Denis Dyli has spent 13 years building Shopify stores for the businesses nobody wants to talk about: industrial suppliers, janitorial distributors, pipe manufacturers. The unsexy stuff. He's now a Shopify Platinum Partner, and he's turning all that pain into an AI-powered deal room that converts messy email RFQs into structured quotes in minutes, not weeks. We get into why B2B and wholesale are fundamentally different buying experiences, how mid-market manufacturers ($20M-$100M) are the most underserved segment in ecommerce, and why your B2B quoting process probably still feels like 1997.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swym actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wish lists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swym's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com slash Kurt. Today on the unofficial Shopify Podcast, we're gonna talk about the difference between B2B and wholesale. Alright, I have lost half my audience with that statement. But i if that resonates with you and you've been thinking like man, there's gotta be a better way to do my quoting process, my sales process, or I'm narrowing this down even further to a niche audience. But If you have tried to do like enterprise level quoting in a strict B2B environment, because hold on, there's a difference between wholesale and B2B. I promise that might be confusing, but we'll get into it You'll discover that suddenly there are some limitations as you scale that process. I know this because we built a a large B2B Shopify store for utility pipe supply. last year and discovered, you know, the unique problems with that setup on our own. And so joining me today locally in studio, oh my gosh, I love folks who are local and can come record with me in person Is Dennis Dooley from UNCAP, who does similar to me, he's a Shopify partner, agency owner, but focuses exclusively on this B2B problem. And so we're going to get into it and talk through it with him. Dennis, welcome. Thanks for coming in.
Denis Dyli • 02:24.799
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Kurt Elster • 02:26.000
So uh we were just talking earlier. How long have you been a Shopify partner?
Denis Dyli • 02:30.320
Uh since 2013, so it's uh almost 13 years. Um Shopify partner, Shopify Expert back then, then Shopify Plus partner, then Shopify Premier, then uh platinum at this point. Um so it has been a it has been a journey and a ride and um a great experience and a pleasure as we were just chatting earlier. It's It's good to know what we are passionate about and and stick with that.
Kurt Elster • 02:55.879
Yeah. Well and just you to your point earlier b before we started recording is You know, to find someone who has like worked in the same space in the same business at this point for over a decade, that's unusual. And then the longer you stick with it, it becomes even more unusual. You know, I have friends who it's like, I swear, like do you get a new job every six months and like people still hire you having seen your LinkedIn? Do they just assume like, well, we don't have a given raise because they'll be gone in six months? Well, I digress. Uh so okay. We're talking about, I I want to open with there is a difference between B2B and wholesale. And that for someone who is not experienced is probably like a very confusing statement. Sure. What's the difference?
Denis Dyli • 03:39.260
Let me start with the fact that like wholesale is B2B too. We we are talking about two different categories, but we are we are pretty much describing two different buying experiences. Um wholesale is pretty much a brand who um is selling direct to consumer, they want to create a new channel and start selling to mom and pop business directly. Um they can set up a uh maybe another store, Shopify store, maybe use Shopify B2B capabilities and build a personalized experience with you know, tier pricing, group pricing, payment terms and everything. Um and it it is you know um something that most most like um recently a lot of brands are doing. Um and pure B2B on the other side is all about um processes that are completely um um um that that require a lot of um hand holding the throughout the journey. Um there is a process of approval, there is a pro prof process of reviewing, negotiating, um and and uh then kind of finalizing what is the buyer in the other side wants and the does the the supplier, the seller in the in the in the side in the in the in the the side of the um uh merchant side, you know, uh reviewing in the back end, like what what prices do we have to offer? What is we higher inventory that we can we can you know um add a further you know uh discount rate into that that unique uh order or quote request. So it's a lot of like um conversation there are a lot of conversations that happen um from the moment that the quote has been requested or the order has been initiated the moment that the checkout um so that that that can last from hopefully one day, two weeks, and it's as we see it right now, that that journey is all over the place. It happens in spreadsheets, on emails, phone calls, text messages, and it's completely decentralized. All of you know, we have clients use this faxes still, right? Like literally.
Kurt Elster • 05:40.500
It is one of the few places you will still occasionally see faxes used.
Denis Dyli • 05:43.700
So like um so that is pure B2B. It's more a relationship uh between the supplier and the buyer um that uh cumulates with that final checkout in the end of the you know the order
Kurt Elster • 05:59.220
So if I think through an example, we have we have several retainer clients. All of them are primarily in first selling Retail direct to consumer on an online store. So I'm you know, I'm selling tea, I'm selling polo shirts, I'm selling bags, purses, whatever And then in addition to that, I bolt on a program where a person can apply as, you know, another business and then they could buy in bulk, you know, with a minimum purchase and get a discount, and then they go resell it according to my terms. The key distinction here is that in those businesses, wholesale is always less than retail, is always second. Yes. The other kind of business that we're referring to It is either it almost for sure started and primarily is going to do B2B You know, occasionally they'll have retail, but often they don't. It's like, look, it's just there's a minimum, you gotta meet it. It does not make sense for us to be selling, you know, to individual consumers. That's what Home Depot's for. And so like in our case, in my experience with this, I'm gonna keep using this as my example because that's my lens, utility pipe supply. sells primarily to municipalities, to cities, right? It's like, hey, they're gonna replace all the stoplights at an intersection. Somebody's gotta they're not making those parts, you know, of course. In Guernia, Illinois or wherever. They're gonna go get them Uh percent. And so there are businesses distributors. They operate. I think that's like the key difference. The pure B2B business Often is uh functionally a wholesale distributor, isn't it?
Denis Dyli • 07:35.880
Correct. It's it's either a distributor or a manufacturer directly. So they we have a ton of manufacturers manufacturers that we are uh implementing Shopify. They there are old school, but they see the value of d going directly to consumer. So for example, a manufacturer who produces you know cabinets, right? They they may they may still you know serve primarily to end consumer who are subcontractors construction contractors and so forth. But in that process of defining that order and consumer is involved, right? The buyer itself is the contractor who is installing, implementing everything. But through that journey the the end buyers are also in involved in part on part of that um uh conversation because the end consumer is picking the color and the end consumer is picking the um the finishes and whatnot or we're we're formalizing the design Although the buyer itself is the contractor, right? So the contractor has the terms, the contractor has the discount, the contractor has the relationship, the contractor pays the bill in the end of the order, right? This is also the the biggest growth that I see and I want to like invest more uncapped towards like mm uh mid-market manufacturers. that are aiming to go directly to consumer um or distribute mid-market distributors because large distributors they have different systems proprietary dist systems like US food, Cisco, like these are you know they're wishing has their own custom systems, I would think. Y you would think. And uh they do, they do have amazing systems. But and I don't think they are looking for a platform, I mean could be wrong, but a platform any of the platforms in the ecosystem to like go e-commerce. But mid-market 20 million to 100 million, they are looking for solutions like that because they see the value of expand um expanding their offer to smaller businesses like through a direct, you know, um buying experience. And also you you were very correct. And sorry I'm I'm I'm kind going further in this. Like we have a dozen of clients that are they have a beautiful storefront on Shopify and they don't even display any of any of the prices. You have to log in to see anything that is um um enabled primarily because they can't show the prices, because they have uh you know um contracts with manufacturers that you know they they they cannot cannot display for the public because they They are not the same prices you get to the retail store and so forth. So there there are more complex nuances of of just like the fact that it's PWE commerce, it's like legal complications, process complications, validation uh betting complications, and also approval. Somebody has like A different team is paying, a different team is making the order, a different person is reviewing everything. And so like it's it's way more All over the place.
Kurt Elster • 10:36.700
And what interesting is risk profile changes as well. You know, if I'm you know, if I'm a merchant and I get a fraud order for five hundred bucks that I fulfilled, uh okay, that's painful. I don't want that. But if I'm in one of these huge stores, my order a like a big B2B store, a $50,000 order, a hundred thousand dollar order, like man, that's a different ball game. Right. It just changes the nature of the relationship. And the chances are stuff like that, it's not happening over credit card, of course. We we have a client who
Denis Dyli • 11:09.560
whom we onboarded about two years ago, they sell pools. They are distribu uh the regional distributors, I'm I I can't name the name, but it's in the website somewhere. Um and uh there are regional distributors of uh uh uh in the United States they sell pools. Like the m the smallest order is there like $30,000, $50,000. Literally the starting point of the order. And so yeah, you can guess. that they're not processing with a credit card, but when they sell accessories, even accessories are like high-ticket items and the risk is is very high.
Kurt Elster • 11:41.860
Yeah. And so, okay, I think we we figured out the distinction here between B2B and wholesale and really established like how different it gets for these pure B2B businesses. One of the interesting things about B2B It is typically not sexy. And because of that, I I think maybe agencies are less willing to work with it, right? Like agencies often are design focused and they want to make these pretty portfolios And like, man, a B2B website is going to be one of the least sexy things you ever put together, assuming you did it right. Is that if are those businesses underserved or are we just not exposed?
Denis Dyli • 12:26.240
Yeah. So they are underserved, although there are, you know, agencies who are trying to tap or working to tap into this market so we're not alone and I'm I'm so happy for that that the Shopify itself as a ecosystem is moving towards these verticals. Um but I remember it was 20 uh 19 I was uh it was a like a uh um sort of like a competition among Shopify agencies and so it was a competition who was the agency that did more Magento migration at that quarter was invited to speak at headquarters of Shopify. So we did, we were lucky and we we we were very good at that at that quarter. I remember vividly, I I made this comment at on on the stage that
Kurt Elster • 13:09.459
Um oh so you got to talk.
Denis Dyli • 13:11.060
I got to talk.
Kurt Elster • 13:11.700
We were like four. Vagento sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Denis Dyli • 13:14.500
Boom. Oh I've been I've been I've been saying that for five years. I have a lot of the frenemies out there that are that we we just debate uh every weekly basis in LinkedIn But uh the the comment that I did was that and and mind mind mind you Shopify B2B wasn't an offer at that point. Remember it was Shopify wholesale, which didn't work, right? Literally didn't work So we would have to bring apps and custom solutions and custom themes to build a portal and whatnot. And I made this comment on stage that sort of like my dream would be on Shopify, prioritize working with underserved unsexy businesses that when we speak with, they value Shopify's capabilities. even more than direct consumer brands. Because direct to consumer brands as as we talk to, they are focused on you know creative work and design and beauty and all of that. And it's Shopify rocks. But kind of they don't appreciate the infrastructure that is behind. Like the the security, the uh reliance, the um, you know, the fact that it's uh Up and live most of the time. Like it's not magento. You wake up at the middle of night and it's not working, right? And you need to call um ten people to make it work and a priest hopefully yeah to like you know you know make a you know uh uh a wish and uh this part of reliability and efficiency Is not something that B2C has taken for granted, but B2B appreciates more because their business is um way more impacted if um the infrastructure goes down for a day or two or three. It's not just a five minute downtime. And so I w I used to have these conversations seven years ago, eight years ago with brands um that sells like uh suppliers and we microfiber supplies, um uh jenitorial supplies, uh all these kind of like unsexy brands like why Shopify is not building these capabilities it is for us. Like even barely a tier pricing uh function in the front end for just price breaks, right? Like the the bare minimum. And so like I don't know. I hope so. I like I I was pushing the product team at Shopify, everybody I knew. Like, can we please, you know, have this conversation like ping everybody can can you add this it's important it's critical because this is the only blocker that why they're not going with Shopify. Everything else they love it. And so um I'm so like you know it's to me it's like a hit in the kindergarten to see the product releases in every week for B2B specific, like ACH transactions and you're not going to be able to do that.
Kurt Elster • 16:03.780
Yeah, Shopify Plus, you get Yeah, Shopify Plus, you get these B2B features. And recently they include ACH Vaulted payments, uh quantity breaks, you know, was was one of the things, yeah, pricing lists, right?
Denis Dyli • 16:19.019
Exactly. Or or all these increments, you know, maximum
Kurt Elster • 16:22.459
Yeah, you s max and min and increment rate if it's like okay we gotta put this in a case of six so you can only buy it in units of six. But it's mix and match.
Denis Dyli • 16:30.620
And max and match. But also the units that sells, like you can sell in a unit now.
Kurt Elster • 16:35.140
Oh I just saw that this week.
Denis Dyli • 16:36.420
That's amazing. But these are like what these B2B businesses need because some of them are selling, you know, for example, materials like We we had a brand four or five years ago that was selling, you know, paint powders for car paint, yeah, car paint you mix.
Kurt Elster • 16:52.560
Like a real pro person mixes the color there to get it to match.
Denis Dyli • 16:56.240
But it's it's not sold on like unit, it's sold on um, you know, pounds or fluid on weight, right? Like like how can we okay, well what is pro uh If I put quantity over there, hypothetically one pound, well a client may want one pound and a quarter. How can I split that pound? if I don't have that unit. So it would there they see this is the level of um complexity that it cre that increases.
Kurt Elster • 17:21.319
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Denis Dyli • 19:00.240
So I wanna start with the fact that there is no platform in the world that would serve everybody. Like there are always like either you have to compromise or there is a there is a gap between what you wish to have and what you can have it's something you can live with. So like you know you have like everything else, like you want a dream car, but always is gonna have something that you hate in that dream car. It's it is what it is. So that goes with uh with Shopify and any other platform. That aside, the Shopify is going towards like the Shopify movement itself or goal to market motion is going towards unified commerce. It's just blending B2B and B2C together for what we talked for primarily for wholesale. They have like six million brands that sells direct to consumer. How can we Help them create another channel so they can start selling directly to and small mom mom and pop businesses or to other businesses in on high on volume. This is one vertical that serves pretty much 90% of the Shopify's um um like uh uh audience. And for that, you know, there are plenty of apps that are available. There are plenty of, you know, Shopify B2B upgrade offers a ton of capabilities. Um you can you can build like a lot of things with apps that that that are either available or custom apps that you can can integrate. For the brands that they want to build the wholesale, you can build every almost everything with um you know um uh uh custom theme functionalities uh you can build them with apps that are available or you can build them with apps, private apps that you can develop um exclusive for your own stores.
Kurt Elster • 20:43.040
There are ownership. Those take the form of simple Python script, right? Like that stuff you can often get away with. Like, hey, we we just need one custom thing solved for us. Do it. And so I have like uh when you walked in, I was running scripts in terminal, and it was for a client that has wholesale added to their store, and they We came up with logic for how to build the pricing lists because they are big a wholesale distributor. And so they're adding like you do new parts add all the time and pricing changes all the time. A person can't go through and update all that. And in the Shopify B2B pricing list, it's a spreadsheet. And it it itself does not have logic to handle that. And so what we ended up doing, like creating just Python script connects Shopify API. goes in and then it knows based on the list like okay this is the discount and then i I forgot what the exact premise we used, but it was like, oh yeah, it's we know what the discount should be. So say it's 20% Discount every price twenty percent, then if it is less, it's gotta be uh less than comparat price to make sense. Or you Compare it price times 20%, you know, reduce it by 20%. And then, hey, is that less or more than the retail price? If it's more, then just default to the retail price, as that becomes the discount. Yeah. Cause otherwise it's like, you know, you got a hundred thousand products up and the prices change regularly because it's all different vendors. And so you can't have Yep, it's just not reasonable for a person to do it. But that's just like one example of a thing. It's like, okay, now I've got like this bespoke rule set. Now here's the problem. They don't know how to run it. We know how to run it because it like I'm very comfortable with a command line interface. Okay, now they're like, hey, we'll run this once a month. Well now it's like, hey, can you just have this run every 72 hours? Because the business is expanding and growing.
Denis Dyli • 22:37.420
Of course.
Kurt Elster • 22:37.880
And so now I'm like, all right, you know, maybe we've we've hit the limitation. Maybe now I need a better solution here.
Denis Dyli • 22:48.419
kind of like the legacy brands, they already have that spreadsheet on their ERP. We all have to integrate and kind of like build a a pipe data synchronization between what they have in the ERP. convert that based on how Shopify you know catalogs and primitives are supported and then you know display these prices to the customers after they log in based on you know where they're assigned to. But most of the time that logic happens in the ERP level, right? Unless they don't have an ERP and then we build apps like that. The whole transaction is between two businesses, suppliers and the buyer. So they are the supplier is selling on bulk, on discount, on terms, on prices, and all of that. And the buyer on the other side Um is just not one person. There are multiple people. There are people who are approving the order. There are people who are reviewing the order, requesting changes and so forth. Um and and then in addition to that we have the CPQ component, which is like CP.
Kurt Elster • 23:48.580
CPQ. What's CPQ stand for?
Denis Dyli • 23:50.420
Yeah, CPQ stands for configurable pricing quotings. So it's just uh three components like configurable products, um price alignment and also quoting uh engagement between the buyer and and the and the seller and that relationship.
Kurt Elster • 24:08.700
So is that a good example of a CPQ product? I am ordering a laptop from Apple. And now I'm an institutional buyer. I'm ordering a thousand laptops from Apple. And now I'm going to tell them, hey, these are our specs. This is what we need. Because a laptop is not a laptop, right? How much memory in it? Yeah, how much RAM, et cetera, et cetera. So okay, all right, that's my example of a CPQ.
Denis Dyli • 24:30.720
And yes, but also in in addition to that, it's just not you're not just configurable configuring a product. the end results on that configuration could be a bill of material. It's not even just one product. It's a list of ten items that bundle that that product, that laptop that you're buying with battery, with uh you know the box and this and this and that. Each of these items they have different prices that are assigned to you as a as a as a buyer um and also maybe some of them are not on stock Some of them are in the inventory. Some of them are supplied by a third-party supplier that the the the seller has to like resource and then pack it and send it to you. So there is, again, way more complex. relationship is just like the the easiest part is to build a configurable experience to the website.
Kurt Elster • 25:21.300
Which that's not even that easy.
Denis Dyli • 25:22.660
That's not even easy. Exactly. That that in itself is a
Kurt Elster • 25:26.240
Yeah, when people are like, oh, let's do a product configurator. I'm like, oh, please don't.
Denis Dyli • 25:29.679
Please don't. And and the problem with with product configurables, especially for Shopify experience, is that the configurables Create dummy products in the backhand for every combination that you are creating. Because you you cannot check out if the product is not in the back end. If the product, let's say you have color, size, material, you know, dimensions and so forth, all these combinations are going to generate a fake or like uh sort of draft product in the back end yeah that when you check out it's generated in a line item then you pay for and then you save it well how is this um draft product being aligned to the catalog pricings that you have assigned to to you personally.
Kurt Elster • 26:18.539
How can I give you Oh right, because every person in theory has customers. No, no, no, not in theory.
Denis Dyli • 26:24.140
In practice has to have custom prices. So that product that is being generated automatically, it has a price that the the the combinations just generated, but it's the retail price.
Kurt Elster • 26:34.940
Oh boy. So you quickly get into like how complex this thing gets.
Denis Dyli • 26:40.220
I that's that and that's the pro complexity we we we are we are trying to solve here.
Kurt Elster • 26:44.780
So if I'm on B2B, my issues become like giant catalog. So product information management. I have never used a PIM. That there are tools built for this, uh PIM. And so often it's like you gotta find and get the data. So data entry. All right, when we did utility pipe supply, that was like the big competitive advantage unlock was no one else was willing to do the work and build the darn catalog as a Shopify catalog. That yeah that was just manual labor and they did it. And so okay, we've got it there, but oh now you got to maintain the thing going over time. And so that's where it's like, all right, we need we need a a tool system, some way to manage that. And that's where like people start using PIMS, product information management. And then we have, and like the Shopify catalog itself is a a PIM. Um and with an API we can plug stuff into it. Okay. And then we've got like all our custom pricing. That happens, you know, in theory, in Shopify through B2B pricing. And then we have uh to unlike, you know, associated rules with that. Then we have custom products that gotta be quoted. Okay, that's harder Typically it's like, you know, in Shopify we might make a draft order and just someone arbitrarily could write in a price. Correct. But it's not gonna be tied back Yeah.
Denis Dyli • 28:02.299
It's very it's it's very unfriendly experience.
Kurt Elster • 28:05.659
And the for us, you know, the part where we found like, oh, this is where it starts to struggle is the sales process. Because in B2B, it's like someone reaches out to you and they say, hey, I went through, I saw, you know, I'm on the site. I'm a current customer. I've applied. I'm approved. Here's my list, right? Here's everything I need for our project. And so now a sales rep has to go through, verify availability, verify pricing, and then give them a quote and say, okay, we can get you this stuff by this date for this price on these terms. And then the person, that's a proposal. And then the person says, you know, yes, no. So I receive my purchase order or request for quote. I provide it. It gets approved. And then our regular process happens. Now I want to scale that up. I need multiple sales reps. I need a CRM. I need a way and like a sales-focused CRM. Shopify is a CRM, but it's like that's very much email-focused, contact focused. I need, you know, to be able to track a sales process and a pipeline on these leads with a, you know, and for a business like that, a team of probably multiple sales reps. Okay. I tried every app that was out there. We couldn't get one that was like that was great. You know, they all did they all did the job of the invoicing or getting, you know, getting the quote in, but nothing was perfect. Nothing did, you know, quite what we wanted here. Man, I'm sure this has been your experience as well. How are you solving for this stuff?
Denis Dyli • 29:36.620
Yeah, well, it has been ex uh like a painful experience for a very long time. Um and um different businesses, different different problems. Um but what I have noticed is that When we bring online and I'm I'm gonna answer the question directly, but when we bring online um a self-serving experience for B2B. There is always that desire and passion and uh, you know, early stage of um, you know, uh adaption where You know, we're gonna go all big on it, we're gonna bring all the customer to the self-serving, we don't like we're gonna reduce the sales need and blah blah blah. And when the reality hit is that Maybe 30% will go to the self-serving adoption. Maybe if they're lucky. But majority of customers are used to sending emails. They're using to sending texts. They're using to s used to sending WhatsApp messages. They're used to send to calling, all of that. How do we synchronize that with commerce, with a commo commerce component where we kind of like dance that We are replying to them via the channel that they want to, but that engagement itself happens still in the e-commerce in the storefront. And so gradually we are luring them towards being a self-serving adapt ad ad adapting to the self-serving gradually. So like would you reduce that friction not in one day, but over time? Like so that's a problem that I've seen, and that's a problem we are solving the platform that we have. developed that you we demo to you. So it is um the the the the the platform that we are building that solves the problems that you outlined. better than I could. Um those s um merchants that are sales led organizations that they always do sales with sales team. They they have the commerce or they may want to invest in the commerce, but they still rely on these personal relationships. Aggregate all orders, pull requests, POs, name, invoices. Aggregate them in one centralized database, one CRM, where every salesperson has access. And through, you know, emerging technologies, AI, whatever, we are converting these orders to line items that map exactly the final orders that they want to send for approval to the end consumer. to sorry to the buyer. And uh but also in that we bring we bring we bring context. Who is this customer? Uh what was the last time this customer uh purchased? What was the price that we gave this buyer last time that they bought this specific product. Or if the product that they are asking for is out of stock, what are the replacements? So all these contexts. Also in addition to that, like w what else we can recommend them to upsell. Um and that is in the deal room that we are we are building um outside from the front end when they go and see and view that quote and start to negotiate and and and review and and Send requests and comments. Everything happens in the in the in the self-serving portal. But in the backhand, in our deal room, uh AI is giving the salesperson all the ammo they need. to nail it, to bring the most advantage, uh advantage uh information so they can win and convert that that order to that that quote to an order. And so that's that's what I've been like using AI, but also bringing all the experiences that we have accumulated over again a decade doing this. Um, I think we have a we have a great product and super excited to be.
Kurt Elster • 33:14.480
So hold on, I think I missed I think I missed the big reveal here. You having built these solutions on Shopify yeah for yeah over a decade now You in the past were you solving for issues with like custom portals, custom apps?
Denis Dyli • 33:33.299
Custom apps, custom themes, custom portals, like one problem at a time. And then now we we take it to the next level. We build a platform that touches like 90% of these problems in one deal room. And um Solves almost all of these problems with a better user experience, fully integrated systems with uh with Shopify's B2B primitives. But more than that, you know, using AI as a supercharge to um allow the salesperson make decision quickly. Instead of Typing entering data instead of like tr to going to the let me give you how the work so much of this that job role ends up being data entry. Almost all the organizations that we work today, they run the CPQ on the ERP. Here's the question. Have you logged in on an Oracle ERP?
Kurt Elster • 34:27.420
Uh no, I've logged into NetSuite and even that was scary.
Denis Dyli • 34:31.980
Please log in in Oracle. It's 1997.
Kurt Elster • 34:36.220
Yep.
Denis Dyli • 34:37.120
Right? Not only it's clear. Yes. Not only is this pain in the ass, it is it takes a lot of time just to go from one place to another to another to another. I I get it. It's like a robust database and all of that. I'm not I'm not saying it's a it's a bad product. I'm just saying it's not user friendly. It's not at all something that any salesperson wanna work. The salesperson is incentivized to move fast because they are most of the time um like uh paid on commission. Like he doesn't have like it's for him it's a waste of time. Like Trying to figure out or search the product in the ERP and then go to the pro to the customer and see the price and orders. 30 clicks to even just figure out what they need to provide. Not that we are inventing.
Kurt Elster • 35:29.920
Correct.
Denis Dyli • 35:30.960
But this is how they like I've seen I've seen this in action. And the reason why, and also we have clients that um large organizations like huge enterprises, two three hundred million dollar doll uh companies and say our salespeople don't even want to be in the RP at all because they find it like hey here's the email they send it to the assistant to the operation admin to enter everything Because like no, I don't want to waste my time on that. And then one order is in confirmed by phone by the salesperson, print it, maybe typewriting, sorry, handwriting, give it to the assistant, follow up with it. We are not in 1997, right? It doesn't have to be that way. It has to be the the the vision that I have for the platform is the tool for the sales team. that gives them everything possible with a fraction of a minute to make a decision and complete that transaction Or at least send it for negotiation, send it for review uh within within minutes. That's that's the vision I have for for the platform. And that will accelerate from hours to minutes and then that also will bring the port to cash timeline from two weeks to hopefully two days Because again, you're expediting the re the the reply with with minutes. And also you have everything in one dashboard and you have everything in one deal room. So you know what to follow up, you know what to do, you know, with to touch.
Kurt Elster • 37:01.839
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Denis Dyli • 39:37.200
It identify ex based on the email address or the phone number of that request, whether that being sent by email. or or text or WhatsApp, whatever. Um, if that buyer is already in the system and it's already assigned to a catalog and a price list and a location, it automatically auto-populate that um that that quote with prices that are assigned to this customer. Now you can edit them, you can add a discount, you can do whatever you want, but you don't have to do anything. It's already done for you. And so it's it's just one click. All what you need to do is review it. You have the PDF. You can see if there is any request or or file or Excel or what or if it's just a just a border uh review, uh make make make any adjustment if there is need to be an adjustment and send it to them for approval. But you send it to the person based on the information you have. the person one person can have approval, another person can have uh just review, another person can have the ability to negotiate, another person can have that it's a multi-to-multi-experience. While also in the deal room, you can bring your sales team. You need an approval from a sales admin that the client is asking, the buyer is asking for a request for a discount on shipping because Probably shipping is sometimes more than the products themselves because heavy products. So this is like, oh I'm not gonna pay like five thousand dollars on the shipping. I'm buy I'm buying tarps, right? Hypothetically. So like can you give this kind? But you cannot make the decision Because it's it impacts what are the rates and the discounts that you get from the shipping. So maybe you need an approval. And so you can't bring the sales team As you would do in a CRM for lead gen and uh relationship with the clients, but in this case, it's all about that draft order, that uh that that order that has been created for this purpose. And a lot of other things that I showed you, but this is just What's the name of this thing? Uncap.
Kurt Elster • 41:34.140
Okay.
Denis Dyli • 41:40.620
soft launch by Q um Q2 and then rebrand the website uh to like the content of the website more towards towards the product and towards the the capabilities and features. It has been always my dream to build a product. I've I've attempted multiple times, launched multiple apps, some successful, some not, but um At this time I'm a believer that this is going to be extremely impactful But also I'm because of the motion of Shopify's go to market towards these verticals, it's just a it's just a momentum and a time that it's kind of like stars are aligned, right? And I'm betting on it. It's a risk, right? But I have a good feeling that this is gonna be it. It's it's my dream come true.
Kurt Elster • 42:29.859
So you know my feeling has always been you build products that solve pains or problems. And yeah, they're not all going to be equally valuable. But if you start there, you know, and you you could empathize and you could build and you know the space and then you could build the solution. Cause like there's so many little nuances here. You know, I've built one store that had these problems and immediately the value of what you built was obvious to me. But then, you know, watch it you demoed it for me before we we did this call. And even in that, it's like all the nuance that I was unaware of starts to immediately become obvious seeing in the solution you built.
Denis Dyli • 43:06.200
Yeah. And also keep in mind that um This industry is also changing. And so we are just adapting with all the changes that are happening in a in a kind of like uh Every day I see new capabilities, new features that we need to adapt.
Kurt Elster • 43:22.000
It's AI.
Denis Dyli • 43:27.599
Let's change with it. Let's do something that is like avant-garde that I have no illusion that this product will take about two, three years for people to really understand it. Like I have no illusion because it's like huge gap between how the situation is and how we are making it to be. Like even if I bring it to a customer and we have demo it is like they are shocked how amazing it is. But like How can I bring that to the team? Like it's we have all these pieces together. It's change management and it's like adaptation and it I understand that. I'm aware of that, but I'm building for the future. I'm not building, not I have no illusion that I'm launching tomorrow, I'm gonna have like 10,000 sub subscrip uh paid customers tomorrow. I I I probably don't want to, even if they are ready. I'm not ready. I wanna build something that is um very impactful And also to add to what you just said is it's not that I woke up a beautiful Sunday and say, you know, I I have this idea. Um, how about if I build it? No. It's just building solutions to painful problems and like kind of like blending them on one unified space.
Kurt Elster • 44:43.460
Yeah, there was so much effort that goes into that where you did like uh Boolean logic, which is like if then else logic. Um it's cool.
Denis Dyli • 44:53.500
Look at the look at the look at the situation right now. You bring a CPQ platform like Logic, for example, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? Sorry, I'm naming that names, but um you need an IT team or a development team to create a configable.
Kurt Elster • 45:08.700
Yeah.
Denis Dyli • 45:09.099
Like what is what is wrong with our industry because the configurable itself has to be something a product configurable has to be something that sales team can create as easy as they are creating a templated email Right? Because maybe they are creating configurable only for one specific use case or one specific offer or one specific uh request. And It's impossible right now because you have to go to IT, it takes like a week, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But my thesis is that configurable And and by that also in assigning with prices, it's an um it's a um a function of sales, not a function of ID. And that's the bet that I'm gonna make with a business, with the whole business, is that I'm gonna go at at the you know really um sort of in a uh aggressive um pattern of kind of um arguing with whoever can argue me wrong that configable is not um uh like who who want to argue that configurable is is is an IT um uh utility it's not it has configurable pricing quotas it's a sales team uh it has to be part of a CRM Period. And has to be fully integrated with with e-commerce uh experience because that's where clients are. You meet them what they are. You don't wildly pretend that they want to go where you want them to go.
Kurt Elster • 46:39.640
Yeah. No, it's tough. Especially with you know dealing with organizations and teams that big, you know, and like all this technical debt and legacy systems and practices. It's a Yeah, you like you have to look for those opportunities to help you know lead a horse to water. Um I wanna look I wanna th look back at your journey It's 2026, you are launching this you know this big enterprise product. That's really cool. 2013, you start as a Shopify partner Before then, you're working out of uh an internet cafe in Albania.
Denis Dyli • 47:11.559
Yeah, that that no, before that I worked at another agency in Chicago, Plumtree Group. I wasn't technical lead for um magento development. It was a Magento shop. And then when I quit, uh I uh I started Uh Pivify was that that was the original name that we were branded about three years ago. And the purpose of rebranding is was we're planning to build a product that At that time, to be completely frank, it was a pimp system, by the way. Like that was a and then I realized that that's it's a problem. but it may not have the the addressable market that I had I dreamed for. So it's a painful problem, but there are also players and it didn't have what I it didn't was not suitable for the dream that I had to build a product that I wanted. This one is the iteration of that that came to life at this point. Um and before that I came here in the US to study in 2011 to get my masters. But before that I yes, I I used to do like websites for, you know, small business in a cafe. You know, that was the lifestyle back then. It's just can't believe how everything has uh evolved from there, but It's an amazing journey. I I'm so thankful that I am living this time. I'm part of this ecosystem. And I get to meet people like you. That's more than anything, this is why I'm grateful. is the people that I've had the chance to meet throughout this journey. More than anything.
Kurt Elster • 48:36.660
It is. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun, you know, just We know a lot of the same people, but it's international, right? We're talking about you're like, oh yeah, I was just talking to Jay Myers last week. Me too, you know. He's in Winnipeg.
Denis Dyli • 48:48.600
Exactly. Exactly. So it's like amazing, amazing. Um um good hearted spirit, good spirit um experts that have been like like Amr that we I I was just like um talking about him earlier that have been so close to me in my hardest times in business. Um, that I needed a sort of like quote unquote shoulder to shoulder to cry. He was there. Although we were competing each other in some deals and we were kind of frenemies in one way, um, but in the in the darker side we were there for each other.
Kurt Elster • 49:27.140
Yeah.
Denis Dyli • 49:27.540
And we are still like very close friends.
Kurt Elster • 49:29.300
Yeah, Mary Christonic.
Denis Dyli • 49:30.420
Um. So like What do you want more? Like literally what do that's what I'm thankful but yes, it has made a good living for me and financial all of that is awesome. But this is impressive.
Kurt Elster • 49:44.140
You know, and uh to your point, how we met, Andrew Eudarian from e-commerce fuel was in the area and said, hey Do you want to get dinner? And I'll see if I can find somebody else. It was the it was the three of us. We ended up having dinner. It was good. All right. Dennis Dooley from Uncap, if we want to learn more about you and your product, where are we going?
Denis Dyli • 50:03.540
So uncap. com, that's the website.
Kurt Elster • 50:06.440
Thanks for coming. Really appreciate it.
Denis Dyli • 50:08.280
Thank you so much.
Kurt Elster • 50:10.200
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