Thomas Gleeson

Co-Founder @storeheroapp helping DTC Brands grow profitability

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

Last night’s queue right before kick-off at Shopify New York 👇

Our biggest turnout yet, not entirely surprised given the topic at hand and the speaker lineup.

AI is front and centre in every conversation right now, not just in DTC, but across every industry.

In DTC alone, I’m seeing it used for everything from creative ideation and ad copy, to building complex Excel formats and onsite merchandising etc!

Huge thanks to our speakers last night — @obviceo , @johnhickey1970 , Chris Maliwat — and the brilliant @Velstar_ duo, Joe Lyon & Greg Hughes, who flew in from the UK and will be around NY all week.

We’re closing in on 800 members in the DTC Builders New York group. If you're in NYC, get involved — some big events coming up 👊

https://t.co/xIA0lnJJuP

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@DsMatie @judgeme @celispj Can you send this across? 😀

[Taylor Holiday @TaylorHoliday]

"GET YOUR ASS INTO THE SimGym!"

- Unc Tobi

Easily the most interesting feature that @Shopify announced today in their Winter '26 Edition was the "SimGym". It allows you to unleash thousands of AI personas on your store to test changes before a real human ever sees them.

Driving the cost of learning to zero.

Here are the 10 simulations to run on Day 1 to improve your contribution margin:

1. The Elasticity Stress Test: Take your top 5 bestsellers. Simulate a 5%, 10%, and 15% price increase. Find the exact breaking point where the drop in conversion rate outweighs the gain in margin dollars.

2. The Free Shipping "Thresholdbreaker": If your free shipping threshold is $75, simulate moving it to $100, $125, and $150. Find the maximum AOV lift the AI will tolerate before cart abandonment spikes.

3. The Offer Structure Deathmatch: Stop arguing about whether "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" is better than "25% Off." Run the sim. Which offer generates more net profit dollars (not just revenue) after accounting for the cost of goods?

4. The "Discount Detox": Simulate turning off your 10% welcome pop-up completely. Does the increase in full-margin sales outweigh the drop in list growth and conversion?

5. The Aggressive Cross-Sell: How much friction can you add to the cart? Test aggressive, multi-step upsell flows in checkout. Find the line between "AOV boost" and "rage quit."

6. The Returns Policy Squeeze: Simulate a stricter return policy (e.g., adding a small restocking fee or shorter windows). If front-end conversion only drops 0.5% but you save 4 points of margin on returns, that’s a massive win.

7. Merchandising for Margin (Not Volume): Re-sort your collection pages to prioritize your highest % margin products first, rather than your bestsellers. Does demand shift profitably, or do users bounce?

8. The "Subscription Default": Simulate making "Subscribe & Save" the pre-selected default option on PDPs instead of "One-time purchase." Measure the impact on immediate conversion vs. projected LTV.

9. The High-Ticket Lander Validation: Before you drive paid traffic to a new bundle page designed to spike AOV, run it through the simulator against your standard PDP. Validate the economics before you validate the ad spend.

10. SKU Rationalization Sim: Take your lowest margin SKU. Simulate deleting it entirely. Does that demand shift to a higher margin alternative, or does it leave the store?

eCom is moving from a creative industry to an engineering discipline. Stop guessing. Start simulating.

This is a huge step in progressive truth.

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@TaylorHoliday This model is basically non existent in Europe

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@KanishDigital 👋

[Edward Upton @eUpton]

Every week I hear: “We're trying a new attribution tool.”

And every time I think, “That won’t fix your signal.”

StoreHero’s guide to tracking puts numbers to the problem:

Browser-based tracking is now missing 30-40 % of conversion events.

Ad blockers, ITP, cookie limits, browser lockdowns. The browser is the weakest link in your data pipeline.

Attribution tools do not fix that.
They analyse the data. They do not repair it.

If your tracking is:
❌ Leaky
❌ Incomplete
❌ Blocked

…then every ROAS model you build on top is already wrong.

The sequence has to be:

1. Fix the signal
Move tracking server-side so every Shopify checkout, subscription, and upsell is captured, even when the browser drops out.

This is exactly where Littledata focuses: a reliable server-side Shopify data layer that ad platforms can trust.

2. Then layer attribution on top
Tools like StoreHero become far more useful once the inputs are accurate. That is when you get real answers to:

✔ Are these campaigns actually profitable?
✔ What is our true ROAS once costs are included?
✔ How much can we afford to spend to acquire a new customer?

❌ Bad signal → Bad attribution → Wasted spend
✅ Clean signal + Profit clarity → Sustainable scale

Thank you to Thomas Gleeson for including Littledata in the guide. Worth a read: https://t.co/mF8JsO40XM

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@DanSheard @jordantwestecom @StoreHeroApp 👊

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@jforjacob I was just about to suggest matrixiy here. Not ideal and a big hacky.

Good feature request though, will get this added asap

[Harley Finkelstein @harleyf]

Curious what people are buying this Black Friday? Just talked about it on @CNN Early Start

Nice job @aloyoga, @cozyearth, Merit

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@andrewjfaris I would add the cogs\gm% line is always usually wide open for 90% of brands to save a few %.

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@andrewjfaris Where do you typically put agency fees out of curiosity? We get so many varying opinions on this one.

[tobi lutke @tobi]

Big week for all commerce / retail entrepreneurs. Let’s go.

[Irlandarra @aldamu_jo]

Hungary 🇭🇺 2 Ireland 🇮🇪 3

Ireland has qualified for the World Cup playoffs with a goal in the 96th minute.

Congratulations Ireland!!

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

slack down?

[Taylor Holiday @TaylorHoliday]

The next wave of 9 figure exits in eCommerce won’t be Brands, SaaS or agencies. They’ll be SEANs — Software Enabled AgeNcies.

The line between software and service is disappearing, and a new hybrid model is emerging in its place. A SEAN combines the scalability and predictability of SaaS with the human leverage and outcome-orientation of an agency.

It’s the inevitable result of two business models, software and agency, collapsing into one. (And yes, the name is a wink to DTC Twitter’s favorite @seanfrank, because he is the hired spokesperson for every “SEAN”.)

The convergence is a result of tectonic shifts in our landscape. SaaS is under pressure. In the mid-market and lower tiers of eCommerce, the expectation of value per dollar is so high that monetizing pure software has become nearly impossible. The dream of self-serve software, like Slack, where users can derive value in a completely autonomous manner doesn't exist. Most brands can’t extract value from software without guidance. And the truth is they don’t want tools; they want outcomes.

At the same time, agencies are evolving. AI and automation have made them faster, leaner, and more consistent. Internal tools, scripts, and proprietary systems are replacing headcount. The best agencies now behave like SaaS products, predictable, scalable, and data-driven. But they also possess a critical feature that most SAAS doesn't, accountability for the outcome.

These two forces are colliding. SaaS companies are adding services: onboarding, customer success, weekly strategy calls. Agencies are adding software: proprietary dashboards, AI layers, internal platforms. Both are converging on the same destination, SEAN. Modern examples include Haus, Fulfill, Fermat, Saras Analytics, Icon and US (CTC) each blending automation, software, and human expertise into a single, productized experience.

The economics are the key to understanding what is happening. SaaS was prized for revenue quality and scale, predictable ARR, great retention, and strong LTV/CAC (3:1). SEANs achieve similar economics through a slightly different route and with slightly less total scale. Gross margins drop from 90% to something closer to 60-70% as you add the human component, but net revenue retention still exceeds 100%, growth rates remain healthy, and operating expenses shrink thanks to AI and systemization. The market rewarded SaaS not for its form but for its financial model, and SEANs can come close to replicating that performance through a hybrid structure.

The benefit of eCom SAAS becoming SEAN's is that it reframes the pricing comparison for brands. Currently, SaaS sells into a brand’s software budget, maybe 1–3% of revenue. Agencies sell into the labor budget, often more like 10–12%. SEANs have the potential to reframe pricing around labor replacement, not software cost, expanding TAM and aligning pricing with true value delivered.

Investors are beginning to see it too. Many “SaaS” businesses are actually SEANs pretending to be pure software for the multiple, but the market is catching up. SAAS multiples are experiencing compression. Meanwhile, agencies that leverage technology are seeing multiple expansion as their margin and predictability increase. The two curves are converging toward a shared financial reality.

Ultimately, customers don’t care whether it’s software or service, they care if it works. The delivery model that can guarantee outcomes through automation, human intelligence, and proprietary systems will win.

The best SaaS companies will look like agencies. The best agencies will look like SaaS. The winners will be SEANs, Software Enabled AgeNcies, owning the middle ground where revenue quality meets operational leverage and customer's take home the lion's share of surplus value creation.

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

After a lot of conversations with StoreHero customers, I decided to put together a quick blog on new customer offers! (low CAC is not your friend)

https://t.co/P0ioEvUJtr

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@lukebelmar Scam

[Thomas Gleeson @GleesonThomas]

@johnhickey1970 @michael_upstack @ChrisLangSocial 👋

[Des Traynor @destraynor]

Stellar article by @collision detailing how the Irish government is now just a bloated mess that does nothing, slowly

All progress stalls due to an epidemic of committees, NGOs, Quangos all of whom myopically focus on self preservation and local metrics.

https://t.co/xxJuYM8TKm