Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Oh

Joshua Warren  0:06  
the theme I see is that things change, they change a lot. And they change typically in the direction of customers having more choice and there being more competition. So you have to do everything you can to serve your customers meet their needs, and realize that you have to stand out, and that there will always be more and more competition. So you need to find ways that you know, whether it's you're going to be the most innovative retailer, or you're going to be the most customer friendly retailer, like, find what that edge is, and really protect that. So you stand out in the marketplace.

Darin Newbold  0:44  
Good day, and welcome once more to Commerce Today. My name is Darren and I'm very excited to be here. And as always, with our funfilled. co host Josh, Josh, how are you doing today?

Joshua Warren  0:54  
Doing good and join our new but temporary office?

Darin Newbold  0:59  
Oh, yeah, definitely want to let you know, you could hear a elevator elevating with the bell dinging we've got a new doorbell that might I don't think it will, but it might go off randomly. And well, who knows what else might happen here at our temporary new location, but we're excited about it. And with that, we're excited about a little bit different of a show today. We want to kind of dig in a little bit deeper and kind of give you a little more background around Josh, his background, how he got into E commerce and how this all got started. So Josh, what for you motivated you to enter the e Commerce Industry back then? And how was that journey evolved?

Joshua Warren  1:36  
So way back then,

Darin Newbold  1:39  
man, I feel old, the Wayback Machine.

Joshua Warren  1:43  
So I was interested in software development. Like I was one of those kids that grew up playing with basic back in the MS DOS days, the good ol gorilla game and all that. So always interested in development. And I actually had somebody I was working for just as a day job completely unrelated to e commerce or programming. And he had an idea that he wanted to start an E commerce site and said, Hey, you're a software developer, you can figure that out. Right? So yeah, that looks interesting, and started a project for him, but then also just kind of realized, like 1999 was an interesting year for the internet. And it seemed like, brands that were selling things online. While some of them didn't make it rip the was it a sock puppet? I think it was pence.com that had like a puppet. So yeah, there's a lot of brands that didn't make it. But there was just some really interesting stuff. Like, it was a fun time to be involved in the internet. But I think e commerce especially like, there's just so much cool stuff happening in 99 that really caught my attention and made me realize that it was something I wanted to make a career out of.

Darin Newbold  2:53  
Well, that's cool. Well, the early days of the languages that you were using, what were some of the challenges that you face dealing with PHP, os commerce and Ruby on Rails? I mean, this is long before even figuring out things with Magento.

Joshua Warren  3:09  
Yeah, so I started in the early days of PHP three. So we're up to a much higher number than that now. And it double digits. No, yeah, no, yeah. But yeah, there's some debate over when and I'll get to that point. But yeah, so I started out and writing everything by hand in PHP and PostgreSQL. Which doesn't mean anything to most people. But for developers that have been around a while does. And yeah, there were no frameworks. There were no like it was all written by hand. No other stuff to help you with me not even really good development environments for PHP back then. So OS commerce came out in like early, mid 2000. And that was at least hey, here's a prebuilt platform that runs on PHP, you don't have to do everything myself from scratch. And then actually, also in 2001, PHP, four came out, got a lot of business, and I did a lot of work, just updating it was almost like the y2k moment for PHP apps where there were so many apps that broke in PHP for websites, so spend some time on that. And then it was, it was right around 2007. I had a client that outgrew US Commerce, didn't want to use OS commerce anymore. And I said, I'm, there's this cool thing called Ruby on Rails. I'm going to write an E commerce platform from scratch. And I tried that for a few months. And I finally was like, you know, and especially during, you know, me, like after a few months of any one thing I was done, lost and lost that loving feeling. Yeah. And that is right about when Magento was first released. And I took a look at it and said, Wow, this is a lot better than OS commerce. It's a lot better than anything else. And someone else wrote it, so I don't have to write it and then That's when I started using Magento. And had been using it ever since.

Darin Newbold  5:03  
That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, going back to maybe that the beginning of this question, because you kind of ended up going into the Magento. And leading us to that. But going back as a, as a freelance developer in those early years, what were some of those key lessons, that and experiences that shaped then your approach to kind of E commerce development, and ultimately, the founding of Creatuity? Yeah,

Joshua Warren  5:27  
a lot of it was realizing that trying to do everything yourself didn't work, right. And there is a power and especially the Magento, being an open source platform, there's a power in being part of and using technology that's been used by a lot of other people. And it's been built by a lot of other people, and not just one person, one company. And so that's always been like, My desire is as much as possible. Let's use tools that other people have written an open source, let's open source our own work, let's contribute back to that. Like it really built a strong open source ethos into the work that I do. And it, it was a magical time. And I think open source still has this power. I mean, I'm seeing this with some of the AI stuff where back then, because Magento was open source, anybody could launch an E commerce site, like you didn't have to go buy software, you didn't have to like it really leveled the playing field. Wow. And so yeah, that was that was kind of a lesson I learned, especially after trying to write some things myself for you some closed platforms.

Darin Newbold  6:33  
So is that what led to ultimately opening and, and starting Creatuity was was having that and being able to have that already built platform that then you could build upon.

Joshua Warren  6:43  
That was a big part of it. Also, just Magento is growth. So I just started getting more and more people that wanted me to do do work for them on the Magento platform. And notice that even working 6080 90 hours a week, there just weren't enough hours. So

Darin Newbold  6:58  
you had to expand and ultimately kind of leading to the to the next piece, you know, how has Creatuity evolved? This all started in 2008. So we're now 20 2315 years later, how is it? How was Creatuity evolved? And what are some of the key pieces critical factors that really contributed to the to the growth and changes with Creatuity?

Joshua Warren  7:22  
Oh, man, it has grown and evolved quite a bit, I would say. So when I first started, we were all developers. We were developers developing. We are also developers, billing developers, contracting developers selling developers project managing, which is especially scary

Darin Newbold  7:40  
For those keeping score at home. You can see where there's a crash, this is like a train going down the tracks. There is a you can see the light in the tunnel, but it's coming straight hatchet. Yeah,

Joshua Warren  7:48  
yeah, we made it. We made it three years before the crash. And it wasn't really a crash so much as an intervention. Others that I knew basically saying, Josh, you might need more than just developers. And still to this day, like we've always been my background been in software development, we've always been a very dev focused agency. But we've realized you have to have balance. And really, with anything, like any aspect of the business, it's just learning you have to have have some balance. And I think very early on, especially the early excitement of early 2000s. Ecommerce, it was easy to not have that balance.

Darin Newbold  8:25  
No makes sense. That definitely makes sense. So as you as we think about kind of the 15 years of of Creatuity. But looking at the broader industry, what are during this time and over this, what are some of the big in industry changes that you've seen been a part of and and then how has that maybe adjusted or impacted? How you approach Creatuity? And how Creatuity approach then the market? Yeah, I

Joshua Warren  8:55  
think there's two big trends, I think I would this. The first is just early days, anybody could set up an e commerce website, get traffic, make good money. And I think there was less competition, so there's less competition for the merchants, there was also less competition among the agencies. And I think now, if you're starting a new e commerce business, you have to have a really solid, unique idea. You can't just say, Hey, I'm gonna go sell T shirts online, because it's been done. And I kind of the same thing with agencies like you have to your agency has to have something that causes it to stand out. The other big trend though, and when I was thinking about this, for some reason, there's been so many technology shifts over the years, but the ones that stick with me are the front end changes. And I'm specifically thinking about when we went from I mean, kind of pre CSS very basic graphical interfaces on the web like websites where there was only one resolution, one size screen you were designing for, and you weren't even really designing that much to a bit more of a modern approach, and then obviously, when responsive design became big, that was a huge shift of Okay, now, whether it's a 27 inch screen or a four inch screen size is going to look good, exactly. And then now shifting even further into headless and PWA. S and other technologies like that, like there's been some big shifts, and really comes down to user expectations, like what customers expect to be able to do online. And that has required us to basically constantly reinvent ourselves, reinvent our processes, and just keep learning and evolving and innovating,

Darin Newbold  10:36  
how this is a little off script. But I wanted to you brought it up kind of as the future on the headless and stuff. How big of an impact, do you and I know that maybe we're even headless is somewhat a little bit old news? It's not? It's not definitely not the new new news. But I guess how big of an impact do you see that making in in the E commerce and E commerce businesses?

Joshua Warren  10:59  
I think the big impact from a headless is as more and more platforms and tools adopt that headless approach, it creates a lot more choice. So five years ago, if you're gonna buy an E commerce platform, that platform, you had to like the front end and the back end, because you can never stuck, you're stuck. Whereas now, you can go out there and say, Okay, I want to use this back end, but I want to build my own front end or pulling this other front end tool. So yeah, I think it's driving more choice. Kind of going back to what I said earlier, that means that there's more competition, you have to do more things to stand out. So I think the platforms are going to have to, to fight more and potentially even, you know, question their, their pricing models and their business models a bit. Because if I, if five years ago, or two years ago, I'm paying, you know, platform a for back end and front end services, and then I go to them now and say, Hey, I'm not going to use your front end anymore, I'm only going to use the back end. I'm now spending money with someone else or the front end, I might be thinking, Hey, can I now pay you less? Like what?

Darin Newbold  12:00  
Exactly? Yeah, I was just thinking about, what if the automobile industry was headless? Can you imagine I can choose the frame that I want that I think of all the competition in trucks, and just think about buying a truck. And while I want to a ram of this, I want the forward of this and a Chevy of something else. Anyway, little off topic here. But back on as we, as we kind of bring this around. So how has your role as CEO at Creatuity? How is that evolved over the years? And, you know, what are what are the key leadership pieces that you kind of your guiding principles that you work from?

Joshua Warren  12:38  
Yeah, it's changed a lot, we first started, it was just me, I was doing everything. And it's been, it's honestly been really awesome over the years to watch as I brought in other people and, you know, have whole teams doing things that I used to do, and giving them an opportunity to have a job they enjoy, and especially get out of some things that I don't enjoy, right. And so that's where, you know, I'm very lucky. The the role I'm in now, I'm really able to spend a lot of my time kind of focusing on innovation change kind of where, where the industry is going, where we need to be going, and also in basically coaching and training up some of our leaders. And that's been that's been great. That's been a an awesome evolution. I think that the very beginning when I was in the trenches, doing everything myself was really exciting. But I think this is an even more exciting kind of chapter for me. As far as the leadership principles, really a lot of it, I just, I try to do my best, I try to give people opportunities to do their best. Some of my most fulfilling moments have been when I found someone that maybe wasn't from the industry maybe didn't quite have the qualifications, but I saw they can be coached to and I saw they could grow into it. And really taking that chance on those people and helping them grow into their roles. That's been really cool.

Darin Newbold  14:00  
You've got some fun success stories there. So that may be another episode for another day. But definitely, that's a, that's a great principle to have is to really growing others and building that. So here's a fun one for you. Can you share a particularly memorable or challenging project from your career in E commerce and what was the impact that had on you and the business? Oh, yeah.

Joshua Warren  14:24  
There's there's already several videos online about this one, so I think I'm fine to talk about it. That would be the Rural King project. So this was this was back in the days when big companies had buy online pick up in store, but like midsize and smaller companies, just that technology wasn't accessible yet. So Rural King at the time had, I want to say 100 150 stores and they wanted to deploy buy online pick up in store, but they decided that they really believed in the Go big or go home approach. So it was changed their e commerce platform, deploy Buy online pick up in store, deploy a PIM deploy a new system for generating shipping labels. And there's probably another piece that I'm forgetting, and they wanted to go live with it all on the same day, it was all one project online. That is the first and last time we ever did that. We have, it was a successful project, a successful launch, but it was a trying launch in a lot of ways. And even from a customer service training perspective, like changing all those systems on the customer on the employees all at once was a little much. So now we we take more of a phased approach. So that was kind of the big lesson learned from now on.

Darin Newbold  15:41  
Oh, absolutely. Wow, that sounds that sounds interesting and challenging all at the same time? Well, as our as we kind of close it up with our last question here based on all of your experience in the industry. What, what would be your advice to? Or what advice do you have for merchants looking to succeed in today's competitive online marketplace,

Joshua Warren  16:04  
just thinking through everything we talked about today, the theme I see is that things change, they change a lot. And they change typically in the direction of customers having more choice and there being more competition. So you have to do everything you can to serve your customers meet their needs, and realize that you have to stand out, and that there will always be more and more competition. So you need to find ways that you know, whether it's you're going to be the most innovative retailer, or you're going to be the most customer friendly retailer, like find what that edge is, and really protect that so that you stand out in the marketplace.

Darin Newbold  16:40  
When it's one of those things where the like all things, it's a balance, you know, you can you can go overboard in one area, and be the most innovative and innovate yourself almost out of the market. Because then the customer either doesn't understand or the customer isn't caught up to you. So there is some balance to that. But definitely change is inevitable. And like anything else, it's going to happen whether you like it or not what I even have, ironically, or, or funnily enough,

Joshua Warren  17:09  
t shirt I'm wearing is from a company called cotton Bureau, cotton Bureau, one of the main reasons I buy from them and they stick out in my head is they innovate, they actually in a free it with the company was before but they were part of a company before they were cotton bureau.com where they were one of the very first responsive sites out there. Like they were the very first that made it really easy to order from your desktop or your phone. And I liked that. And I appreciated that. And I just kind of thought it was cool. And so that has I become a loyal customer for life, basically, because I know that, hey, when it comes to new patterns and design, they're going to be first to deploy those and I like buying from companies that do that.

Darin Newbold  17:48  
Very cool. All right, well, that company just got a small plug in there. As always, we are very happy to have you on board for this trip down memory lane. And Josh, thank you so much for sharing all of your background, the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations of your journey in E commerce. So with that, until next time, we'll see you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai