On this bonus episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Gavin Ballard. Gavin Ballard is the founder and CEO of Submarine, a platform that powers flexible commerce experiences for Shopify including subscriptions, presales, crowdfunding and more. We talk about the transition from an agency to product, being a niche in the early years of Shopify, a platform built for customization requests, and so much more!
Gavin first founded Disco Labs, an agency that specializes in custom solutions for the world's biggest brands. With the sole focus of deep platform knowledge and ecosystem leadership, Disco Labs is the global partner of choice for complex projects involving Shopify.
In addition to working with startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises, Disco Labs has released numerous open-source projects, and written detailed courses teaching others how to successfully build custom and public applications on Shopify.
From Disco Labs came Submarine. After over a decade working with leading ecommerce merchants and solving complex challenges for them, we saw the need for better building blocks for merchants, agencies and developers when it comes to customer experiences that go beyond the transactional.
Originally built as an internal tool to deliver those experiences, Submarine’s now a constantly-evolving platform accessible to all and tasked with making innovative commerce experiences possible for the world’s leading brands.
Gavin is also the author of The Definitive Guide to Shopify Themes, a slew of popular Shopify frameworks like Bootstrap for Shopify and Cart.js, and numerous articles for publications like net magazine.
He can often be seen popping up on Shopify podcasts and blogs across the internet, or in person speaking at meetups and conferences around the world.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Gavin Ballard
One of the challenges we had as an agency was, and even as a product as well, was also that, yes, we can do anything. So there needs to be that layer, but should we be doing this? Is this the most valuable way to spend people's time?
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to a bonus episode of Honest Ecommerce.
Today I'm welcoming the show Gavin Ballard. He is the founder and CEO of Submarine, a platform that powers flexible commerce experiences for Shopify, including subscriptions, presales, crowdfunding and more.
Gavin, welcome to the show.
Gavin Ballard
Thank you so much, Chase. I'm very happy to be here.
Chase Clymer
I'm excited to chat. Gavin and I have been friendly in the ecosystem for numerous years now and it's the first time I've had him on the show, surprisingly.
But let's first, I guess, before we dive into what you're up to now with Submarine and how your career has evolved here, let's just go back to the beginning and talk about your history just within the Shopify ecosystem in general.
Do you remember your first project that you worked on that utilized Shopify?
Gavin Ballard
I do very clearly because they're still kind of... Well, they're French now and an ongoing client we've got some partnership projects on the go.
So yeah, I kind of fell into the Shopify ecosystem because I moved to New York to start a business with some friends. That went terribly. I needed to earn some money.
So I started freelancing and just so happened that the first client that I had was a Shopify store. So it was a button store up in Portland, Oregon.
And yeah, they had a bunch of apps that they needed building. And that was how I got my start in the Shopify ecosystem. Just really enjoyed it.
And yeah, like I said, we still do stuff with them. I catch up with them. And that's, I think one of the things about the Shopify ecosystem that's kept me here for this long is that everyone's really nice.
It's been a long time, but it's been a fun journey.
Chase Clymer
Do you remember what year you did that first project?
Gavin Ballard
Oh, yeah. That was 2011-ish, I'm going to say. I've been around for 10-12 years in the ecosystem. And it's been, obviously, started out freelancing. Then I focused on the agency, Disco Labs, which ran for quite some time.
And now, moving more into the product space with Submarine.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
And so with the solution that you're building for that client, you mentioned that you were building out apps for them. Was the App Store even a thing back then?
Gavin Ballard
It was... It's hard to remember exactly. It was pretty nascent, that's for sure.
But my background is software engineering. And so that was always the part of the Shopify ecosystem that I was most interested in was the backend side of software.
And so, that was just kind of a natural place to gravitate to. When we started out, I was just doing anything, setting up front-end sites, themes, and did a fair bit of theme work early doors.
But yeah, the App Store wasn't really a thing. You could definitely install apps. But a lot of the stuff that you did was custom. Nothing like it is today.
So it's certainly evolved a lot over that last 10 to 12 years.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
And then we met when you were at the helm of Disco Labs, which is an agency that we'll get into a little bit more that existed. But it was more custom solutions for big brands and stuff like that.
How long... What was the evolution of freelancing and doing these projects for clients in the Shopify ecosystem until you built an agency around it?
Gavin Ballard
I'd love to pretend that it was like a really intentional strategy, but it was very much I was doing this stuff freelance, to the point I was like, oh, I've got too much work on. I guess the next thing I do is hire someone.
And I just got very lucky that the first couple of engineers I hired to help me out with the work were fantastic. And that really helped us expand the scope of what we were doing and take on bigger and gnarlier projects.
But yeah, I think that the story in general has been very organic. Right from the word go, I sort of fell into the ecosystem over time, just started building up the agency.
And what was lucky because we were early to the ecosystem, there weren't a lot of people that were focused on building custom apps and integrations, but there were increasingly more merchants that had larger businesses with more custom requirements.
And so other agencies, other freelancers, those merchants themselves were looking for people who could solve this stuff. And there wasn't yet, like I said, anyone that was really, really focused on it.
And so that was great for us having that really specific niche, because it meant that a lot of other agencies would happily partner with us because they were doing design, UX, build, all that sort of stuff, but they didn't have the in-house technical knowledge to build a custom integration with an ERP or a completely bespoke review system or whatever the merchant needed.
So they were very happy to bring us in. They knew we weren't going to tread on their toes because we didn't do front-end design or dev or marketing and any of that sort of stuff.
And so that really worked really well. And then we got exposed to a lot of really big merchants around the world.
And a lot of them that we still service because they're either Submarine customers, or we've got legacy stuff that's sitting in the background working for them.
So that's... Yeah, that's how it works.
Chase Clymer
And I think that's a little... I guess inside baseball for the most. For the average listener that works at a brand or owns a brand, agencies aren't all one size.
And the specialization, even when you're talking to development shops between building a custom app solution like you guys do over at Disco Labs or Electric Eye, we're glorified front-end CRO dudes.
We're all just like, make it pretty but make it perform. We would 1,000% instantly just turn down anything that's leaning towards “This has to be a custom app” just because it's like we don't know our heads from our tails when it comes to that kind of stuff.
Gavin Ballard
Yeah, there's definitely specializations. And I think more and more, especially larger agencies, more and more of them are building out their back-end capabilities.
So I think that the landscape today compared to 5 years ago… firstly, agencies are more experienced in Shopify, they're more comfortable with some backend stuff. But also just what Shopify is doing with the platform has made it much, much easier to build backend solutions and the latest things with being able to build remix apps in the Shopify App Store and that sort of stuff means it is feasible.
Shopify functions, it is feasible for agencies that don't have a deep tech backend experience to build really good solutions for a lot of use cases.
I still think there's a place in the ecosystem for specialist back-ends development. At the end of the day, there are merchants that have super custom requirements.
And so if you look at merchants that we support, like Hasbro, for example, we've been running their D2C, pre-sales, and crowdfunding memberships for years.
And the scale that they operate on when they launched a new range of Star Wars toys or something like that, that you genuinely need some serious backend shops to handle that kind of thing.
So there are definitely still use cases where you need that experience. But yeah, for a lot of it, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's easier than it was.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. Functions specifically are a game changer. Just recently, now that they're adding accessibility and… not calling it sections everywhere but it kinda is– into checkout, into post purchase, onto the thank you page.
We're finally getting all the stuff that we wish we had years ago, from a front end development perspective. But it allows you to solve for a lot of the more typical use cases.
But then, as you get into the edge cases, it becomes a business requirement.
I guess what I want to tell listeners is if you have a requirement that you can't solve with an app in the ecosystem and it's looking like it needs to be custom, when you're talking to a partner about it, make sure that they have done something similar before.
Because doing an actual custom app is a specific skill set in Shopify.
Gavin Ballard
Yeah, that's definitely true. And I think as time increases, the footprint of what apps can do and the flexibility of what those apps can do increases, which is great.
08:59 But there's just always going to be, I think, Shopify's philosophy in general is we make 80% of what a merchant wants to do easy and then the other 20% possible.
And that 20% is kind of where app developers and things like that exist.
And for us, I guess we were then sort of focused in again on the 80-20 of that 80-20 because we were really just focused on sort of the larger merchants with the really custom requirements.
But yeah, that absolutely makes sense.
I think the rate of product development in the Shopify product has been really impressive over the last couple of years.
There's been a lot of stuff that's gone forward really, really quickly. And I think the Shopify functions and Shopify checkout UI extensions are two parts of that tail, which has really demonstrated how quickly they're iterating.
Just a huge difference to sort of that. They had a big lull, I would say, in sort of 2018 to 2020. And then obviously COVID just meant they were just focused on scaling rather than building new stuff.
The last couple of years have been really, really great. It's been exciting. And I think where they're headed with functions and checkout UI extensions is really... It's a really great product direction.
And it's actually something we're borrowing a little bit from in Submarine as well. So yeah, it's all positive at the moment.
Chase Clymer
We've alluded to Submarine now a few times and you even let people know that you have clients that have held over from Disco Labs into what is Submarine.
So first, let's just talk about how Submarine came to be.
Gavin Ballard
Sure.
Like all good products, I think it came from a real-world need and pain point which we, as an agency, we were building these custom apps and backend things and one of the merchants we had early doors–so this is maybe 2016-y, I think– was a merchant called Youfoodz who are a large ready-made meal provider here in Australia.
And at the time they had the largest Shopify store in the APAC region, one of the largest ones in the world, and they didn't have a subscription system.
The reason for that was multiple requirements around that. So they had a very custom delivery zone and delivery region management system, which you can imagine, for sort of ready-made meals, you've got to know exactly when your meals are gonna get delivered and that sort of stuff.
They also had a lot of checkout customization. So they needed to be using the Shopify checkout and at the time just didn't have a subscription solution that supported that.
So we actually built the first native checkout subscription solution for them that as far as I am aware existed on Shopify well before the Shopify subscription APIs and that sort of stuff.
And as soon as we built it, we had a whole bunch of people reaching out saying, “How did you do that? We wanna do that.” So that kind of triggered us working with more and more brands that had these, what I'd call ‘payment experience requirements’.
So whether that was subscriptions, pre-sales, crowdfunding, they had something that was a bit more custom than what you could get with an off the shelf app.
And that's kind of like the basic DNA of the Submarine platform is to provide those larger merchants, enterprise merchants with the flexibility that they need to build a customer experience that's really bespoke and targeted.
So whether that is from a UI UX perspective, complete flexibility there, or if it's flexibility in terms of the business logic and the rules or flexibility in terms of what payment process that you integrate with, or how you integrate into your ERP or order management system on the backend, that's kind of like… the goal is very much like taking what we did as an agency one-on-one with merchants and making it way more accessible to merchants that have some in-house dev capacity or an agency that's working with those brands and that sort of thing.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And can you... Maybe this is definitely a question for me and less for the listeners.
But I'm sure there are some other folks out there that work at agencies.
Can you talk about the transition and even the name change? Going from an agency, Disco Labs, to now a product called Submarine.
How long did this take? What does that look like to experience?
Gavin Ballard
Yeah. I feel like almost everyone who runs an agency, and you can tell me if this is true or not, but almost everyone that runs an agency at some point is like, “Oh man, the product world seems much, much nicer.”
Chase Clymer
Oh dude, all the time. Even as of two weeks ago, me and Sean were talking about an idea to build an app. But we know, you can't.
Unless you go all in on it, it will never hit the growth that you need. And it's like, we're really good at what we do at the agency now, we should stop getting distracted.
And I should stop interrupting you and I could let you answer the questions.
Gavin Ballard
No, no, no, no. It's all good because I hear the same story when I talk to any other agency owner.
It's like there's always that... You see the problems, right? You're at ground level. You see what people are struggling with. And you're like, “I could build something to solve that.” And that could be really successful.
But you're absolutely right. I think it's very, very difficult to run both businesses at once. And I know that because we tried to do that at Disco Labs for a while.
We sort of tried to do, “Oh, we'll do Google 20% time, but we'll do it on our product.”
We'd sort of build up a framework internally that was kind of like the V1 for Submarine that we were using to deliver projects.
But the projects we were delivering were still very bespoke engagements that were nine-month projects where we were doing custom implementations and there was a whole bunch of other stuff going on.
We sort of started charging for it as a product as well. So we'd charge people to deliver the project and then there would be an ongoing fee to run Submarine.
And so we could see that it was generating revenue and it was never at the stage where it's like, this is sustaining the entire agency, but it got to the point where we'd say, “Okay, this can be a real thing.”
So we knew we wanted to maybe invest more in it. And for me, I kind of knew that I wanted to do products more than run an agency. As I discussed before, it was a very kind of organic, not well thought-out transition into the agency world.
But I knew I wanted to do products. This seems like a really good opportunity.
So we were trying to do both essentially and trying to spend 20% time, 30% time into the product. And it just didn't work because the client always takes priority.
There's always new stuff coming in the door. And then you're always having to hunt for the next client, the next project to keep the team fed and happy and healthy.
So I think if you're a very large business and you can genuinely carve out a section, like a dedicated team and actually give them the headspace to work on it, then yes, maybe it works.
But even then, just architecturally as a business, you're not invested as much in the success of that product because the rest of the business is more likely than not gonna be your main source of revenue.
So yeah, it's really a prioritization question, we struggled with it for a long time.
It was only really when we were like, “Okay, we're actually genuinely gonna go all in on this,” that I think we've kind of made the transition and been able to properly accelerate our product development.
So yeah, we took on some… initially some revenue-based financing to kind of help us start buying at our own time and accelerate the product.
And then that led into sort of a pre-seed round in late 21, early 22, right when everything was going terribly for raising money.
But that's all we've done to bootstrap that product transition, which has been a longer journey than I thought. But we're in a good place now.
Chase Clymer
I mean, I know for a fact that you and I could talk about the pros and cons of agency versus product all over the place. But I don't want to get into that now.
But what I'm going to challenge the audience to do is if you want to hear us do that, I can get Gavin back on the show. I can get some other people that have done similar stuff or we could have a really cool 4-people podcast.
If you want to hear that, just email me or tweet me. Put a comment on LinkedIn.
Just let me know. And I'll make that happen. Because I think that's a conversation that could get very long-winded and off the rails.
And I don't want to interrupt the flow of this podcast. But I do think it's a very fun conversation.
Gavin Ballard
It's really interesting.
I... At some point, I hope to... When I have spare time, actually do a mini series or a book or something around it, not necessarily because I think I've got all the answers, but I just know there are so many instances of really great products being built by people who were agency or ex-agency, like very successful large companies.
And equally, I know that there are a lot of agency founders that have that kind of frustration where they're like, we know there's something here, but we don't know how to actually make it into something that works and give it the time it needs.
So I think it's a really, really...interesting space.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And then there's the business models and the cash flows and then selling it. There's so much nuance to both of them. And it's something I know a lot about for no reason.
Gavin Ballard
Yeah. It's interesting. But at the end of the day, once you get the product wrapped up in an operation, it is pretty amazing to just sort of see that money drop in your bank account, and you feel like I haven't really done anything for that.
Obviously you've done the work before, but it makes a really big difference to your mindset and how you operate.
For us, I think we've had a semi soft landing in that the product that we have is very much geared towards the same sort of merchants that we were working for. As an agency.
And as a result, the sales cycle is actually similar. The types of merchants, the type of problems we're solving are similar, which has its upsides and its downsides.
So yeah, it's been an easier transition for us than if we just swapped to, oh, well, actually, we're trying to build an app for 20,000 merchants and charging 20 plus a month for it.
That's not what we're doing. So that makes the transition a bit easier, but it's certainly not easy by any means.
Chase Clymer
Let's talk a bit more about the app itself and the solutions that it makes possible.
So a question I always like to ask is, what are some ways that a merchant might self-identify and be like, “Oh, Submarine might be a good solution for me”? What are the pain points they're experiencing? Or what are they not getting out of what already exists in the ecosystem?
Gavin Ballard
Yeah. I'd say like the number one flag that's like, “Oh, maybe Submarine is a good fit,” is if you ever feel like you are shoehorning your business into how an off the shelf app thinks of your business model.
So whether that's subscriptions or presales or crowdfunding, if it's, “This doesn't integrate very well with my back office,” or “I'd really like to be able to offer trailing discounts on my subscription program where people get 30%, then 20%, but then 10% off,” but that needs to be conditional based on where the customer is located.
Just those sorts of things, where it's like, you know how you want your subscription program to run. You know how you want your pre-sale campaigns to run.
But you feel like you're making trade-offs based on the tech that you've got, or you're like, “I just can't find a solution for this so I'm kind of giving up on having this as an option in the first place.”
Our goal as an agency and with the product with Submarine is always to say, you come to us with your business model and what you want to do, and we have tech that is flexible enough to adapt to it and make that work for you.
So obviously, there's much more of a solutions component to that. We need to sit down with you and work out exactly what you need and because of that model. We're not a one-click install on the Shopify App Store and you're up and running in a way you go.
We have a really great baseline experience for the types of business models we support. So you can get up and running really quickly.
But in terms of getting the most value out of products, it's really something that we're going to sit down and talk through with you and work out what the best way to do it is.
So, you know, examples of things that have happened in the past that we've supported. I mean, that subscription use case is a really good one.
Pre-sales, so merchants that want to be able to launch a pre-sale campaign, let customers buy a whole bunch of products on pre-sale and then just capture payment for those individual line items as they become ready to ship and ship them out and have that flow into their third party ERP system.
Crowdfunding campaigns like wanting to be able to run a genuine crowdfunding campaign on your own site, with your own brand, with 100% integrated natively into your theme, and being able to take customer pledges and then capture payment at the end when you succeed or fail.
That sort of stuff. So there's a very long list of use cases, which is the downside of being very flexible. But yeah, hopefully I've captured, I guess, where it makes sense to think about this.
Chase Clymer
No, I think you did a great job.
And I think your statement about being shoehorned into the way that Shopify or an app wants to think about your business is a great way for me, as an agency guy, to understand where it might make sense to refer business your way.
Because I often push back... I'm guilty of this. I'm saying, “You're making this hard. Why not make it easier?”
I would say that sometimes though, I feel that what they want to do is easy. And I just wish it worked that way. And then obviously, using Submarine or something like that makes sense.
But then also sometimes people do make things a little bit aggressively complex. So do you ever find yourself like putting on your consultant hat and be like, guys, this is not a good idea.
Gavin Ballard
Yeah. I think that pushback is a really, really healthy thing. And I think that the agency should absolutely be doing that. I think one of the challenges we had as an agency was, and even as a product as well, is also that, yes, we can do anything.
So there needs to be that layer. But should we be doing this? Is this the most valuable way to spend people's time?
And yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Especially in migration projects where people are coming from another platform, like, let's say, a magento over Shopify where they could do anything so they did do anything.
And now they're coming to the Shopify world and like, “Well, I just want exactly what I did previously.”
And yes, you can do that. But the question becomes, “But should you? Are you spending more time and effort than it's worth to get it working exactly how I did on your old system and fighting against what the Shopify platform is?”
So I think that's a really healthy question to have.
I think conversely, there are times where it is like, well, I know that our ROI or our AOV would be significantly higher if we, let's say we've got clients that do a mystery box subscription.
So every month they send out a random product. Like, how do you choose what that product is
If you've got an off the shelf app, the opportunities or how you might actually pick what that product that's getting shipped out is, it could be very limited.
It might be, I need to set up, you know, what this month's mystery box thing is. I might have to go and manually swap out the products, all that sort of stuff.
Whereas the Submarine solution could be, well, actually we can call out to an API that your business owns as a merchant that takes into account all these different things, your customer profile, what stock you want to move, what you've got on hand, what's going to be cheapest to ship to the customer.
It can take all of that into account. And then that's the thing that goes into the mystery box. And it's like, “Oh, well, that's gonna be a huge benefit to our business to be able to do that.”
So yeah, there's definitely cases where the flexibility isn't needed or warranted and you're better off just let's keep it simple.
But equally, there are definitely times for, and especially for larger merchants, where a 2% increase in AOV is, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
So yeah, I think that kind of needs to be an option for some merchants as well.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. It does make a lot of sense.
It's funny that you brought up the migration thing because it's like just because it was that way before doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be that way now. But again, great argument.
It's like, but if we know it worked well last time, maybe we should further explore this.
Gavin Ballard
Yeah, exactly. Awesome, Gavin.
Chase Clymer
Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience?
Gavin Ballard
Oh, that's a broad question.
No, I mean, I think maybe this is tooting Submarine’s horn, but I guess that's why I'm on a podcast, really.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, to be real.
Gavin Ballard
I think what we're doing with the flexibility piece and having that focus is actually reflective of the broader Shopify ecosystem, which is kind of interesting.
The stuff like Shopify functions and check out UI extensibility and things like that. I think more and more platforms and apps and offerings are trying to get to this point where you've got this 80% baseline experience and then trying to work out what is the easiest way for people to customize this to their business.
And I think especially as Shopify pushes into the enterprise space more and more, that kind of flexibility and how that customization works and how that plays with the rest of the ecosystem is actually really interesting.
So I don't know if that's a particularly actionable or useful piece of tidbit, but I think for your audience and for anyone that's listening, I think that's a trend that you're going to see everywhere across the ecosystem is how this extensibility and flexibility story plays out.
So I feel like we're playing our part in that. But yeah, it's gonna be more and more of a thing over the next few years, I think.
Chase Clymer
Awesome, Gavin. I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast and chatting. We'll link to Submarine below. And again, thank you for coming on.
Gavin Ballard
Thanks so much, Chase.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
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