A good product isn't enough: why I believe in community

For GemPages’ first ten years, the formula was simple: a good product and good customer service.

In 2026, that is no longer true. A good product and excellent support are not enough anymore, because every decent app does both.

”A good product and good support” is no longer enough

When the App Store gets crowded, organic traffic keeps getting more expensive, and Shopify controls distribution right on its own platform, then if all you compete on is ranking and reviews, you will burn out.

I came to see that I needed a distribution layer of my own: a channel, a community, a durable advantage that does not sit on the Shopify App Store. Something I can actually control.

NEW GAME, NEW LAYER: the layer on the App Store that Shopify controls vs your own distribution layer that you control — What’s on the App Store, Shopify controls; what’s off it, you control.

There is another shift I have to admit. AI is blurring the line of competitive advantage between players. With AI, someone can clone your design, or a product much like yours, in a matter of hours or days.

But there is one thing I do not think AI will be able to produce for many years: the relationship between people. More precisely, the trust that accumulates over time, through many real interactions between people who genuinely care about and support each other.

The one thing AI can't copy: what money can buy vs human relationships built over time — When everything is easy to clone, the relationship between people is the thing AI can’t copy.

The new durable advantage comes from community

Some will say paid ads also build an advantage — through data, customer lists, retargeting. I would say paid ads buy traffic, not the trust of your customers.

A brand burning 500,000 dollars a month on ads can be cut off the next month and lose most of its flow of customers.

A brand with tens of thousands of people following it for its content and community still has those customers even if it pauses ads for a quarter.

That is the difference between what money can buy and what only time can build.

In 2021, Shopify banned GemPages from the App Store for six months, over an issue with a Mailchimp element.

For a SaaS product that lives on Shopify, that is the kind of fall that can end the game. New customers can’t find you, existing ones see the app as “unavailable” and start to worry, competitors take your spot in search.

During those six months, luckily, GemPages still had a Facebook Group of Shopify accounts that already had GemPages installed. Enough customers stayed, and were willing to wait for us to get through that stretch.

It showed me how much GemPages was loved. And it opened up another perspective for me on the power of community.

A comparison of paid ads and community: paid buys traffic, community buys time — Paid buys traffic; community buys time — and what takes time is hard to copy.

That is one of the reasons Gem decided to organize ShopX — the first global-scale e-commerce event in Vietnam.

Chris Koh on the ShopX 2025 stage in Hanoi — ShopX 2025 in Hanoi — the first global-scale e-commerce event Gem organized.

After the first season of ShopX, here are a few things we were lucky to gain:

Network effect: operators introduce operators, agencies introduce agencies, and that network compounds over time — something advertising can’t do.
Brand authority: after ShopX 2025, more and more people in the APAC e-commerce community associate the name GemPages with CRO expertise. That is not something you can easily buy; it has to be built over years, by showing up consistently and serving the community.

Come for the tool, stay for the network: GemPages is the tool, the community is the network that's hard to copy — Come for the tool, stay for the network — GemPages is the tool, the community is the network rivals can’t buy.

Community is not a marketing channel

I’m not saying “drop ads, build a community.” And I’m not saying “turn a community into a marketing channel for your company” either.

If you build a community as a marketing channel for your company’s product, it is really just a loudspeaker wearing a community’s clothes.

Customers are sharper than you think. They can tell the difference between a community of real value and a group cheering for a product.

ShopX, to me, is not a Gem marketing campaign; it is an important part of a community-led strategy. GemPages only supports the operations — it doesn’t pay to have the product featured in it.

At ShopX, and in the regular ECom Coffee Chats, I have never aimed to pitch a product.

An ECom Coffee Chat — people gathered around a table, exchanging ideas — An ECom Coffee Chat — focused on sharing value, not pitching a product.

We focus on spreading value: sharing useful knowledge, understanding and solving together the pain points people are facing, connecting experts to share new perspectives and ways of doing things.

The cost of building a community is that it is slow. But that slowness, seen from another angle, is exactly what turns “community” into a durable advantage.

Because what you can buy quickly with money, your competitors can buy too. What only accumulates over years of walking alongside each other, sharing, and helping one another — no one can buy, and it is very hard to copy.

I’m also not saying community alone is enough. You still need a product people genuinely love. A strong community can’t save a product no one wants. The two have to go together.

In the end, community is how you see your customers

Community-led, in the end, is more about how a business sees its customers than it is a marketing tactic. Do you see them as someone who buys once, or someone who will walk with you for the long run?

I believe that with a community-led strategy, customers and revenue are the lucky things that come after — not the immediate goal.

We have been, and will keep, spreading things of real value to the community. Because Gem’s motivation has always been to “Help People Sell Better,” not simply to chase profit.

— Chris