Stord

The UK just got a new home for e-commerce. On 12 November, we're bringing The Stord Experience to Mercedes-Benz World, and we're gathering the founders and leaders behind the UK's fastest-growing e-commerce brands to be part of it. One day, built for the operators running the UK's fastest-growing e-commerce brands. ✇ Real growth stories from leading e-commerce founders ✇ Networking & workshops with operators solving the same problems ✇ Behind the wheel: The Grid F1 Simulator, the Pit Stop Challenge, and the Mercedes-AMG Ultimate Ride This is Stord's official UK launch: one platform for fulfillment, software, AI, and robotics, built to grow revenue, reduce costs, and give every customer a delivery experience worth coming back for. Spaces are limited and by invitation. https://hubs.ly/Q04yDn1d0

From Malibu to Manhattan, we're closing out the Stord Summer Roadshow this week. We've got Founderland in California on October 1, and the last Stord Dinner Series on October 6 in New York. Different coasts, different rooms, same crowd we've spent all summer getting to know: the people driving the future of commerce. To everyone who joined us at a table this summer: thank you for building this with us. 

77% of consumers say they think more favorably of brands that invest in well-designed packaging. Yet only 36% of e-commerce brands include an insert or sample inside the box. That's an exponential gap when you consider that the box is one of the few moments where a customer has a brand’s undivided attention. Brands invest heavily in acquisition, personalization, and lifecycle marketing. They segment audiences, tailor offers, and build increasingly sophisticated customer journeys. Then the order ships. A first-time buyer often receives the same insert as someone placing their sixth order. A VIP gets the same message as a customer who purchased once during a promotion. Much of the customer intelligence that shapes the digital experience never makes it into the physical one. In our latest blog, Sr. Product Manager Anna Khomenko explores why the post-purchase physical experience is one of the most underleveraged channels in commerce, and what the brands pulling ahead are doing differently. https://lnkd.in/gFpRF3mw

The Stord Summer Roadshow is back in LA on September 24 for the Founders Only Dinner. Another stop on the road trip we've been running city by city all summer, sitting down with the founders and operators building independent commerce. Want more info on becoming a Founders Club member? Email events@stord.com.

A card expires. A subscriber pauses. An address changes. None of that is a customer deciding to leave. But most subscription tools handle all three the same way: badly, and usually after the fact. Involuntary churn, the kind caused by a failed payment rather than a customer walking away, makes up 20 to 40% of total subscription churn. That's not a retention problem. It's a systems problem. Billing, storefront, and fulfillment running as three tools that don't talk to each other, so nobody finds out something broke until the customer already has. Stord Subscriptions runs all three on one platform, so a paused order actually stays paused, a failed payment gets caught before it costs a subscriber, and the warehouse knows what's coming before a renewal spike hits it. Senior Product Manager Sean Sandrock breaks down what's actually driving subscription churn, and how fixing the systems underneath it is different from fixing the product itself. Read the full piece in the comments.

Keep the subscribers you're quietly losing. Most subscription tools stop paying attention the moment a subscriber does something outside the checkout flow. A subscriber pauses, and the next shipment goes out anyway. A subscriber updates an address, and the box ships to the old one. Nobody's watching the handoff between systems, so nobody catches it until the subscriber does. Separately, failed payments are a bigger problem than most brands realize: 20 to 40% of subscription churn is involuntary, caused by a card that expired or a retry that never happened, not a customer choosing to leave. (Recurly) Stord Subscriptions runs billing, the storefront, and fulfillment on one connected platform. A failed payment gets caught and retried automatically. A paused subscriber's box actually stays put. No subscriber left behind. Link in comments to learn more about Stord Subscriptions.

Last week we hosted founders and leaders at Bob Bob Ricard for our Commerce Leaders London Social, to talk through what's actually on their minds right now. The topic that came up again and again was international expansion. Makes sense. Most of the room is scaling fast, and expansion is no longer a someday plan. It's a live decision. What stood out was how much AI came up, not as a buzzword but as a practical tool: automated translation, localization/localisation, and making sense of the operational data that piles up the moment you start selling across borders. That's the thing about getting the right people in one room. From wellness and beauty, to pet care, to consumer tech and home, every perspective on international growth was shaped by a completely different kind of business. A founder scaling a supplement brand thinks about expansion differently than one scaling pet food, who thinks about it differently again than someone in consumer electronics. Put them at the same table and the conversation gets sharper, fast. The discussion moved into AI and creativity too, and one point stuck with the room. AI can scale a good idea across audiences. It can't originate one. If you're sitting on something genuinely unique and wondering whether AI could have done it faster and better, the answer is no. Which means the brands going AI-first from day one aren't the ones outpacing you on originality. They're proving the opposite: the value still sits in the time and money spent bringing an original thought to life in the first place. Good conversation, better company. More of these to come.

It's a big week for the Stord Summer Roadshow: Vessel International in San Marcos, Beanstalk in New York, PARCEL Forum (The #1 Package Fulfillment Event in the U.S.)#1 in Orlando, and Origin Point in San Diego, Sept 13-18. Four cities in one week, and every stop is a new room full of the people building independent commerce. Busy doesn't begin to cover it, but we're soaking up every conversation and enjoying the ride. Want in at any stop? events@stord.com

Amazon is roughly a third of U.S. e-commerce, and already a trillion-dollar company on that third alone. Recently on BBC's Talking Business, Stord CEO Sean Henry made the case for the other two-thirds: independent brands who can't absorb tariffs, energy costs, and global disruption on their own, and who need infrastructure built to carry that volatility for them. That's the two-thirds we care about, and the UK is where we're proving it next. Check the comments for showtimes of the full segment.

Attending Beanstalk in New York City from September 14-16? Schedule time with our team in the Beanstalk app today. Looking forward to being there!