Newsletter #46: Shopify news, Serena Williams, and Mirai Rengy

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

The month of May is full of in-person events in the Shopify ecosystem. It’s so refreshing!

Last Wednesday, I had the honor of being invited to an event organized by Payplug, a French omnichannel payment solution.

This event was dedicated to French Shopify freelance developers. Even though I'm not a freelancer anymore, I loved being part of this event as it allowed me to reunite with friends.

The next day, I attended another event: the second edition of the ShopiShopaShow Apps Edition, organized by Christophe Davy, a freelance Shopify consultant.

This event revolved around 12 Shopify applications made in France. The 150+ participants had the opportunity to talk to their founders, get a demo of the apps, and ask questions.

I really enjoyed these two events. They are a great reminder of how amazing the French Shopify community is.

In today’s edition, we’re discussing Shopify news, Serena Williams, and Mirai Rengy.

Let's dive in.

Work

What’s up in the Shopify ecosystem?

• Kirill Platonov created a less painful way to work with Shopify’s GraphQL API in Ruby

Kirill is a software developer who specializes in building and scaling Shopify apps with Ruby on Rails, Hotwire, and Polaris ViewComponents.

On May 12th, 2024, Kirill released shopify_graphql, a small wrapper on top of the official shopify_api gem.

This wrapper adds a layer of abstraction for GraphQL calls, allowing them to be isolated and hiding the complexity from the rest of the application.

Most importantly, it provides a set of conventions and best practices on how to structure and use GraphQL in Rails applications.

All of this is extracted from real-life experience building and maintaining multiple Shopify apps and has been battle-tested in production.

Discover more in Kirill’s release blog post, and on shopify_graphql’s GitHub repository.

• Mantle acquired two great products: App Store Analytics, and Shopify App Store Index (SASI)

In March 2022, I published an article called “6 tools to grow your Shopify app”.

App Store Analytics and Shopify App Store Index were on my list, along with Google Analytics, Partner Metrics, Loom, and Crisp.

Created by Daniel Sim, App Store Analytics is an essential tool for Shopify app developers.

They use it to explore the world of keywords: which keywords are Shopify merchants typing into the app store to find their application?

For each keyword, App Store Analytics shows the number of page views, the number of installations, the install rate, and the app’s average position on the results page for that keyword.

Based on this data, Shopify app developers are able to understand their current position on the app store, and introduce changes to improve it, as part of a constant test-and-learn process.

Without App Store Analytics, Shopify app developers would be navigating in the dark.

Same goes for Shopify App Store Index, which was created by Alex Dover, Steve Jones, and Sam Hennings.

Shopify app developers use SASI to track their ranking in the different categories of the app store, and their progression over time. Since this information is public, they can also track their competitors’ rankings.

Based on this data, Shopify app developers can develop strategies to improve their app’s discoverability.

Mantle was already very powerful on its own.

Successful Shopify app developers, such as Gil Greenberg and Björn Forsberg, enjoy it because of all the essential metrics it provides: trial conversion funnel, performance of different subscription plans, app usage and event reporting, etc.

Mantle is also popular for their billing and subscription management feature, which makes it easier to integrate with Shopify’s billing API.

By acquiring these two much-loved products, Mantle expands their dataset by adding precious historical data regarding listing changes and ranking. They should now be able to provide a more comprehensive view of an app’s progress and success.

Read more about this double acquisition on Mantle’s blog.

Inspire

Last month, Serena Williams launched her new brand, WYN Beauty, on Shopify.

WYN Beauty is all about makeup you can move in. The products are wrapped in a chartreuse color as a reference to tennis and a representation of energy and audacity.

This launch is another reminder of how big of an icon Serena Williams is. She has been a huge inspiration for me over the years.

Here are some key facts about her:

• Serena was born on September 26th, 1981. She is 42 years old.

• She won 23 major (Grand Slam) women's singles titles.

• Serena and her older sister Venus Williams were coached by their parents, Oracene Price and Richard Williams.

• She turned professional in 1995 and won her first major singles title at the 1999 US Open.

• She won 14 major women's doubles titles, all with her sister Venus.

• She broke many barriers for women and athletes of color. She has been a trailblazer in a sport that historically lacked diversity, inspiring a new generation of players from diverse backgrounds.

• She runs the Serena Williams Foundation, to fund various projects such as school construction.

• She studied fashion at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, in Florida, in between winning Grand Slams.

• In 2014, she launched Serena Ventures, an investment fund with a vision to support founders whose perspectives and innovations level the playing field for women and people of color. In an ecosystem where solo women founders receive only 2% of venture funding, and Black founders receive 1.2%, Serena Ventures breaks the mold. They don’t require founders to come from historically underrepresented backgrounds, yet 76% of their portfolio founders do. As of April 2024, Serena Ventures invested in over 85 companies, which now include 14 unicorns.

• In 2018, she launched her own clothing line, S by Serena, designed to empower people to look and feel their absolute best.

• In 2022, she retired from tennis.

• She is married to Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit. Together they have two daughters: Olympia, born in 2017, and Adira, born in 2023.

Explore

In edition 23, I wrote about my Spotify Wrapped and told you that my top artist in 2023 was Meryl.

Meryl is hands-down one of my favorite artists of all time. I’ve seen her live several times and, most importantly, I was very lucky to meet her in person for various projects.

On November 30th, 2022, she invited me to a private event: her own music label Maison Caviar had reserved a restaurant to host a listening session for the first album of a new artist that had just joined her label.

This new artist was Mirai Rengy.

We were about 25 people that day: Mirai Rengy, Meryl and her team, a few music journalists, and me.

We all listened to the album together a few times, and gave our opinion on each song. It was such a great experience for me to be a part of it.

I really enjoyed the album and was looking forward to its release.

That day has now arrived.

On May 17th, 2024, Mirai Rengy released his first album, “Lit et ratures”.

Here is a song from it, called “Eloigne”.

Enjoy.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie