Issue #40 - Evolve, Engrage, Encroach - we do all these

In This Issue: Vile Rumour & Gossip | The Demand Gen conundrum | How many grown up System Integrators are there in Shopify’s ecosystem? | Hiding the AI for now

Jul 09, 2025

Welcome to our new readers… sorry to say that you’ll be seeing a podcast from us too in the coming few months... all volunteers welcome BUT assume it's like this email, punchy and as truthful as it can be :)

In this issue we talk a little about our own evolution, but mostly the standard fayre of gossip and insight about digital. Can you guess who the industry players are AI'd as Elvis above?

Vile Rumour & Gossip

Shopify Day in Latam - We reckon there are about 7 proper players in the eCom platform market, and according to the founder of one of them at least 4 of them are up for sale - 2 officially and 2 unofficially. As a customer does this give you the collywobbles?

From July 10th content from pro accounts in Instagram will start appearing in Google results, including Reels, posts and videos. The world of SEO is already seemingly in chaos, with misinformation and poor attribution stats pretty much the norm. More complexity incoming 🙂

TEMU disruption is real. Yes, China is dumping stock in Europe, but TEMU is actively recruiting local sellers in the UK, and then selling their stock sometimes below cost currently. It’s causing chaos in Marketplace-land, and makes it even more important that retailers in each local market build really strong relationships with their sellers. Curated marketplace anyone?

Build your own PIM? An assertion from an SI this week claims to have built a home-grown PIM using Claude and some enrichment tech. There is a growing indication that many current vendors will simply be washed away in a tide of AI solutions that bypass them, food for gossip of course.

The Demand Gen conundrum

After 20+ years we’ve closed our SDR function. I saw this coming a long way away, partly it has been due to a gradually diminishing return for programs, as well as the desire to stop doing the toughest of things in the hardest of ways, and to prevent the poor souls who do it suffering the bad feels.

The math is simple. Our clients’ target base of customers is about the same size as it has been for 15 years, whilst the pool of SaaS companies selling to that base has grown 100’s of times over. Marketing keeps doing the same things (persuaded by sales). In short, anyone with an SDR team is now officially annoying the people they are trying to sell to… and they know it.

We’ve chosen a different way - leaning into the idea of building “Trust” through content and community.. which in the attack-mode world of tech marketing is a tough thing to do… wish us luck as we try to persuade the market to pivot! After all - remember all those customer promises you made when you were making a plan for your ABM program? Stay relevant / Nurture effectively / Don’t be greedy.

How many grown up System Integrators are there in Shopify’s ecosystem?

As Shopify starts to win more in the mid-market and beyond, the strain is showing on their SI ecosystem. Only one player in the UK has delivered anything complex right now, and they are “creaking” under the pressure.

Those 20 or so mid-market agencies who have recently opened a Shopify practice are only just winning their first gigs, and the puddle-jumpers like Domaine aren’t in the game quite yet. In a year or so it’ll likely be fine, but right now there’s some bum clenching going on for some in the throes of delivery 🙂.

We think that in more than a few cases the big brands moving to Shopify are doing so due to a lack of real alternatives, making the same number of compromises they’d have made 10yrs ago with Magento, but with less risk. Those mourning the lack of competition need to see this for what it is - just another part of the cycle.

Hiding the AI for now

In watching and engaging with the LLM noise, I can see parallels with early web & eCom. Only a few had good information (for Google then read OpenAI now), and they are keeping it closely guarded.

As ChatGPT teases product feeds, and integrates directly with key platforms that it sees as strategic, many software vendors and customers are wondering what the near future looks like. Those winning short term are those where AI is “hidden”. Look at Vercel for high growth and deeply embedded AI… but positioned as an infrastructure play rather than anything groundbreaking. Content is in turmoil, with the CMS market in some confusion as rumours abound that GPT will be the last website we ever need or see. Figma's integration with builder.io looks like a genius move for any designer looking for a new place to deliver value

We’d always place a bet on humanity and ingenuity over automation, but with AI’s intelligence somewhere above my own, maybe the dad jokes will outpace my own soon.