When we launched Replo less than a year ago, we wanted to make it easier for design, marketing, and engineering teams to build for ecommerce.
Ecommerce development is a domain driven by great branding, creativity, and story-telling, and data, integrations, and metrics. As designers and developers, we wanted to build software that empowered high-growth teams to iterate more quickly without limiting them by traditional constraints like cookie-cutter templates, developer availability, and design fatigue.
In the last six months, thousands of brands have been onboarded onto Replo to create content on platforms like Shopify. We've been fortunate enough to work with some of our favorite household brands like Caraway, Hexclad, and Peak Design, and agencies like Hoox and Vayner Media. While we're a small team and still at the beginning of our journey, there's so much we've learned, and so much we have yet to do.
One area that blew us away was the power of community. Six months ago, we started a Slack channel primarily for faster support; today, it has over 1,400 members and is growing faster and faster every day. While this growth brings its share of challenges, including timely responses, managing spam, and learning community management from the ground up, the support from our community has been nothing short of incredible.
The future of software lies in building alongside the people who use it. That's why, over the past few months, we've worked tirelessly to give back as much as possible. We've launched our Design to Convert podcast, which has been an enormous hit, revamped our Experts program to provide more value and consistency, and hosted in-person events at conferences like Shoptalk. These are just some of the many ways we're dedicated to building a product that truly resonates with our community. With each new update, we're one step closer to realizing our vision of providing user- and community-centric products and services.
Today, we're proud to unveil the next chapter of our company, Replo 2.0 — a more comprehensive ecosystem tailored for ambitious ecommerce teams. These tools and resources complement our core product and aim to extend beyond our customers, regardless of whether you pay or use Replo.
A More Unified Ecosystem
Replo UI
Our users absolutely love the templates we provide through our library but have trouble adapting these templates to their brand and story-telling. We also noticed many of our users were designers who regularly worked with Figma or other design tools.
The issue with most design systems today on Figma is that they're oriented toward selling software to consumers or businesses. There wasn't a great resource for the millions of companies selling physical products online. Furthermore, most of the resources were just collections of helpful screenshots for inspiration, but rebuilding and adapting took a ton of time.
Our team made a significant effort to create a complete ecommerce design system based on the most common components people use. Available in both Figma and Replo, Replo UI features hundreds of ecommerce layouts, serving as the fundamental building blocks for designing engaging content for modern ecommerce teams. We invested hundreds of hours ensuring seamless one-to-one mapping between content, sections, and pages across both tools, ultimately streamlining the design and development process.
We're sharing the Replo UI Figma file free of charge, whether or not you use Replo for ecommerce development. These assets are available now in the Figma Community under Figma's Creative Commons license, making it easy to use, share, and update as anyone sees fit.
Replo Marketplace
Over the past few months, we've connected with hundreds of agencies and software companies working in the ecommerce space, many of whom are doing remarkable work. We've been inspired by their innovative ways of using Replo, some of which we never even anticipated. It's through our partner network's resources and services that many of our users first learn about Replo.
Our goal is to make it easier for freelancers, agencies, and software partners to share their resources with their clients and everyone using our product. We believe in fostering a community that empowers users to create, share, and iterate on projects built with Replo, extending beyond their teams to reach people worldwide.
With the Replo Marketplace, we're providing a platform for our partners to share their design systems, templates, and integrations with other users. Currently, all templates are free to use, but we envision a future where creators can monetize premium templates and reach a global audience.
We envision the Replo Marketplace as a platform to browse templates and integrations and as a hub for finding talent. This includes freelancers and agencies using Replo and subject-matter experts in e-commerce-related fields such as analytics, marketing, and content writing. Today, our community is a free-for-all, and many users are left to find freelancers themselves on platforms like Upwork or work with someone they're not happy with. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose, and ensuring quality across our referral network is at the top of our priority list.
Replo AI
AI has been written about ad nauseam in the last few months, but it has some unique applications within design and ecommerce. In the long term, AI's power complements human decision-making, opening new creative doors and automating inherently repeatable processes. When we thought about integrating AI into Replo, we didn't want it to be something people used once or something that got a ton of likes on Twitter. It had to be discreet, practical, and ultimately helpful.
Integrating AI directly into Replo had several advantages over working with AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney in isolation. The first is that Replo understands and has context about the products our customers are selling and the assets teams use to communicate their brand. Many proofs-of-concept demo online today can generate beautiful designs, but they're difficult to edit and update and lack the details required for the content to go live.
We designed Replo AI to contextualize everything we know about your brand, design, and existing content and use hand-selected sections and templates proven to convert. You can use Replo AI to write copy for a particular paragraph or generate novel ecommerce pages from scratch. Replo AI intelligently substitutes products from your store and doesn't waste your time throwing in fake stock images. Developing these pages in Replo also means you can edit everything Replo AI generates down to the pixel. The result is a marriage between human experience and AI automation, eliminating guesswork and accelerating the development of visually appealing and engaging pages.
Ecommerce Resources
Replo Masterclass
During our work, we have met some fantastic people who are building incredible things in ecommerce and design, engineering, and marketing. One of these people is Sanjay Jenkins, who has since joined our team and now hosts our ecommerce masterclass. This in-depth course covers everything aspiring DTC entrepreneurs need to know, from understanding the fundamentals of eCommerce and DTC to scaling their brand.
The Masterclass covers the basics, including market analysis, product development, branding, and customer acquisition, and proven strategies for conversion and how to avoid common pitfalls while scaling your brand. We have gathered lessons from hundreds of brands, including 7, 8, and 9-figure brands, not just about their ecommerce strategy but across all stages of business.
Design To Convert (Season 2)
In conjunction with the Masterclass – and after 25 episodes of Season 1 – we are launching the second season of our podcast, Design to Convert. Design To Convert explores even more fascinating stories of brands, agencies, and partners who have leveraged Replo and Shopify to elevate their ecommerce game. Each episode features industry experts and innovative business owners sharing their experiences, challenges, and successes in creating and growing online businesses.
Replo Active: Merch Store
Lastly, we are announcing Replo Active, a fun activewear brand built on Shopify and Replo, to showcase new features and design capabilities using Replo's platform. It's also a great testing bed for demos and tutorials, creating captivating, high-converting online experiences on Replo.
Welcome to the Reploverse
Not many people know this, but until recently, Noah and I chatted with almost every Replo customer who came on board. Today, we still talk with dozens of users weekly, whether through calls, Reploverse Slack, or support chat.
We remain committed to providing the best support and resources as the company grows. Investing in the community is the most effective way to help people succeed in their businesses.
With the launch of Replo UI, we're leaning into both the Figma and Replo community to deliver world-class resources in ecommerce, design, and marketing. With Replo AI, we're building the foundation for Replo to be on the cutting edge of leveraging data from our community with the power of AI. With our new marketplace, we'll be able to bring our freelance and agency partners to the forefront of our product and create an ecosystem for people to use, create, and share their work with anyone around the world.
The next generation of software companies will be built and distributed through the power of community, and we intend to make this community with Replo.
Welcome to the Reploverse. Let's BUILD!
