About Chris

I am a builder. That’s the through-line behind everything else.

The story

I started writing code because nobody would build the tool I needed. In 2015, the Shopify ecosystem had storefront builders that were either too rigid for serious merchants or too complex for everyone else. I built GemPages to solve my own problem first.

Ten years later, GemPages is the #1 page builder app on Shopify, used by 100,000+ merchants worldwide, with a 4.9★ rating and 95% five-star reviews. We bootstrapped the entire way — no funding rounds, no exit pressure, no dilution. Just a product compounding for a decade.

The hardest year wasn’t year one. It was year six. We hit a plateau, the product had drifted, and I had to rebuild parts of the engine while customers were still using the car. We came out of it with a clearer thesis about who we serve and why — and that thesis is what’s driving everything we ship now.

Why this site exists

Most of what I’ve learned in 10 years of building doesn’t fit on LinkedIn or Twitter. The framework decisions, the failures, the data behind why advertorials convert 3x better than landing pages — it lives in internal Slack threads or workshop slides that never see the light of day.

This site is the long-form home for that.

The mission is simple: share what I’ve learned about ecommerce, technology, and how to apply technology to sell better. Real data, real product, real numbers. No course funnels. No “make money fast.” No motivational posters with my face on them.

If you’re a DTC operator trying to figure out why your CVR is stuck, an agency owner looking for a framework that actually moves a client’s needle, a Vietnamese ecom founder thinking about going global, or an AI builder wondering whether agents actually ship to production — I think you’ll find something here.

The vision

I’m building toward two convergent products:

Self-Driving Storefront

An online store should design itself, A/B test itself, optimize itself, and write its own copy. The merchant focuses on product and brand; the AI runs the operations. We’re not there yet — but the agents are starting to ship inside the GemPages ecosystem.

AI Ecommerce Funnel

A full conversion funnel that’s AI-native end-to-end — ad creative, advertorial, product page, post-purchase upsell — each stage informed by what worked at the previous stage, retraining itself on real merchant data. The thesis: generic AI writers are dead. Pattern-based, vertical-specific, funnel-aware AI wins. CRO and gross margin are the two metrics we optimize for.

And the bigger frame

Vietnam can be the Ecommerce Nation — the country that powers global ecommerce the way Taiwan powers semiconductors. We have the talent, cost structure, and geography. The 4S Strategy — Shenzhen, Saigon, Singapore, Sydney — connects the four hubs that matter for cross-border ecommerce. GemCommerce is one bet on that. There will be more.