Happy Thursday!

Harley is the President of Shopify, co-founder of Firebelly Tea, and one of the few people who sees spend across millions of stores in real time.

A year or two ago, he walked on stage for the Q4 Summit with data from 18,000 consumers and a take I fully agree with: "The brands that are beloved by consumers are killing it. The brands that are not beloved by consumers are not."

By the way, a week from today, next Thursday, September 24th, we are hosting the 2026 Q4 Summit! Grab a free brand ticket on this link and join 300+ brand executives next week. Building affiliate programs, Q4 offer programming, building AI landing pages, and more you don’t want to miss. Grab a ticket here!

Vendor of the Week

Onward — Give customers a better experience without taking it out of your margin.

If you've ever had someone email to change their shipping address and then email again because the order shipped before your team got to it, you know how frustrating the experience is for everyone involved. The customer just wants their order to show up at the right place, and you're paying someone to go back and forth on something they should have been able to fix themselves.

Onward has developed an entire platform to address issues like these to increase your profitability and free up your team’s time. They let customers manage their own orders after checkout inside a nice branded order tracking page. They also have a claims team to resolve covered delivery issues so your CX team doesn't have to chase those down either.

If you use their Checkout+ order upgrade, you get the software at no additional cost. Customers can choose to pay a small fee at checkout for benefits you select (delivery protection, free return-shipping, CashBack credit, etc). It gives the customer a reason to come back and shop with you again.

Equinox's retail business saw an 18% reduction in CX tickets and more than $200k in financial impact at no cost, according to Onward's case study. Onward also uses customer scoring to give trusted customers faster approvals while adding verification for higher-risk claims, instead of putting everyone through the same process.

“It makes the user experience better because everything’s easier and gets taken care of faster. It’s a seamless flow to a resolution for any kind of problem there is. Giving our team the time back allows us to go from savers to revenue drivers.” Becca Briggs — Senior Retail Director, Equinox

If you're looking at how much you're spending to support each order, I'd have Onward walk you through it with your own setup in mind. Right now, you'll get a $100 gift card just for attending. And if you're one of the first 10 to book, order editing is free for life. Book a demo with Onward here.

Get Smarter about CTV

This isn't a session about why CTV works. We already know it works. This is about who's in the room to make it actionable.

Kira Federer runs SMB Advertising Marketing at Paramount and can tell you exactly how CTV works as a self-service, measurable channel, not just a brand play.

Jessica Pelligra, founder of The Marketing Sanctum, is the operator who turns that into an actual campaign.

I'm bringing them both into one session to give you the platform view, the execution view, and a Q4 playbook you can hand your team by Friday.

Join us live.

What Every DTC Brand Should Know Before Q4

Harley opened with numbers. Ecommerce is 15% of total retail in Canada, 18% to 20% in the US, 25% in the UK. His words: we're still at the hotel getting dressed for the game. From the 18,000-shopper survey: 18 to 24 year olds are the most likely group to increase holiday spending. The two biggest loyalty drivers: discounting and free shipping.

Then he got into the part I care about most: how a three-person brand beats a company with a hundred times the budget.

You do things that don't scale. You lean on novelty, which he calls the single most powerful marketing tactic on the planet, ahead of any ad or discount. And you stop assuming your biggest channel is the one you already have.

Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple

What I pulled from this one:

1. Holiday shopping starts in June now. One in five holiday shoppers builds their list before the end of June. 55% of younger US shoppers finish by the end of November. Five years ago the cliff was December 18. If your BFCM plan starts in October, you're late.

2. Free shipping is a loyalty driver, at 41%. Everybody knows it lifts conversion. Almost nobody expected it to rank second only to discounting for loyalty. Treat it like scarcity: offer it rarely, announce it loudly, and give people a reason to buy now instead of in January.

3. Novelty beats any discount. Gymshark turned their site off for BFCM and bet they'd make more on the Wednesday before and the Tuesday after. You don't have to go that far. New variants, new colors, new bundle names, a co-branded drop. Cheap to launch, and it gives people something to talk about.

4. Delight equals expectation minus reality. Big retail reset everyone's expectations to low. A personal thank-you note after a first big order, a birthday surprise, a real human on the other end of the email. Nobody at scale can do this. You can, and that person tells five friends.

5. Your biggest channel might be one you haven't turned on. Roblox, YouTube affiliates, TikTok Shop, Target .com through Shopify. Harley's rule: you can't just turn it on and walk away. Turn it on, study the data weekly, and double down on what moves. Set it and forget it is how you wake up three months later wondering what changed.

That's all for today

Harley's point about founder mode stuck with me: the founders who win are the ones in the weeds of their own business, testing every tool themselves instead of trusting another brand's verdict.

Ninety-seven percent of people skip a channel because someone else said it didn't work. Be in the other 3%.

It's Thursday, and it's all downhill from here. Get some rest, drink some water, and I'll see you next week at the Q4 Summit!

Nik