headless commerce

Andrei Rebrov has worked in the technology field for more than 15 years. 

He is the CTO and Co-Founder of Scentbird, a subscription service for perfumes and colognes, and has helped it grow to more than 500,000 active subscribers. 

At Scentbird, Andrei was responsible for building early versions of the platform, growing a remote engineering team and making sure that the company has technology advantages in every department, from marketing to operations. 

He is also a startup adviser in various industries, from aerospace to video games. 

Prior to Scentbird Andrei worked as an agile engineering coach, helping various companies with their technology. 

Prior to that he worked as a software engineer for UBS Investment Bank and Avis UK.

In This Conversation We Discuss: 

• [00:00] Intro
• [00:59] What is Scentbird?
• [01:41] Where the idea of Scentbird came from
• [02:54] Implementing a trial run of a subscription
• [03:47] The initial batch of shipments
• [04:35] Andrei’s background before being a startup founder
• [05:55] Learning agile late in the career
• [06:21] When you should focus on agile
• [07:38] Knowing when you are onto something
• [08:37] The growing pains that Scentbird experienced
• [09:56] Sponsor: Electric Eye electriceye.io/connect
• [10:53] Sponsor: Sendlane sendlane.com/honest
• [12:27] Build vs buy: Where Andrei draws the line
• [13:51] What is composable commerce?
• [14:55] Only go headless when you really need it
• [16:20] Start small and don’t make unnecessary changes
• [17:10] Traditional Ecom vs Subscriptions
• [19:30] Where to support Scentbird
• [19:57] Working with 2 different tech stacks
• [20:53] Look for things to complement your business
• [21:55] The advantages of acquiring an additional business

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• Date perfumes before marrying them. Explore over 600 designer fragrances. scentbird.com
• Connect with linkedin.com/in/andrebrov
• Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect
• Schedule your free consultation with a Sendlane expert sendlane.com/honest

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Web-to-Print, E-Commerce, Mass Customization: Wo der Printformer von rissc zum Einsatz kommt, dreht sich meist alles um die Personalisierung von (Print-)Produkten. Dabei ist die Ludwigburger IT-Schmiede ganz klassisch – und abseits der Druckindustrie – in der Welt der Bits und Bytes gestartet. Warum rissc aus dem Onlineprint heute nicht mehr wegzudenken und die Zukunft im W2P „headless“ und „mobile“ ist, verrät rissc-Gründer und -CEO Alex Sperrfechter in der neuen Folge der Zippers Insights.  

Auf "Zippers Insights" präsentiert Bernd Zipper, CEO der zipcon consulting und Blogger bei beyond-print.de, gemeinsam mit interessanten Gesprächspartnern aktuelle Themen aus dem Print-Bereich. Mehr Infos und der Podcast zum nachlesen auf www.beyondprint.de
#zipcon #berndzipper #beyondprint #webtoprint #onlineprint #print

Welcome to the LAST episode of Step by Step Season 8! We’re wrapping up the series with Tyson Graham, and will be covering the nuts and bolts of what makes headless interesting.  Listen now!

Headless Needs a Real Head

• What you want is optionality, but there is another level that isn’t just a first-party option in your eCommerce tech stack. there is an entire level we haven't thought about as an option.
• “People don’t buy protocols, they buy products.” – Phillip
• There are some advantages of headless in a world where legacy technology is really just slowing down in a sense, and the world is speeding up.
• “We realized that there needs to be a head for headless that everyone can use, so the agnostic sort of storefront really is the head for headless. The advantages with optionality means that you can switch things in and out as you need them.” –Tyson
• Like a myth or ghost story, headless is very similar. There can be a lot of misinformation spread.
• “The unique aspect of your brand as a merchant is that experience. The thing you own is the experience. You're not different because you have a subscription to X-provider. You're not different because you're using a certain CMS, you're different and memorable and ultimately creating value for yourself and shareholders and customers because of that experience.” –Tyson
• If you have the right setup, you can zig when others are zagging, but you can’t do that without the right technologies in place.

Associated Links:

• Want to learn more about going beyond headless? Download our free Step by Step guide!
• Get connected with Fabric!
• Learn more about Tyson Graham and Vue Storefront
• Listen to our other Step by Step seasons
• Find our other Future Commerce episodes on our website

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Living in a Headless World 

• Bryan Mahoney is back today to talk about recent news at Chord such as launching Chord Commerce Hub
• “We see Chord Commerce Hub as the mission control for business users.” -Bryan
• If you’re trying to be efficient, you’re doing it wrong. The right way is oftentimes the hard way.
• “The core tenant of headless for me, is taking a first-principles approach to building. It's not the technology behind it. It's that it obviates you to have to build, starting with no assumptions and starting with the questions: who do we want to be and what do we want our identity to look like.” -Phillip
• In order to build a great business, you have to understand your customer
• “You understand your customer with data and not tricking them into making a purchase by following them around the internet, but really collecting great data, being upfront about the data that you're collecting, and then using that data to make better experiences.” -Bryan M.

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Bryan Mahoney and Chord
• The Family Board Meeting
• Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce
• Tune into Infinite Shelf Season 2!

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Drew Lau talks with Oleg Sapishchuk and Peter Schmalfeldt about Headless, PWA & Composable Commerce.

Discussion Links:

› Accelerate
› State of DevOps 2021
› PWA Kit Docs
› PWA Kit GitHub

▬ Content ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

00:00 - Intro
01:05 - Drew, can you introduce yourself?
02:17 - What is your relationship with Headless?
03:18 - How do you define Headless Commerce?
09:24 - What are the Pros and Cons of Headless Commerce?
12:32 - Team Structure Considerations
16:01 - Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps
17:53 - Is Headless a Natural Progression for E-Commerce?
19:56 - What does Salesforce have to offer for Headless?
22:50 - Headless Continuous Integration
26:25 - Flexibility of Headless Development Team
29:26 - Where can I learn more about Headless & PWA?
31:39 - What is Composable Commerce?
35:20 - How to Transition to Headless?
38:58 - How does A/B Testing work with Headless?
40:48 - Where do you see the Future of Headless?
46:40 - What is your Message to the Community?

▬ Guest ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Drew Lau

› LinkedIn
› Twitter

▬ Hosts ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Oleg Sapishchuk

› Twitter
› LinkedIn
› Github
› Website

Peter Schmalfeldt

› Website
› Work

▬ About ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Welcome to the Unofficial Salesforce Commerce Cloud Podcast. We created this Podcast to give everyone access to each other to share ideas and help one another. It also offers members a place to discuss, listen and watch Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud in a free and open environment.

› YouTube
› Playlist

On Headless, Influencers, and Live Streaming

• What does digital marketing attribution look like if there are no cookies? And what are people doing in response to this? Frantic behavior. 
• “Frantic behavior can be exciting because that means there is opportunity to be part of the solution.” - Gary
• Product market fit is beginning to become influencer fit. Consumers want to buy from experiences and from influencers they trust. Having a “genuine influencer” promote something to a consumer doesn’t take a lot of convincing.
• The law of platforms is always evolving. 
• “The platform always evolves where its ecosystem performs R&D for it, and then it makes its strategic bets and product roadmap based on what's getting market share, and in this case, capital allocation.” -Phillip

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Gary Benerofe
• Check out our interview with Lomi’s Matt Bertulli
• The Cookiepocolypse and the Zero-Party Data Opportunity with Ben Parr
• Our interview with Liyia Wu from ShopShops
• Subscribe to Insiders
• Sign up for the prerelease of Nine By Nine
• End of episode Com Truise tunes

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

In this week's episode of Southern Fried eCommerce, Jay and Executive Producer, Emily discuss their eCommerce opinions that might not be part of the majority. They might be hot takes that change with time, but definitely topics worth discussing now.
They cover a few hot takes that have been on their mind, including: 

• PWAs and their potential to become an outdated idea quickly
• Why SMS Marketing is a pain for Millenials
• Headless commerce and how it's not a fit for most brands
• Desktop hamburger menus being terrible for user experience

Don't Forget To Subscribe, Rate & Review! Check us out online at eystudios.com. Also, be sure to follow us on social media for more updates from the studio @eystudios.

The Big Pivot: From Physical Products to Headless Commerce

• The core idea of the pivot from physical products to software was the basis of our piece in Insiders #070: Phenomenological Brands, which is how we booked Arfa (now Chord) to the Show.
• The Chord team’s background in deploying technology at Glossier informed the need for unique eCommerce experiences, and headless represents a shift from the template-driven sameness of eCommerce today, to a new limitless future
• Henry breaks down a new announcement, the name change from Arfa to Chord, a stronger  focus on business software, as well as acquiring business intelligence company, Yaguara.
• Arfa was rated as #4 in our “Amazon Prime Challengers” category in our Spring 2020 Nine by Nine report
• The technological evolution of headless commerce allows for a fundamental revolution in direct to consumer 
• “To make real value at some point, you’ve got to walk away from something that's worth something.” - Henry 
• Proprietary competitive advantage is a meaningful way to make your entire business better, and what will impact everything else.
• “We need to move the conversation beyond build versus buy. It's really buy the right thing and then build around it. And if you can't build around it, then it's not the right thing.” - Bryan M.
• “Our very unique position on this is not just about headless, it's about the brain as well. Having the tools is half the battle. Knowing what to do with them is the other half. And that's our very strong position that we arrived at as operators.” - Henry 

Associated Links:

• Nine by Nine Report
• https://chord.co/
• https://www.glossier.com/

Let us know what you think on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at Hello@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!

Kelly Goetsch is the Chief Product Officer of commercetools and responsible for the overall product visions for the e-commerce platform. 

In this episode, we talk with Kelly about the core principles of commercetools, the next big thing in online retail and his very own learnings on being a leader.

Carter Morgan (@carterthecomic) and Stephanie Wong (@stephr_wong) are back this week with another episode of the SaaS Podcast! This week, we're speaking with Field CTO Steve Mayzak about Elastic and how they're perfecting the thorough search of data in distributed systems.

Steve starts the show explaining the role of a Field CTO and how he helps develop strategies for the future of Elastic. He describes the function of Elastic in detail, sharing that the search capabilities they've developed can do anything from satisfy your curiosity on Wikipedia to protecting submarines from attack. Whether it's online shopping, sifting through years of web logs, or detecting threats to your project, people expect to find exactly what they're looking for fast, and Elastic has the power to do that.

Later, we talk about why open source is so important to Elastic and how it led to the development of programs like Logstash, software that can manipulate and search through logs, Kibana, software that improves UI and simplifies data organization for any system, and Endpoint, security software that searches out threats to the system. Steve talks about real-life use cases of these Elastic products and how companies like car manufacturers can use the system to predict machine maintenance, thus decreasing downtime. We discuss the future of Elastic and learn how these use cases influence future product development.

We wrap up the show with a detailed discussion of the Elastic stack, including the technologies they use to keep the system running smoothly, ensure data is well indexed and organized, and perfect the scalability of Elastic. Steve talks about roadblocks the company has faced and the solutions they found, as well as Covid-specific changes they've made and how they're helping other companies deal with issues caused by the global pandemic. He offers advice for companies now facing this work-from-home scenario and ways to run efficient teams no matter their location, as well as the future of data management.

Episode Links:
Elastic
Elasticsearch
Logstash
Kibana
Elastic Security

Stephanie Wong (@stephr_wong) and Carter Morgan (@carterthecomic) are back with another episode of How I Launched this: A SaaS Story! This week, they're talking to DataStax Chief Product Officer, Ed Anuff, about how the company has managed to create massively scalable databases capable of running on any cloud platform. 

Ed starts the show by explaining the inspiration for DataStax and why they chose Apache Cassandra to build their software. At DataStax, they recognized the need for packaged software to allow businesses to harness the power of data securely, and their appreciation for open source software meant Apache Cassandra was the perfect fit.

Later in the show, we talk about the evolution of DataStax and Cassandra and how they've changed as technology has evolved. Ed talks about their newest offering, DataStax Astra, explaining the ways it allows Cassandra to work efficiently in the cloud. Specifically, Ed details Astra's scale-out capability and how it's handled on different cloud platforms, including Google.

The show wraps up with a look at the future of SaaS and the technologies Ed believes will  become more and more popular. He makes the point that as technology continues to advance, developers will need to think more about integration of products and services.

Episode Links:
DataStax
Apache Cassandra
DataStax Astra
Envoy
DataStax on GitHub
DataStax Blog
DataStax Academy
DataStax Documentation

Welcome to How I Launched This: A SaaS Story from Google Cloud. SaaS embraces the full potential of the Cloud and is arguably changing the way organizations work. Each episode, Stephanie Wong (@stephr_wong) and Carter Morgan (@carterthecomic) will go in-depth on a different SaaS story, sharing the initial challenges, approaches, and ultimate impact various global leaders have faced implementing their own SaaS solutions. Stay tuned to learn more about SaaS, the technologies being employed, other lessons learned and stories from industry leaders all over the world. Stories like sustainable futures, full-stack monitoring, AIOps and headless commerce.

If you want to keep up to date with the latest on SaaS, Google Cloud and this show, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, follow Google Cloud on Twitter and give us a share. Reach out to Carter and Stephanie with suggestions, comments and questions to keep the conversation going online. Check out each episodes show notes for more information, rate and review our show on Apple Podcast and stay tuned for our frequent releases. 

We'll see you next time.

Kelly Vaughn is the founder of The Taproom. A full-service Shopify and Shopify Plus agency based in Atlanta, Georgia. A twitter star in the developer's world, Kelly chats about headless commerce and how she self-taught herself to code aged 11. 

Sponsored By:

• The Point of Sale Store
• Rewind.io

Links:

• The Taproom
• Milk Bottle Labs