Last week we attended Modern Commerce in Charleston, South Carolina. This two-day event hosted by eHouse Studios and Shopify Plus was jam-packed with information on building a successful business. There was a great turnout, with around 200 Shopify merchants attending the event.
It was great to see such a diverse group of merchants — there was a range of large and small companies all using Shopify to grow their e-commerce businesses, and merchants from all over the country.
Of course Charleston was well represented, which makes sense given it’s history of trade. In fact, the conference was just a couple of blocks from Charleston’s historic U.S. Customs House built in the mid-nineteenth century. We had to stop by for a photo.
This was a great event for networking. We loved seeing the speakers mingling with the attendees. There were opportunities for attendees to talk with the speakers on a one-on-one basis, so if you wanted to talk to a speaker, you could! It was really cool to see everyone talking and sharing knowledge, and even introducing and referring people to others to network with.
On the first day our own Ashley Spiker moderated a breakout panel on Managing Hypergrowth and Breaking Things Along the Way. This discussion featured two panelists, Danny Taing of Bokksu and Carl Protsch of FLEO Shorts.
The audience was very engaged and came away from the panel with a lot of knowledge to think on. There were a ton of questions for Danny and Carl the next two days.
On the second day, Refersion’s Erica Roth introduced Hannah Coffman and Robbi Webb of Amika to talk about A New Approach to Affiliate Marketing. Hannah and Robbi spoke about how they use a custom solution from Refersion to grow their influencer network, and the specific e-commerce challenges they face as a beauty brand known for their salon and hairstylist referrals, and how they are building a winning influencer team. The conversation was lively and you could definitely see the gears turning as the audience listened to Hannah and Robbi’s examples.
There were some really amazing and unique speakers at Modern Commerce, including Helen Nightingale of Draper James, who presented Dress for Success: How One Dress Changed Our Business. Helen used the example of how they had Reese Witherspoon appear on one of their ads, and how big of a success it was.
Stone Crandall and Sam Goff of Magnolia had the audience in stitches with their comedic discussion about failing smarter.
We also heard from Todd Wilson of Gerber Childrenswear who talked about the value of hiring an expert, and Brian Goulet of The Goulet Pen Company about creating great content that people want.
What made this conference extra special was how Chris Quinn and the eHouse Studio team put everything the right context from the very start. Things kicked off with the announcement that Chris has been nominated for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Woman of the Year.
Chris spoke passionately about how important this cause is to her, and ended day one with everyone getting to meet the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Girl of the Year, Elia Ikonomidis, and her mother, Ashley. Elia was wonderful to meet and did a great job as an ambassador for the cause.
If you’d like to learn more and support Chris in this amazing cause, check out her nominee page.
