shop has quietly become one of the most valuable channels a Shopify merchant has. Kenny runs product for Shop, and in this spring edition he walks Kurt through three updates. Agentic Shop Search now understands a buyer's taste from their real purchase history, not generic web guesses. Posts let you auto cross-post your Instagram reels into a feed where people actually came to shop. And a new retail integration lets buyers check local inventory and start a return in the app to finish it in store. The throughline: Shop already has hundreds of millions of buyers interacting with your brand for free, mostly through order tracking. The merchants who win are the ones who show up with Posts and a dialed-in storefront instead of leaving that attention on the table. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and moregetswym.com/kurt Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnelszipify.com/KURT LINKS * Shop: shop.app * Set up Posts: Shopify Admin > Shop sales channel > Posts tab * Check your search placement: Shopify Admin > Agentic sales channel * Sign in with Shop on the Catalog API (for developers) WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

Inside Shopify's "Everywhere" Edition | Spring 2026

VP of Product Vanessa Lee joins Kurt to break down the 2026 "Everywhere" edition and the years of quiet groundwork behind it: taxonomy, attributes, clustering, and a universal product identifier that now power a search catalog of billions of products. The payoff for merchants is strange and good. You're already enrolled in agentic commerce by default. One real store is doing $60K a month through it. Inside this episode: why the catalog plus UCP makes every Shopify store callable by any AI app, how to use Agentic Storefronts to see exactly where you rank and what data to fix, and why Vanessa says not to sleep on Shopify retail in 2026. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more getswym.com/kurt [https://getswym.com/kurt] Ecommerce Alley — The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale Special offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt [https://ecommercealley.com/kurt] Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT [https://zipify.com/KURT] LINKS * Shopify Spring 2026 "Everywhere" Edition: shopify.com/editions/spring2026 * What is Shopify Catalog (merchant explainer): shopify.com/blog/what-is-shopify-catalog * Shopify Engineering blog, product taxonomy at scale: shopify.engineering/product-taxonomy-at-scale * Shopify Engineering blog, catalog clustering: shopify.engineering/catalog-clustering * Shopify Catalog API + dev dashboard: shopify.dev * Agentic Storefronts: in your Shopify admin sales channels * Vanessa Lee on X: x.com/vlaurenlee WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

How We Built MKC's Montana Landing Page

Also on YouTube [https://youtu.be/lj0TBPdqkL4] Montana Knife Company was finally releasing its first folding knife, a $390 piece their fans had been begging for, and they wanted an announcement page worthy of the moment. Apple-style scroll animations. Exploding diagrams. Every element on screen doing something. The catch: you couldn't buy anything from it. The entire page existed to introduce the new product, build the hype, and capture emails before the drop. Then it had to survive launch day. Paul Reda walks through the build that crashed Safari before it sold out in minutes: why video was the obvious answer and the wrong one, how a canvas-based flipbook moved 40MB without killing phones, where "French developer Claude" wrote every line of GSAP, and the one rule that made it all possible. Content leads design, or you don't get the dinner. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more getswym.com/kurt [https://getswym.com/kurt] Ecommerce Alley — The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale Special offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt [https://ecommercealley.com/kurt] Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT [https://zipify.com/KURT] LINKS * Montana Knife Company: montanaknifecompany.com * The Montana (the folding knife landing page): montanaknifecompany.com * GSAP (animation library): gsap.com * Prior MKC episodes with Brandon [Horejsi]: search the feed for Montana Knife Company WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

Top 1% of Shopify. 8 Figures. Profit in Year 6.

Also available on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t5O_wB5vhw] "It was a mind and body brokenness. I'll just say like depression." By 39, Chris Lang was running 10 businesses and falling apart. He killed most of them and bet everything on Fresh Chile, his bootstrapped Shopify chili brand from Hatch, New Mexico. It cracked the top 1% of Shopify and 8 figures in revenue, but didn't turn a profit until Q1 of year six. Inside: why he started publishing his real ROAS on LinkedIn when the numbers were ugly, the 80% Meta cut that finally flipped him profitable, and how a 250K-follower organic community out-engages Heinz, Tabasco, and Sriracha combined. SPONSORS Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more getswym.com/kurt [https://getswym.com/kurt] Ecommerce Alley - The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale Special Offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT [https://zipify.com/KURT] LINKS * Fresh Chile: https://freshchileco.com/ [https://freshchileco.com/] * Chris Lang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislangsocial/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislangsocial/] * Chris Lang on X: https://x.com/chrislangsocial [https://x.com/chrislangsocial] WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

He Reviewed 500 Deals Before Buying One Shopify App

"You would probably prefer to take money from Tony Soprano." Jeremy Horowitz has spent a decade in the Shopify ecosystem, scaled brands at Gorgias, and now runs a PE fund that's reviewed nearly 500 deals. He acquired a WhatsApp marketing app called Coco AI and he's still hunting for his next Shopify brand in the $10-100M range. We get into what actually makes a business sellable (and what kills a deal instantly), how earnouts and seller notes really work, why DTC as we knew it is dead, and his scorching take on why Shopify Capital loans are worse than credit card debt at 40% effective interest. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Ecommerce Alley - Is It Your Ads Or Is Meta Having A Bad Day? Check it at  ecommercealley.com/bad Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS * Jeremy Horowitz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyhorowitz1/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyhorowitz1/] * Coco AI (WhatsApp Marketing for Shopify): https://my-coco.ai/ [https://my-coco.ai/] WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.