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- ASR Sunday Brief #7
ASR Sunday Brief #7
What Shopify operators were talking about this week
From the founder:
Welcome back to the ASR Sunday Brief - issue #7.
Quick Mantle follow-up: the replies keep coming in, and the most interesting thread is app teams using the wind-down as an excuse to build the internal tooling they always meant to build. That same instinct showed up in this week's brand intent data - see the pattern of the week below.
Like this newsletter? Forward this email to another brand operator or app developer!
Welcome to the brand network
These are a few brand operators that joined us this week:
Todd H. — Finance · Sports & Recreation · Plus plan
Jim M. — Owner, United States · Sports & Recreation · Advanced plan
Simon W. — Owner · Sports & Recreation · Plus plan
Start a project to meet these participants and others like them.
Built with the network
Worth pausing on. Reviewers.com went live this week - and part of why we're highlighting it is that the product was shaped by conversations that ran through app store research.
Chief Business Officer Natasha Shine-Zirkel ran 60+ discovery interviews with DTC brands and Shopify agencies on our network as they were building - Shopify merchants from six-figure to multi-million dollar GMV, plus 20+ growth and dev agencies.
Real, unbiased conversations with merchants who'd never touched the product before. Pricing, features, and positioning all sharpened through iteration between batches. As Natasha put it on LinkedIn: "By launch day, we weren't making educated guesses anymore."
If you were one of the operators on those calls - thank you. This is exactly how the network is supposed to work.
What it does. Most stores have a review problem nobody names out loud: the reviews exist, but they're all text. Text reviews convert. Video reviews convert better, and they can run as ads.
Reviewers.com gets you authentic video reviews on demand - gift your products to a vetted reviewer community, receive ready-to-publish video screened for lighting, audio, and camera presence, and use it anywhere with full commercial rights: Meta ads, TikTok, on-site, or inside any reviews app.
Two ways in:
Merchants: start a 30-day trial to run your first campaign free, and lock in 25% off your subscription →
Agencies and app teams: the Reviewers.com partner program is now open - apply to become a partner →
Popular projects last week
Seeking Shopify founders who develop and launch their own branded products
Research Call · Incentive: $100 · 45 mins
Seeking founders or ecommerce managers at influencer-led brands
Research Call · Incentive: $100 · 45 mins
Looking for retention marketers at high SKU Shopify brands
Research Call · Incentive: $150 · 45 mins
Pattern of the week
Something new showed up in the data this week.
Three operators, in separate submissions, described building their own internal tooling before evaluating any app for the same job. One is integrating Claude directly with Shopify for daily operations and reporting. Another built order reconciliation, returns monitoring, and forecasting workflows on no-code automation tools - and is now looking at where apps might augment what he's already made. A third is refining internal AI processes to free strategic time from execution.
For most of the last decade, operators looked for the right app to solve a problem. This week we started seeing operators solve it first, then decide whether an app was worth adding on top.
If you're building instead of buying right now, you're not alone.
New App Reviews
Our brand network frequently writes reviews for apps they use. These reviews are visible from all Shopify app accounts under the App reviews tab.
1. ShipTection
Reviewer: Owner, Home & Gifts
Operator liked | Didn't like |
|---|---|
Easy for employees to use day-to-day | Ultimately left for a different tech stack |
Great company to work with | Not as effective as competitors at addressing a wide range of needs |
Trusted through 1–2 years of use before switching |
2. PushOwl & Brevo: Email, Push
Reviewer: Owner, Themes & Development
Operator liked | Didn't like |
|---|---|
Very effective for abandoned cart recovery and push campaigns | Room for improvement in advanced personalization and analytics |
Easy setup and seamless Shopify integration across stores | Deeper customer insights and better attribution tracking needed |
Reliable automation flows for cart, browse, and back-in-stock | Would benefit from reduced script dependency for high-traffic stores |
Clean UI with strong segmentation for targeted campaigns | Deeper integration with Shopify Functions and Checkout Extensibility would help |
3. Loyoly – Loyalty and Referral
Reviewer: Owner, Sports & Recreation
Operator liked | Didn't like |
|---|---|
Easy setup and onboarding | Integrations with email/CRM/subscriptions aren't deep enough |
Smooth Shopify integration, quick launch with minimal technical work | Limits automation across the broader stack |
From the Feed This Week
Three reads worth your time this week:
Ben Francis, CEO @ Gymshark - on why the hardest part of building a company isn't the building — it's the starting →
Chirag Shah, CFO @ Nature's Bakery - on five years at a brand acquired by Mars, and what actually changes after the acquisition dust settles →
Amelia Christie-Miller, CEO & Founder @ Bold Bean Co - on starting a food brand in March 2020 while her employer's restaurant supply business collapsed around her →
Join our private communities
Join the ASR Brand Operator Slack
Private discussions for Shopify brands. Apply to join →
Join the ASR Shopify App Slack
For Shopify app founders. Apply to join →
Photo of the week
Brian Chesky and the early Airbnb team at their first San Francisco office, ca. 2008 - the Rausch Street loft they also slept in. The version of the story people forget: no marketplace platform existed for what they wanted to build, so they wrote it themselves before investors ever gave them a chance. Same instinct showing up in our network this week - operators building the tooling they need before anyone offers to sell it to them.
See you next week.
Jon and team
— app store research
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