How I Use My Own Shopify Experience To Help Plus Merchants Grow

William Jenkins
Sep 2, 2018 · 10 min read

This November will be my first “Shopiversary”, meaning that I started working for Shopify Plus exactly one year ago. It will also be the third birthday of my side hustle, Mr. Jenks, where I sell luxury men’s accessories through my Shopify site.

As a Merchant Success Manager, it’s my responsibility to help Shopify Plus merchants reach their full potential on the platform. I’ve been amazed by how much my own merchant experience has made me a better Merchant Success Manager. I’ve been able to share first-hand experience with merchants and help them avoid the mistakes I made. My Shopify journey also means I can understand their concerns, as well as help them navigate obstacles.

In this article, I’m going to share my experience as someone who’s worked on both sides. Let me take you through my journey as the founder of a Shopify store and show you how my own merchant experience has allowed me to help other high-growth merchants evolve. If you’re a merchant, Shopify worker, or on both sides like myself, let me know how your e-commerce journey has affected the way you do business.

“The two key aspects of a business are a great product and a great way of showing it. We think we’ve struck that balance.”

What exactly is Shopify Plus?

Born out of Shopify — the world’s fastest growing commerce platform and home to over 600,000 stores — Shopify Plus launched in 2014 to provide high-growth merchants with a customisable solution that doesn’t need large investments of time, money, or resources.

Shopify Plus Platform Video

Founding Mr. Jenks

I’ve always loved dressing well. No matter what the occasion, I’d find an excuse to don a suit and accessorise with a pocket square and stylish tie. As a regular consumer of these products, I was able to identify a gap in the Irish market and in 2015, I founded Mr. Jenks with my partner, Maeve. We were both passionate about the business and the products, which is key to starting and building your own business.

That said, we needed more than passion to get Mr. Jenks off the ground. As much as we were interested in fashion, neither Maeve or I had experience in the industry, so we faced a steep learning curve in those first few months. We knew that even the best-quality product couldn’t succeed without market knowledge and a strong business plan, so we spent every spare minute we had building our knowledge base.

Irish pocket square collection in collaboration with Irish artists

We spent months constructing our business plan, setting up our Shopify store, and sourcing materials. We initially ordered silk from a Chinese supplier, but realised the quality wasn’t of the standard we wanted. We immediately switched to ordering from Silk Mills in Como, Italy. It was an expensive decision, but we knew that if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right. From the first day of our business, Mr. Jenks has been about offering luxurious goods, and decisions like these were integral to delivering on that idea. We brainstormed to find other ways of cutting costs to offset our production expenses- this resulted in our iconic packaging being designed by me. This worked out great as we didn’t have to outsource to a designer and I was able to personally craft our customers’ first impression of every product.

Mr. Jenks on Dragons’ Den March 2017

In 2017, we were featured on Dragons’ Den and though we didn’t receive an offer, it has been a huge boost to Mr. Jenks. Over the past three years, our business has grown enormously and Shopify has been a huge part of that. The two key aspects of a business are a great product and a great way of showing it. We think we’ve struck that balance.

Starting our own Shopify Store

When we set up our online store for Mr. Jenks, I didn’t work for Shopify. I hadn’t used it before, having worked with platforms such as WordPress for previous projects, but Shopify repeatedly stood out as I investigated and compared e-commerce options for our company. I was amazed by its ease of use, as well as how flexible and customisable the website options were.

With so many other platforms, every site looked like variations of the same template unless you knew how to code what you wanted. What struck me about Shopify was how professional and bespoke our store could look even though it was created by me, someone with zero coding experience.

Challenges

The term “side hustle” can be deceiving sometimes. Yes, we worked on our new business on the side of our day jobs, but it definitely wasn’t just a side project in terms of the hours and commitment we put into it. Our daily routine became working all day, coming home, and immediately dedicating the rest of the day to working on Mr. Jenks. We were basically working two full-time jobs in order to bring our store to life.

Our second big challenge was that dreaded learning curve. As people who worked in IT, Maeve and I were well aware that we had a lot to learn when it came to working in fashion. As it turned out, we also had a lot to learn when it came to the world of e-commerce. Online marketing, promotional deals, securing buyers, and managing the finances of a business… We did everything ourselves and that meant a lot of learning. We absorbed every educational resource we could find, from online forums and tutorials, work by other entrepreneurs, even YouTube videos… We learned so much, but it was still daunting to know all this responsibility was in our hands.

Now that you can buy clothes with nothing more than a few mouse clicks, it’s incredibly easy to forget how much work goes on to get that garment to your door. Maeve and I had to learn about the wholesale model of managing products, and wrap our heads around the way the fashion world works.

I remember once when one of our stockists asked us what our “terms” were, and we had no idea what that meant. Another time, we were asked in the middle of summer when we would be releasing our winter collection- I felt like I needed to check my calendar! There were so many meetings like this where we casually took note of what was being said and frantically Googled it when we got home. Eventually, we learned enough to hold our own in such meetings and only had to Google in a panic every so often- as much as we’ve learned, we’re sure something like that will pop up every once in a while. That’s the thing about building a business- you’re always going to be building your knowledge, too. Things that used to seem strange and impossible to understand are now incorporated into our business methods without a second thought. It’s amazing how much you absorb over time and it’s only when you look back that you realise how far you’ve come.

“There were so many meetings where we casually took note of what was being said and frantically Googled it when we got home.”

When it came to customer acquisition, we added new skills like SEM and PPC to our existing experience with offline sales. We contacted up to 75 menswear stores across Ireland, driving up and down the country with our products and eventually secured deals with 13 stockists. At the same time, we promoted our brand online through partnerships with bloggers and influencers, as well as through advertising campaigns run by ourselves and professional agencies.

We created a glamorous image to match our products on our Instagram and in press features, but sometimes it was almost funny how far from glamorous working behind the scenes was. We sacrificed holidays, nights out with friends, and family gatherings, putting every spare minute we had into working on Mr. Jenks. It’s a common story with entrepreneurs, and I really relate to Shopify Plus merchants who tell me about their struggles in this area. I love having these conversations because while those times are tough, the passion and dedication that fuels them is incredible.

Having been there myself, I can say I’ve walked a mile in those merchants’ shoes and share my experiences. When they tell me about the work they’re putting in to prepare presentations for investors, I share my experience when we prepared for Dragons’ Den. When they tell me they’re not sure how to customise their store, I can add to my knowledge as a Merchant Success Manager by sharing what I’ve learned through my hours upon hours of testing apps and trying different UX strategies for the Mr. Jenks site. Thanks to the late-night learning sessions on the likes of SEO, Google Analytics and traditional wholesale methods, I’m able to talk about these topics in-depth with my merchants. It’s also allowed me to have the highest respect for every merchant out there, because I know what they’re doing isn’t easy. In fact, it can be pretty brutal.

2017 — Listed in the Top 100 Start-ups in Ireland

What I’ve learned

I always say to Maeve that if I could go back and change one thing, it would be to have partnered with a fulfilment centre as soon as possible. In the early days of the business, we spent so much time at the post office, rushing during lunch or after work, or dealing with couriers when we should have spent that time and energy on building the Mr. Jenks brand. We spent a lot of time creating personalised touches such as including a handwritten note with every order. This helped us achieve the very high customer satisfaction rate that we have, which is very important to us, but it would have been smart to look into more sustainable and less time-consuming ways of satisfying our customers.

We often say to each other that the amount we’ve learned in the last three years of running our own Shopify business is absolutely crazy. I’ve learned how important it is to set goals, short-term and long-term, as it allows you to track your progress and work towards reaching milestones. We really struggled juggling it all and I feel that if we’d strategized clearly and written everything down, the road to success would have been smoother and we wouldn’t have been side-tracked.

How I help high-volume merchants

One of the many perks of working with Shopify Plus is that you get your very own dedicated Merchant Success Manager (MSM) who will work with you to help define and reach your goals.

It starts with a call to meet one-on-one and for us to get a good understanding of your business. We then strategise for the future and help put measurements and KPIs in place to track the progression of your business growth.

From there we have bi-weekly/monthly calls where we’ll build up the relationship to a point where the MSM will be operating as an extension of your team. Your merchant success manager then gives you access to tools and advises you on strategies to help you effectively run your business and increase KPIs.

Shopify Store Data - often used to measure KPI’s

Since I joined Shopify Plus, I have helped merchants with the following areas:

  • SEM/PPC
  • Onsite and offsite SEO
  • Customer retention
  • Email marketing
  • Fraud prevention strategies
  • Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
  • Wholesale / B2B e-commerce
  • Internationalisation

As well as assisting with these areas, it’s the MSM’s responsibility to keep merchants updated on e-commerce best practices, latest platform releases, industry trends, and provide them with case studies. They also ensure the merchant is using the Plus platform and its features to their full advantage which is often done through education, training and usage guidance.

Any e-commerce manager or store owner can tell you that no matter how you work, there will always be challenges. It’s in these situations that I feel my experience is a great advantage, because I understand merchants’ situations and I can often relate to their pain points and frustrations, having been there myself.

Whether you’re struggling with the same things I did or have other business problems, know that an MSM is there to support, guide and help accelerate your growth. Your MSM is another tool to give you better business results, so don’t be afraid to use them to their fullest extent!

“Building, launching, and growing your own online business will likely teach you at least 10x the number of new skills than you’ve learned in the last 10 years. All these skills will make you an overall better entrepreneur.”

– Richard Lazazzera, e-commerce entrepreneur

To my peers at Shopify or other aspiring entrepreneurs out there who read this and are considering starting a side hustle - go for it! It has been hugely beneficial to me from a career perspective and has a positive impact on the merchants I work with on a daily basis.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.

Regards,

William Jenkins

Written by

Founder at Mr. Jenks & Merchant Success Manager at Shopify Plus

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