When MAXBURST first started as a Shopify partner, they worked mostly with small and midsize ecommerce businesses. But as Shopify expanded our offerings, MAXBURST was able to grow with us, taking on more and larger clients, as well as opening up new revenue streams by providing unified commerce solutions across D2C, B2B, and physical retail.
“You could see where [Shopify] was going, right? All the new updates that were happening based on client requirements. [I thought], ‘Yep, this checks the boxes.’... It was a lot easier to use, easier to maintain, clients were really happy with it, and total cost of ownership was a lot less compared to other platforms,” said Jason Sidana, director of business development and strategic partnerships at MAXBURST. “And as Shopify grew, we grew with it.”
As a result of growing alongside Shopify's product innovations, MAXBURST has experienced benefits such as:
- Increased revenue by 2x in 3 years
- Shopify accounting for ~70% of their total revenue
- Grown from 20 employees to more than 40
The challenge: Replacing disjointed platforms
When his agency merged with MAXBURST in 2021, Jason brought his firsthand experience of trying to run an ecommerce business using competitors’ platforms. His family owns a footwear and apparel store and wholesale business that built their websites on Magento (Adobe Commerce) and BigCommerce. If something sold in the store, they had to manually reduce the inventory in their wholesale and other sales channels. Or if a product sold on a sales channel, they had to tell the store or warehouse to pull the inventory.
“It was a ton of maintenance work. We were spending a ridiculous amount of money and energy just maintaining data,” said Jason. “Using a unified database commerce platform like Shopify definitely streamlines it. You don't need that much labor. You don't need to invest time on just managing inventory, managing pricing, managing the different platforms. Everything's all in one place.”
Beyond Jason’s personal experiences, merchants also came to MAXBURST with disjointed commerce platforms. They had one for point of sale and another for ecommerce. They had middleware that connected it all, which only ended up raising their costs even more. And if something got disconnected or their server went down, they were unable to do transactions in-store or sync their inventory.
When Shopify POS launched, MAXBURST seized the opportunity to help these merchants unify their commerce.
"When Shopify POS came out, it was a no brainer. Everything's all in one place. It's easy to use. Clients don't have to do redundant data publishing for products. You create it in the Shopify admin, and now [your] ecommerce has that same inventory and product data as [your]... POS. With [Shopify] POS and ecommerce, it just makes sense. It just works."
—Jason Sidana, Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, MAXBURST
The solution: Streamlining customer experiences
MAXBURST got right to work helping merchants with unified commerce. It’s Shopify’s product differentiation that’s allowed them to uniquely position themselves in the market, and helped them grow their business in new segments and verticals.
For example, one of their clients is a women’s apparel company with eight stores in Texas. With Lightspeed for their POS and BigCommerce for their ecommerce platform, they struggled to manage separate inventories. When MAXBURST helped them migrate, they brought over the products, customers, and even transactional history into Shopify.
“When we finished out the project, it was like they were always on Shopify,” said Jason. “By migrating them onto Shopify, it's a lot easier for them to maintain in terms of product publishing, because now it's just one source rather than two places managing inventory.”
With Shopify in place, MAXBURST streamlined the customer journey. The first task at hand was an issue with the merchant’s gift card data. Their Lightspeed platform was set up so that if they sold a gift card in-store, it couldn’t be used online. If a mom bought a gift card for her daughter who lived out of state, there was no way for her to use it. With this fixed on Shopify, the merchant was able to help these customers place their orders, growing revenue, retention, and loyalty.
MAXBURST also built a buy online, pick-up in store (BOPIS) option for customers. Now, retail employees get notified on their tablet when somebody makes a purchase, and as soon as they’re done packing up the order, the system seamlessly sends out a notification to that customer to come pick it up. And because their customer data is now unified, the merchant can better manage their loyalty plan to reward these customers online or in-store at pick up.
In shifting their agency’s focus to unified commerce solutions, MAXBURST has also started taking on more B2B clients—and more specifically, those that are focused on the supply chain and distributing to various retailers and distributors.
One of MAXBURST’s clients is a wholesale retailer that sells blank apparel. Their wholesale customers—think retailers and silkscreeners—wanted a website where their own customers could make purchases directly. While the front end of the new site looks simple, MAXBURST built the complex back-end rules and integrations all natively on Shopify. Specifically, they created a custom matrix that allows customers to see all the sizes, colors, and quantities of each product and added discounts like volume-based pricing.
"It's not like we had to go find a third-party app or do a heavy custom development. It was just within the theme, [and we] customized it based on what they needed. All the APIs are there. Everything's laid out in the documentation.… We'd studied Shopify, so we know this platform in and out. It was pretty easy for us to build out, even though we've never done it before."
—Jason Sidana, Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, MAXBURST
The results: Harness the strength of the ecosystem
MAXBURST attributes much of their success to working with Shopify. As Jason tells it, the strength of the platform, ecosystem, and the support they get from the Shopify team are what keeps them moving forward.
“There's a bunch of reasons [why we stick with Shopify]. One is support. We get a partner rep. Any question that we have, we have access to the product team or to get direct answers. The ease of use, the ecosystem, the total cost of ownership—it's a full gambit of checkboxes that hit everything. It's been a great relationship.”
In particular, adding Shopify POS has been one of the biggest contributors to MAXBURST’s success. It not only opened up a whole new service offering and revenue stream, but it also unlocked new segments and verticals. Jason says that it’s often even the catalyst for additional services they can offer those clients.
"POS is in demand. People are trying to move off of antiquated or custom platforms where they’re feeling restricted. So just by adding that additional service, that gets us in the door. Then, it opens up the door to other things that we can do with them, whether that’s consulting or ecommerce or B2B or marketing services."
—Jason Sidana, Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, MAXBURST
The results speak for themselves. MAXBURST’s growth on Shopify has come in the form of double the headcount and double the revenue. And with Shopify only continuing to launch new features, MAXBURST feels confident that they’ll be able to help more and more clients stay at the forefront of commerce.
“Shopify is staying ahead of the curve. There's never a point where I felt like they're lacking.… You can see that Shopify is always changing, innovating, and staying on top of what's trending,” said Jason. “Once [new technology] goes to the masses… you know Shopify is going to be there. They're going to have some app or functionality or some utility that works around it. So merchants don't have to build something custom just to make it work.”
As for the future, MAXBURST is focused on continuing to extend their reach. With Shopify serving more merchants upmarket, it’s allowing MAXBURST to gain clients in these segments as well. “[Shopify is] not only being innovative, but they're also going upstream,” said Jason. “They're heavily focused on mid-market, large, and now even enterprise. They're doubling down on it.”
And while it’s been a major factor in their business growth, MAXBURST’s partnership with Shopify is nothing they’re trying to keep secret. Instead, their advice to other agencies is to seize the opportunity.
"If you are an agency focused on commerce, you need to be building on Shopify. There's so much potential there.… There's a ton of merchants on it. Existing merchants need help, but then on top of that, new leads are coming in, and they all want to be on Shopify because they know somebody else that's on it."
—Jason Sidana, Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, MAXBURST
Watch the entire interview
Watch the full video interview with Jason Sidana, director of business development and strategic partnerships at MAXBURST, and Sayed Saber, director of retail partnerships at Shopify, for a deeper dive into the MAXBURST story.
