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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
You can check out our daily blog post and signup for our newsletter here https://talk-commerce.com
Brent Peterson (00:01.93)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Ben Sharf as the CEO of Platter. Ben, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life.
Ben Sharf (00:13.742)
Love that. I, uh, my name is Ben Sharf. I'm one of the founders and CEO of Platter. We're an e-commerce software company aiming to build more profitable storefronts for Shopify brands. So our business was born out of this thesis that if we can consolidate a lot of the most popular tools and functionality in the Shopify ecosystem into one product suite, we can build you a storefront cheaper and faster without compromising quality. And to date we've worked with over 150 brands, uh, ranging.
from OneSkew startups all the way up to the Mrs. Meyers of the world and everything in between. My day to day, I like to say is I'm the chief firefighter officer. So my job is to unblock everyone in our organization and make sure everyone has what they need to be successful. And then the other part of my job is storytelling and marketing. So everyone in the ecosystem knows who we are and I can recruit the best talent to help us build. And then one burning passion of mine,
I would definitely say it's fitness. I was a division one athlete in my past life. I was a division one ice hockey player, which I think molded me into the person I am today. And so I continue to challenge myself both physically and mentally because I find a lot of fulfillment in doing so.
Brent Peterson (01:31.08)
That's awesome. Which school did you skate for?
Ben Sharf (01:34.094)
Colgate University.
Brent Peterson (01:36.692)
Awesome, good. Yeah, I'm originally from Minnesota. So we have a few D1 hockey teams in Minnesota. And the Hockey Hall of Fame is in Minnesota, although Canadians will often say it's in Canada. Ours is in Minnesota, or the US one is. Anyways, one thing, Ben, I forgot to tell you that we were gonna do. I do this thing called the Free Joke Project. I'm gonna tell you a joke, and all you have to do is give me a rating on the joke.
Ben Sharf (01:37.674)
Okay
Brent Peterson (02:05.226)
8 through 13. It'll take us about 15 seconds. So I'll tell you a joke. Give me a rating 8 through 13. So here we go. I went to a bookstore and saw the book titled How to Solve 50 % of Your Problems. So I bought two.
Ben Sharf (02:12.109)
Okay.
Ben Sharf (02:22.286)
Ten.
Brent Peterson (02:23.53)
Perfect, thanks I appreciate that. right, tell us kind of about how you've, tell us your founding story, tell us how you got started and a little bit of background on Platter.
Ben Sharf (02:38.54)
Yeah. So before starting Platter, I was working at a company called GoPuff. For those of you listening who aren't familiar, they're basically an instant delivery platform for convenience store goods. So think like Uber Eats, but for convenience store. And while working there, I was building out a business unit to enable instant delivery for e-commerce websites. So imagine if you can go buy a case of water from liquiddeath.com and get it delivered to your doorstep in under 30 minutes.
pretty revolutionary business model. But during that time, all I did was talk to Shopify brands and people in the Shopify ecosystem. And every time I would get on the phone with a brand to talk about this integration that we were building at GoPuff, they all had complications with building and managing their website. And I could never understand like why there was no like blueprint or gold standard for how to do this effectively. I'm talking brands doing 50 million plus in revenue. So that kind of sparked
my curiosity to go down this rabbit hole to explore that a little bit deeper. And in tandem, I have two co-founders. They were both working in e-commerce in different capacities as well. One of them, technical co-founder was consulting with brands on building websites and the other one was doing sales, selling products for brands on marketplaces. So we kind of just basically brought together our different skillsets and insights and locked ourselves in a room knowing intuitively we wanted to build an e-commerce software company.
just started consulting with brands and ultimately wanted them to, we started working with who we wanted to make our future customer, and really just take their input and their feedback on what pain points they had and what solutions they needed. And we kind of, you know, the rest is history after that. We're three years into the journey now and it's, kind of taken, taken its own shape in terms of what the business is today based on what we've learned from the market.
Brent Peterson (04:26.41)
That's super interesting. So do you have that same model now that works with Shopify that sort of purchase and buy and get delivered in 30 minutes?
Ben Sharf (04:32.499)
Bye.
Ben Sharf (04:37.47)
No, I mean, that's like a go puff, a go puff thing. I wish we could build that, but you need like billions of dollars and a crazy infrastructure to make that possible. It was more so just my first step into the world of e-commerce and recognizing that there was a better way to be building and managing online storefronts, which is ultimately what we do at Platter.
Brent Peterson (04:57.342)
Yeah. So it just reminds me in my past life, I had a Magento agency, which is another e-commerce platform that got eaten by Shopify or that lunch was eaten, lunch, whatever. And we had a client in the Dominican Republic and they have things called Clamados, these little tiny stores. And the company was called AB InBev and they had a headless application that ran on top of Magento that somebody would order.
And you could get your beer or Pepsi or whatever that thing was delivered by a motorcycle driver within 30 minutes. It was geofenced. It was really cool. They had a really great solution. know, during like football or soccer, things like that, they would get, they would get 40 or 50,000 users within minutes to order some of these things. So was also a fun experience for a high volume.
So tell us a little bit about your Shopify solutions that you have now and kind of how does that push you outside the boundaries of what Shopify offers natively?
Ben Sharf (05:59.436)
Yeah, so we have our product suite is a Shopify theme and a Shopify app. What we found historically how brands operate today, they do one of a couple things. One is they either go to an agency and get a super custom storefront built. Where if they're not technical, that basically means they're beholden to whoever built that site for them every time they want to make additional changes. Or they go to the Shopify theme store and buy or use a super basic out of the box theme that has very minimal functionality.
And then they go to the Shopify app store and download a bunch of third party applications or a combination of the two. So what we found is this brand scale, end up hitting that implosion point because their storefront is too complicated and it no longer can meet the requirements of the business as it is in the current state. So what we did was build a lot of that functionality into one product suite. So instead of brands needing to go get apps for every single piece of functionality, if we can build a lot of that into one solution and provide you incrementality where it's a few
less apps, a few less monthly expenses, and then a drag and drop editor that makes it more intuitive. The whole idea was to have an infrastructure and solution that appeals to the middle market and enterprise that's also super user friendly for non-technical people to make contributions. And we've built over 150 storefronts in the last two and a half years, which as a previous agency owner, you know that most agencies probably hit that number in like a decade.
so that speaks a little bit to the process and the product that we have, because we can move really quickly and have a lot of functionality baked into it already, to allow us to do so. The last thing I'll add is that the one unique point about our business is most traditional agencies build on top of third party tools. And then most tech vendors, that build software don't have like a professional services team. We're unique in that we're a services business and a software business under one umbrella. So we have.
Shopify theme and a Shopify app and then also a professional services team that builds these storefronts on top of the tools we built.
Brent Peterson (07:58.794)
Yeah, that's interesting because a lot of people, I think, get into Shopify and then pretty soon they've added 20 or 30 apps. they're, especially if you're on Shopify, plus pretty soon their bill is four or five grand a month on it doesn't seem as inexpensive as it was first presented. So are you both solving the pricing and complexity problem?
Ben Sharf (08:21.454)
Yeah, I mean, I would say that depending on the size of the brand you're working with or the pain points they have, I would say different parts of our product resonate, right? Like saving a thousand bucks a month for a $50 million brand isn't really something they're going to get out of bed for. Not to say it doesn't happen, but I would say it's really relative to like, what problem are you facing? Like, I'll give you an example right now, a brand that we're talking to that's top of mind. They do like 70 million a year on their Shopify storefront. They haven't, they've had the same, same code base for 10 years.
And they're like, we just need a new infrastructure. There's so much legacy code. There's so many apps that have been installed and removed in different agencies and freelancers. like every time you want to change something now, it's such a production. So it's like, how can you maintain the integrity of it? Having that enterprise feel and infrastructure, while actually giving you something that empowers you to move a lot faster. And then the other piece of it is just keeping a pulse on the ecosystem in terms of like what type of functionality is relevant so that what brands are asking for, we already have.
Right? Like our product is really effective for brands that have medium to large catalogs and mid price point items, because a lot of what we do is around gamification. think cross sells upsells where you can do bundle builders, checkout extensions, post purchase upsells, like incentive progress bars really all driven around. Like how do we increase your average order value and increase the amount of revenue for every visitor that lands on your store.
Brent Peterson (09:46.57)
And how many typical extensions would you replace then? I mean, let's back up a second. Is the extension market a problem with stores that just go and buy or just get and download every extension they possibly could want in their stores? Is that a problem in Shopify?
Ben Sharf (10:04.684)
Yeah, because what people don't realize is there's over 12,000 apps in the Shopify app ecosystem. And a lot of those are lifestyle businesses when there's nothing wrong with that. But like, you don't need to pay $6 a month for a color swatch app. Like that should just be a feature that's built into the theme. And so like that concept, if you extrapolate that out, all of sudden you find yourself having a different app for a car drawer, a different app for an incentive bar, different app for like Instagram feed videos, a different app for a menu.
and it just goes on and on and on, it starts to become a problem when you scale.
So our product is more relevant, I would say, like I said, to the middle market brands. I'm all for being scrappy when you're a new brand, maybe minimal budget, like just find a way to get it done, but you don't necessarily anticipate the problems you're gonna face when you're doing five, 10, 15 million in revenue. And to be honest, you don't need to anticipate those. Once you get there, you can deal with it.
Brent Peterson (10:41.043)
Yeah, the
Brent Peterson (11:04.413)
Yeah, it's a some of these things already. I guess I'm not super familiar with Shopify ecosystem, but should some of these things just be inherently built in like the color swatch? That would be something that a lot of platforms have out of the box where you wouldn't even have to install an app.
Ben Sharf (11:19.5)
Yeah, exactly. That's the point though. But like you might have a, you know, a Joe Schmo in the middle of the country who's making 50 K a month off of a color swatch app, which is awesome. And there's nothing wrong with that. But when you think about like these really large brands have a lot of complexities, like every incremental advantage you can have is really important. And like one topic that's super popular is like page speed and having a lot of extra apps and additional code in the store in the code base that isn't needed is the exact
problem to look for when you're trying to make a website more efficient and faster. And the way that we describe it is a lot of these apps are features, not products. So as a brand, you should only be using products on your storefront in terms of software, not features.
Brent Peterson (11:56.19)
you mentioned
Brent Peterson (12:05.578)
That's a good way to look at it. mean, earlier you talked about the big brands don't really care about the cost, but they probably care about the complexity. But I think knowing a lot of technology, e-commerce managers, they don't always think about the technical debt. And you kind of let off with that technical debt piece. How do you advise your clients to get rid of something by adding something
consolidated and it sounds like a lot of things you're doing is consolidating some of these bespoke apps that are unneeded.
Ben Sharf (12:42.06)
Yeah, and I think it's getting brands over the hump of the sunk cost fallacy. Right? Like sometimes brands are, they struggle to detach from something because they put so much time into it and so much money into it. But if it's not the most effective solution to put you in the best position to succeed, then you need to just like accept that for what it is. And so for us off like our KPI and our tagline, you'll see on our website is around profitability.
So like if I can save you more money by eliminating a set of tools and by improving operational efficiencies by giving you a more user friendly experience to manage your storefront. And then I can also give you features you didn't know existed and also give you best practices around how to increase your AOV and your conversion. I can actually save you money and make you money at the same time. And I don't remember the last time we spoke to a brand who saw that we could objectively make them more profitable and they weren't attracted to that opportunity.
Brent Peterson (13:33.5)
Who's your is your target mainly the CTO or the CMO or a mixture of both? Or how do you kind of introduce your solution to the to the brand?
Ben Sharf (13:38.786)
Thank
It depends on the size of the brand. I would say our title is typically founder, ecom manager, chief digital officer, chief marketing officer, ecom director.
Brent Peterson (13:53.688)
I work a lot with Indir. They're a little boutique CRM that they're, they're big thing is about client telling. and the idea that somebody had a POS is also going to help sell when you're to get, to get them online. Do you have a strategy for getting in store people online to their Shopify store?
Ben Sharf (14:14.496)
It's not where we focus. Our expertise is more once they get to the store, make sure the store is set up to help them be successful.
Brent Peterson (14:24.138)
What have you seen as the biggest faux pas or mistake that a big brand makes when setting up a Shopify store?
Ben Sharf (14:35.086)
I think there's a couple things. I mean, I think the first one is not actually understanding like, who their customer is, I think throwing a lot of money at ads to a leaky funnel is a huge mistake we see so often. Like, it's like people think spending more money is going to solve the problem, but actually understanding the root cause of the issue is really the solution. I would say oftentimes larger brands because they are larger, they just think that things need to be more complicated, but there's beauty and simplicity.
And I'd say that's like a huge thing that we communicate with brands is like less is more in a lot of instances.
I would say that's probably one the biggest mistakes we see is like, why is it this complicated? It doesn't need to be.
Brent Peterson (15:13.726)
Yet.
Brent Peterson (15:18.642)
is that sort of the headless model where a brand was some CTO is gonna get into his head that the headless solution is the only way to go and suddenly you have a separated front end from your back end and you're trying to maintain two code bases.
Ben Sharf (15:32.984)
Do you know the brand Wild Earth? It's a dog food brand. We saved them $720,000 in annual operating expenses, moving them off of a headless storefront.
Brent Peterson (15:45.418)
Yeah, that's amazing. All right. So if you have a brand, beside your own solution, what would be the, what would be the, for 2025, what's kind of advice would you give to a brand that is that 10 million plus or 20 million plus when they're reorganizing their existing Shopify store?
Ben Sharf (16:09.132)
I mean, I think if it's, you're saying like unrelated to us, think like my broad advice is, and I know this is, it's not necessarily a novel insight, but like people need to start paying attention to the technological innovations that are happening right in front of our eyes around like AI, because I think like throwing people at problems is no longer necessary in every instance. so I think like really starting to challenge yourself.
about like, are the ways to solve problems? Because I think one of the biggest advantages you're going to see now with new tools available is just like efficiency, right? Like overall operating margins for a business P &L because one person can now do four people's jobs if they actually have the knowledge and how to use the tools at their disposal. And there's so many tools out there, whether it's like personalization of the actual storefront experience, generating creative using AI, like there's, there's just so many ways.
to go about it. I think my, my, my, guess my concise feedback or point of advice to people listening would be around like not being afraid to question things. Like that is the biggest thing. Like all because someone told you this is how you need to do something. Like you should feel comfortable pushing back on that because there's definitely more than one solution and there's probably a more cost effective solution too. You just have to like dig a little deeper to find it.
Brent Peterson (17:33.22)
That's perfect, Ben. As we close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. Would you like to plug today?
Ben Sharf (17:41.836)
I mean, I'm just gonna do a shameless plug for Platter. I think we're really good at what we do. I think our results speak for themselves. And if you're operating an e-commerce brand and you want a pro bono audit, I'm happy to sit down and tell you everything I think you should change about your conversion funnel.
Brent Peterson (17:58.248)
That's great. Ben Scharf is the co-founder and CEO of Platter. Thank you so much for being here today.
Ben Sharf (18:03.832)
Thanks for having me, Brent.