Tagged: shopify
30 results
Harish Abbott: Building the AI Teammate Rewiring Global Logistics
On Joe Lonsdale's American Optimist podcast, serial entrepreneur and billionaire Harish Abbott, co-founder and CEO of Augment, explains how his AI teammate 'Auggie' is transforming the fragmented $10 trillion global logistics industry. Abbott, who previously built Deliverr (sold to Shopify for roughly $2.1 billion) and helped build Amazon's fulfillment network, argues that AI's reasoning models and expanding context windows finally make it possible to automate the endless emails, phone calls, and texts that move freight. Auggie already helps manage roughly $25 billion in freight, works 24/7 across email, phone, Telegram and WhatsApp, and follows written workflows like a human employee. Abbott lays out a massive opportunity: not just tens of billions in productivity gains, but a $300 billion U.S. (nearly $1 trillion global) chance to cut waste from an industry hobbled by low-bandwidth, asynchronous communication.
Josh Tabaj
Josh Tabaj is the Chief Marketing Officer and one of four co-founders of Branded Bills, the Arizona headwear and apparel company that turned a hand-branded leather patch into a national custom-merchandise business. Branded Bills started around 2015 in a Mesa garage with a branding iron, a knife, and roughly $1,000 from each founder; its first patch hat went to a South Dakota brewery. The company grew from state-pride hats into a vertically integrated operation that sources and produces its own headwear, runs a custom and corporate-branding division, sells officially licensed collegiate gear, opened its first physical store inside the Phoenix Suns' Footprint Center in 2022, and moved into a 96,000-plus square foot Tempe headquarters in 2025. Tabaj handles the marketing side of that machine - the brand voice, the customer story, and the argument that a logo deserves better than a screen print.
Bandit Running
Bandit Running is a Brooklyn-born, community-first performance running brand founded in 2020 by Tim and Nick West with designer Ardith Singh. Starting with a single pair of cushioned running socks packed by hand, Bandit grew through New York run clubs into a full head-to-toe running apparel line - shorts, tights, singlets, sports bras, socks and lifestyle wear - sold direct-to-consumer. The brand is known for co-designing product with its running community, high social engagement, and The Unsponsored Project, which backs professional runners without shoe deals. Bandit raised a $14.25M Series A in 2023.
Branded Bills
Branded Bills is an Arizona-based premium headwear and apparel company that started in a garage in 2015 with a branding iron, a knife, and a leather patch hat. It grew from one-of-one state-pride caps into a direct-to-consumer and business-to-business brand offering custom and stock hats, apparel, and corporate branding. The company has sold more than $50 million of product, employs roughly 200 people, and operates the first Branded Bills retail store inside the Phoenix Suns' Footprint Center.
Brixton
Brixton is a California-based lifestyle apparel and headwear brand founded in a Oceanside garage in 2004. Named after The Clash song 'The Guns of Brixton,' it started with a single vintage-inspired newsboy cap and grew into a full line of hats, clothing and accessories inspired by heritage workwear - from mariners and aviators to cowboys and laborers. Distributed in more than 30 countries and backed by Altamont Capital Partners, Brixton blends classic silhouettes with modern function and a growing commitment to sustainable materials.
BYLT Basics
BYLT Basics is a Southern California premium apparel brand that reengineers everyday wardrobe staples - tees, polos, joggers and outerwear - with heavier, longer-lasting performance fabrics and tailored fits. Founded in 2016 by Eric Mear, who was frustrated that basic black T-shirts fell apart after a few washes, the direct-to-consumer label built its reputation on its flagship Drop-Cut silhouette and has grown into an omnichannel business spanning men's, women's and kids' lines sold online, in retail stores, and at wholesale partners like Nordstrom, shipping to over 50 countries.
Dagne Dover
Dagne Dover is a New York-based direct-to-consumer accessories brand founded in 2013 that designs hyper-functional bags - backpacks, totes, diaper bags, and luggage - engineered around organization and everyday problem-solving. Built by three women who bootstrapped rather than chasing venture capital, the brand is known for its signature neoprene 365 Collection, recycled Repreve linings, and an 'Almost Vintage' resale program that extends the life of its products.
Edikted
Edikted is a Los Angeles-based, Gen Z-focused online fashion brand founded in 2020 by former Adika executives Dedy Shwartzenberg and Zvika Alon. It sells trend-led, affordable women's apparel and accessories - dresses, denim, tops, swimwear and more - and rose to prominence through viral TikTok marketing. After starting online-only, Edikted has expanded into physical retail, opening flagship stores in major U.S. malls and moving into Europe, positioning itself as a curated, community-driven alternative to ultra-fast-fashion players like Shein and Temu.
Fit & Fresh Inc.
Fit & Fresh is a Providence, Rhode Island consumer products company that designs fashionable, functional gear for carrying healthy food and drinks on the go - insulated lunch bags, meal-prep kits, portion-control containers, bento boxes and reusable ice packs. Formerly MEDport LLC, the company helped create the 'fashion lunch' category in 2006 and now sells through more than 30,000 retail doors nationwide plus a direct-to-consumer Shopify store, with a team that is roughly 85% women designing for a largely female customer base.
GLD (The GLD Shop)
GLD (The GLD Shop) is a Miami-based direct-to-consumer jewelry brand founded by Christian Johnston in 2015. It designs classic and custom chains, pendants, watches, and accessories that blend streetwear culture with fine-jewelry craftsmanship. Backed by officially licensed partnerships with the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA, and WNBA plus pop-culture collabs and celebrity fans, GLD has grown from a Pittsburgh basement into an international brand often called the 'Nike of men's jewelry.'
Glik's
Glik's is a fifth-generation, family-owned specialty apparel retailer founded in 1897 and headquartered in Collinsville, Illinois. It operates roughly 70 boutique-style clothing and footwear stores across 11 Midwestern states, plus an e-commerce site, carrying denim and trending national brands like Judy Blue, Birkenstock, The North Face, Silver Jeans, Roxy and Simply Southern. One of the oldest continuously operating retailers in the United States, Glik's focuses on smaller communities and personalized service.
Mugsy
Mugsy is a Chicago-based direct-to-consumer menswear brand built around a single idea: men shouldn't have to trade comfort for style. Founded in 2015 by Leo Tropeano, the company designs stretchy, athletic-fit jeans, chinos, shorts and shirts using a custom performance-denim blend that adds more spandex and softer cotton than typical stretch jeans. Sold almost entirely online with free shipping and returns, Mugsy has grown into one of the fastest-growing apparel companies in the U.S., earning more than 40,000 five-star reviews and a spot on the Inc. 5000.
Naeem Khan
Naeem Khan is a New York luxury fashion house founded by Indian-American designer Naeem Khan, known for opulent, intricately hand-beaded evening gowns, ready-to-wear, and bridal collections. Blending his family's Indian textile heritage with the restraint he learned as Halston's apprentice, the label has dressed Michelle Obama, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez and royalty, and shows twice a year at New York Fashion Week.
OluKai
OluKai is a Hawaiian-inspired premium footwear brand that designs sandals, sneakers, slippers, boots and golf shoes for people who live an active, ocean-oriented lifestyle. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Irvine, California, the company blends the Hawaiian values of comfort ('olu') and ocean ('kai') with contoured, high-support footbeds and water-friendly, durable construction. A Certified B Corporation, OluKai channels a portion of every sale into its 'Ohana Giveback Program and the Ama OluKai Foundation to preserve Hawaiian culture and communities.
Rebel Athletic
Rebel Athletic is a Carrollton, Texas-based designer and manufacturer of couture cheerleading, dance, and athletic apparel, known for crystal-embellished 'luxury athletic wear for those that sparkle.' Founded in 2012 by Karen Noseff Aldridge, the company built a vertically integrated model - designing like a fashion house and producing in its own offshore factory - to challenge market leader Varsity Brands with faster service, deep customization, and better value. It serves allstar gyms, school and youth programs, dance studios, and pro cheer squads, and has expanded into direct-to-consumer retail and e-commerce, including a flagship store at The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano.
Roller Rabbit
Roller Rabbit is a New York-based lifestyle brand built around vibrant, hand-blocked prints. Founded in 2003 by Roberta Freymann after she found a textile scrap depicting a roller-skating rabbit, the label makes India-inspired sleepwear, ready-to-wear, kids' apparel, accessories and home goods. Its signature monkey-print pajamas turned into a TikTok-era cult item, and under owner RRR Brands the company has rebuilt itself as a direct-to-consumer business known for fast, limited-edition drops and sold-out collaborations.
Shelly Wilson
Shelly Wilson is a C-level digital, eCommerce and marketing executive based in San Diego who now works as a fractional and interim leader for consumer brands. She is Fractional Chief Marketing Officer at the Australian bohemian-fashion label SPELL, Interim CEO and Chief Marketing Officer at fragrance brand Vitruvi, and a senior advisor to lifestyle brands including Nixon and tentree. Earlier she was SVP Digital at Saje Natural Wellness, where she is known for leading platform migrations and building high-growth direct-to-consumer operations. She pairs deep operational eCommerce experience with brand-building instincts across fashion, wellness and consumer goods.
Salasa | سلاسة
Salasa is a Riyadh-based end-to-end e-commerce fulfillment and logistics platform. Founded in 2017, it gives online merchants a single stack for warehousing, order fulfillment, domestic and cross-border shipping, bonded zones, returns, and dark-store-powered two-hour delivery, connected through an OMS and API integrations with platforms like Salla, Zid, Shopify and Amazon and more than 40 carriers. The company has fulfilled tens of millions of orders for over 1,000 merchants and raised roughly $40 million to build a tech-first logistics network across Saudi Arabia and the GCC.
Torod | طرود
Torod (طرود) is a Riyadh-based e-commerce logistics platform that acts as a shipping aggregator, letting online merchants connect to a wide network of local and international couriers through a single dashboard. Founded in 2022 by Faisal Almaklas and Ammar Almaatouq, it handles carrier selection, order tracking, cash-on-collection settlement, and returns, and plugs into store builders like Salla, Zid, Shopify and WooCommerce. The company has raised roughly $12.7M to date, including a ~$11.2M (42M SAR) pre-Series A round in February 2025 led by Wa'ed Ventures and Elm.
Blue Onion
Blue Onion is a New York-based fintech company that builds an automated financial subledger and reconciliation platform for e-commerce and retail brands. Its data engine ingests transactions from order systems, payment processors, marketplaces and bank accounts, then reconciles every order, payout, fee, refund and deposit into a single source of truth - letting finance teams close their books daily with guaranteed accuracy and feed clean, structured financial data into AI workflows.
David Dokes
David Dokes is the co-founder and CEO of Polar Analytics, a first-party data and business intelligence platform built for Shopify and direct-to-consumer brands. Before Polar, he led growth at car-sharing marketplace Turo, where he ran a roughly $20M annual marketing budget. He teamed up with former Airbnb data scientist Charbel Seif in 2020 to give smaller retailers the kind of enterprise-grade data infrastructure that big companies take for granted, unifying scattered marketing, sales, and inventory data into one dashboard that installs in days rather than months. Under his leadership Polar has raised roughly $28.5M and now serves several thousand merchants across dozens of countries.
LoudCrowd
LoudCrowd is an Austin-based software company that helps direct-to-consumer brands turn creators and customers into a measurable sales channel. Its all-in-one creator commerce platform runs influencer, affiliate, ambassador, and user-generated-content programs, spins up branded on-domain creator storefronts, and layers on AI agents that automate discovery, outreach, and program management - shifting the focus from reach-based vanity metrics to attributable revenue.
Mike's Hot Honey
Mike's Hot Honey is a Brooklyn-based food brand that makes honey infused with chili peppers - a sweet-and-spicy condiment for pizza, fried chicken, cheese and more. Founded by Mike Kurtz in 2010 after he discovered chili-infused honey at a Brazilian pizzeria, the company pioneered the hot honey category in the United States and now sells through more than 30,000 retail locations and 3,000-plus restaurants. Led by CEO Matt Beaton since 2015, it has grown from a one-man operation at Paulie Gee's pizzeria into a nationally distributed brand with an estimated $40 million in annual revenue.
Proxima
Proxima is a New York-based predictive data intelligence platform that helps consumer and DTC brands find high-value customers and scale paid media efficiently. It turns billions of anonymized ecommerce transactions from a proprietary network of tens of millions of shoppers into AI-powered audiences, conversion attribution, creative guidance, and industry benchmarks across Meta, TikTok, and Google. Founded in 2022 by Alex Song, the company raised a $12M Series A in April 2024 led by Mucker Capital.
Gary Garofalo
Gary Garofalo is the CEO and co-founder of LoudCrowd, an Austin-based software company that turns brand creators and influencers into measurable revenue channels. His platform builds native creator storefronts on a brand's own e-commerce site, aiming to make social commerce as mainstream as third-party tools like LTK or TikTok Shop. A former Deloitte consultant with an economics degree from Wesleyan, Garofalo has led LoudCrowd to work with brands including Gymshark, Boohoo, Kyte Baby and Dolce Vita.
Gina Perrelli
Gina Perrelli is the co-founder and CEO of Stay AI, a subscription and retention platform for Shopify brands that treats subscriptions as a performance channel rather than a payment mechanism. A self-described 'retention girlie' with over a decade in lifecycle marketing, she previously co-founded the ecommerce agency Lunar Solar Group and now leads a company that helps hundreds of DTC brands - including Olipop, Vita Coco, and Momofuku - reduce churn and grow subscriber revenue. Stay AI raised $15.1M in Series A funding and has expanded through acquisitions of RetentionEngine and Bellwethr.
Disco
Disco is a San Francisco-based commerce media network that connects brands to high-intent shoppers through AI-powered, personalized offers across more than 800 digital touchpoints. Founded in 2020 by former Facebook and Affirm operator Conner Sherline, Disco started as a post-purchase ad network that lets independent DTC brands recommend each other to customers at the checkout 'thank you' moment, lowering customer acquisition costs without relying on Big Tech. It has since grown into a broader commerce media layer powering endemic and non-endemic advertising for retailers and B2B2C SaaS companies, built on one of the largest commerce graphs in the market.
Extend
Extend is a San Francisco software company that turns the messy, unloved world of extended warranties and post-purchase headaches into an API. It lets online and offline merchants offer product protection plans, shipping protection, order tracking, returns, exchanges, and automated claims - and, since 2026, bundles all of it into an AI-native 'Shopper Operations' platform that scores customers by value and risk. Founded in 2019 by Woodrow 'Woody' Levin, the company raised a $260M Series C in 2021 at a $1.6B valuation led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and works with 1,200+ merchants including Peloton, iRobot, Sonos and Advance Auto Parts.
Public Goods
Public Goods is a New York-based, membership-driven direct-to-consumer brand that sells its own line of healthy, sustainable everyday essentials - personal care, household, cleaning, grocery, and supplements - at near-wholesale prices. Pitched by co-founder Morgan Hirsh as 'Amazon with a soul,' the company launched on Kickstarter in 2017, built a single house brand with minimalist design and clean ingredients, and ties purchases to reforestation and food-bank donations.
Try Your Best (TYB)
Try Your Best (TYB) is a community rewards platform that lets consumer brands turn their most obsessed fans into a measurable, on-chain loyalty layer. Founded by Outdoor Voices creator Ty Haney in 2021, TYB rewards shoppers for participation - reviews, referrals, user-generated content, challenges and purchases - with collectibles, brand coins and access to exclusive drops. Around 200 brands including Glossier, Rare Beauty, Poppi, Urban Outfitters and Saie use TYB to reach roughly two million users, mostly Gen Z women, with the company reporting higher purchase frequency and lifetime value for participating customers.