This Dropshipper Built A $20K/Month Shopify Order Tracking App

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

Hello, everyone! My name is Kiril Kirilov, and I am the co-founder of Rush — the most versatile shipment software for Shopify businesses. Rush is a Shopify post-purchase solution that turns first-time customers into returning customers.

Since eCommerce and dropshipping are taking off in the last couple of years, My business partner and I decided to develop an app that can truly be a game-changing component for many businesses on Shopify. Our main focus was to answer the needs of merchants when it comes to providing first-class tracking information to their customers.

Yes, Rush is, in fact, our flagship product. It provides numerous solutions that Shopify owners are looking for.

A few of the main features of Rush include the following:

• Excellent delivery notifications via Email/SMS/Push
• Customizable branded tracking page
• Last mile updates and notifications
• Upselling and cross-selling options

Rush is an app that offers a lot of value for both merchants and customers. In a minute, I will explore all of its features, why it stands out ahead of the current competition, and how it can be integrated into your Shopify store to bring mesmerizing results fast.

As far as how much money we are making today, we just hit $20k MRR. With more than 1500 active installations, we are steadily growing. On top of that, we are building strong relationships with customers, experienced dropshippers, and brand owners on Shopify.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

That should be an easy and interesting question to answer. As of now, I’ve been doing Ecom for more than 10 years, from eBay to Amazon FBA to SEO for ecom stores to doing dropshipping using Facebook ads since 2017, and my experience has shown that although there are many useful methods, apps, and ways to automate the process and give adequate information to clients, there is room for more improvement.

But the truth is that Dropshipping is like being pregnant - Everybody says "congratulations", but nobody knows how many times you got f---ed

I am no stranger to:

• getting dozens of disputes, chargebacks in my Paypal account every day
• responding to angry emails and ticket inquiries
• running into a mountain of problems due to low Facebook page score
• losing money by refunding your buyers because shipments get lost
• not be able to retain customers on a scale

And don't get me wrong, I truly enjoyed my journey so far, and the software we've built last year turns out to be a shipment "swiss army knife" for Shopify merchants of all sizes - from small dropshippers to big DTC brands.

Nonetheless Rush turns order tracking and delivery notifications into a sales and conversions machine.

So, truth be told, that’s how we came up with the idea for Rush. We changed our thinking pattern and we started to dig deeper into the Shopify apps world.

We discovered that some apps offer "just tracking" or "just upsells or cross-sells", but there was never an application that had all of these powerful tools combined and offer a lot more.

My partner and I knew from the beginning that Rush is the start of something bigger, and I don’t mean by only providing a first-class product. With Rush, we are managing to change Shopify stores for the better by increasing their ROI by at least 10-20x with smart-triggered email and SMS notifications while leveraging the 2 most visited pages after the Buy Button, which are the “Thank you” and “Order Tracking” pages.

I do not want to sound too philosophical, but to create something means that you care for people. You are a problem solver who wants to create solutions that can make an impact in specific niches.

The results speak for themselves. By far, we have hundreds of clients that sent us their metrics since they started using Rush and the feedback has been fantastic!

The “aha” moment for us came early in the process as we showed a demo version of Rush to friends and people who work in the eCommerce industry. They reacted with responses like, "Wow, we are now witnessing an app that combines many of the ‘needed’ features for tracking, shipping, and notifications all in one.” Plus all the integrations we do have with top-notch apps like Klaviyo, Omnisend, Loox, Judge.me, Loox, Stamped, PayPal, (and soon more to come) is what gives us the confidence to name it our "most successful project to date".

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

In the beginning, it was just me and my partner and co-founder in Rush — Stanislav Stankov. Stanislav has a decorated history of developing much successful software, so he can develop a tool that would accomplish our needs.

Our first step was to look at e-commerce as a whole and ask ourselves some important questions: what do customers want to know about the orders they place? What kind of information will keep them updated on their order? How will providing customer updates on their order turn into profits for a business?

In short - “closing the gap between order & unboxing”.

We wanted to develop a software that would track, notify, and upsell Shopify stores’ customers, and at the same time keep them engaged and turn them into repeat customers.

This process has taken us to where we are today. We are working with a great team that is constantly growing. In the beginning, there were the two of us and some business partners that did help us launch the project, but as of June 2021, we are working with more than 25 specialists, and each one of them is bringing their unique signature to the table.

Today, Rush serves the needs of tracking, notifications, and upsells for Shopify store owners. With the incredible post-purchase shipping notifications that can increase returning customers by 33%, 10x the ROI, and reduce tracking inquiries by more than 78%. It is challenging to launch such a versatile app but to us a process that is showing astonishing results and feedback from users by far, and it is the true motivation that keeps us going firmly to our next goal.

Yes, as any business and startup in general, we did put a lot of money and effort into launching the app in early 2020, but in the last couple of months, we start to "see the bigger picture," and the impact Rush is starting to have on our clients. I do not plan to go into detail on how much money we have spent on it and what was our starting capital but, instead, I will take my time to thank you once again for the trust in us from business partners and clients. As we know, it is a rocky road to the top, but with an amazing team like ours, I feel we will "leap over" difficulties and breakthroughs. It is a matter of time.

Describe the process of launching the business.

I mentioned some of the processes in the last question but will try to summarize them here once again. Our strategy was to create a "solid" version of Rush – an app that has a seamless user interface that works the proper way with all stores and that is following all the Shopify requirements, terms, and regulations.

Pick the right team, which might be tricky at times, but with time comes experience. You will soon know what you are looking for in a specialist.

It was important for us to get our first customer because it would validate that we did develop an application that served the needs of Shopify store owners. We got our first customer in 2020. I remember how it felt knowing we had gotten our first customer, and I wondered what the future held for us in terms of “a lot of customers”.

The term "a lot of customers" does not resonate with me because who can tell how much is enough? I think the answer to the question is by the end of 2020, we started to get more requests, active installations, and reviews from satisfied customers. Half a year later, we are managing to bring more revenue from Rush. We can grow as a team, hiring some top-notch specialists in software development, customer support, growth marketing, and copywriting to give you "the ultimate experience".

As far as our website is concerned, it has been active for more than a year and as of June 2021, it has "growing traffic" inquiries. Users love our blog, as a lot of eCommerce-related topics are discussed there.

But to get back on starting a business, I do believe it is a hard process for all of us, isn't it? If it was too easy to launch an original idea and execute its development, then everyone would do it. Yes, we did sacrifice a lot of hours into Rush, a lot of capital to boost it but what matters to us and we try to retain are the following KPIs:

• We grow with the growth of our client's businesses
• Always listen to our ideal customer and build the product for them
• Providing “value” and “unique experience” to our clients

It might sound simple, but these are our “core values”. Everything else comes after that. Some of our biggest lessons, in the beginning, were to believe in the app provided, to execute its development the right way, according to our understanding, and to never stop in the process. It brings remarkable results as of now.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

We focus on retaining customers by delivering an app that will solve real problems that Shopify store owners are facing daily. Some of them are well-known questions include the following:

• Where is my order?
• What are my tracking and shipping dates?
• Why is my delivery delayed?
• Can you help me with courier or communication problems?

Our advice would be to focus on launching a problem-solving app. Rush is managing to solve these kinds of problems and questions extremely well and give more “value” options like upsells and cross-sells, increasing ROI by smart-triggered email/SMS notifications and integrating with some of the best apps for Shopify.

As far as traffic and sales go, we are trying to optimize our website just as well as our application. We do publish guest posts on reputable websites, including some of our partner websites. We have included our Starter Story (thank you for the opportunity), and our blog is generating traffic with quality posts, case study publications, and more.

Organic growth channels are huge factors in online advertising and we are preparing some "intriguing" campaigns for our future ads, collaborations, and overall advertising. Stay tuned about it.

When it comes to advertising, we haven't reached our full potential yet, we’re just scratching the surface, to say the least. We look at paid channels as a way to build brand awareness, attract the right prospects and turn them into leads and overtime customers, but we don’t look for immediate revenue since day 1. That’s why we offer a 7-day and on special holidays throughout the year a 30-day risk-free trial.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

The last couple of months were stable not only in the sense of "revenue" and "cash-flow" but we managed to grow our team with more talented specialists. This has given us the confidence to proceed further and execute more marketing campaigns while developing our brand exposure to reach more customers.

Rush is an app that successfully transitions into the merchants' most profitable tool because it "turns one-time buyers into life-long paying customers." I think the reason that Rush is successful is because of its diversity and the outcome it delivers to all Shopify merchants regardless of their size.

As I mentioned before, our goals for the future are while retaining more customers and meet their needs and expectations to grow our customer base to tens of thousands and to become the Go-to all-in-one post-purchase solution. Our customers, many of which are dropshippers and small-medium size businesses, are the foundation behind the whole idea that Rush was born in the first place. We have a lot of exciting things planned for the future.

Last but not least after we’ve closed a pre-seed investment round in Q2 of 2021 including Adii Pienaar, founder of WooCommerce, Casey Armstrong, CMO at ShipBob and former VP Marketing at BigCommerce, Mihail Stoychev and Georgi Petrov, the founders of SMSBump, now a Yotpo company, and Jonathan Kennedy, founder of HeyCarson.

We are thrilled to announce that we have raised a whopping €2.5 million in seed funding backed up by two incredible VCs - Eleven and Launchub.

Our journey so far has led us towards this successful outcome and we’re excited for what the future holds for Rush and our clients.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

At Rush, we learn every single day. We learn through our business meetings, we learn from all individuals from our team, and we learn from the eCommerce situation so we can improve our management skills, workflow, and find ways to measure results.

We learn from mistakes, too. I am a very observant person and reflect on every single detail when it comes to the product, quality of marketing campaigns, spending budgets, and so on. It is inevitable not to be detail-oriented when there is such stiff competition.

I can only speak for myself, but as I see in all of our specialists, we are born to take on different challenges and bring the best results at the end of the day. If I can say it like that: "Rush is a company that is open to anything new in the eCommerce world and would grasp all opportunities as they come!"

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We are working with a bunch of tools but some of the most important are the Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Hubspot, Jira, Slack, and last but not least ClickUp.

With the apps provided by Google & Hubspot, we do track our SEO KPIs, keyword performance, traffic, clicks, and overall conversions. Slack and ClickUp are showing proficiency in conversations and task management.

As far as the integrations Rush offers to people, I mentioned some of the biggest apps for Shopify that are our partners, such as Klaviyo, Omnisend, LOOX, Stamped, Judge.me, etc. We do have integrations with Slack and PayPal and some more fascinating news coming to the public real soon.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

It is hard to say the number one most influential book that I’ve read because there are so many, but 2 coming to my mind are “Eugene Schwartz - Breakthrough Advertising” and “Zig Ziglar - Secrets Of Closing The Sale”.

As far as influencers, lately, I look up to people like Adii Pienaar (angel investor at Rush), Dan Martell, Russel Brunson, Alex Hormozi to say a few.

Not to forget to mention - I love learning from the successes of other entrepreneurs and companies. It's hard to think about what it will be like when you're starting out, but knowing that others have been there helping me stay passionate and motivated!

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Be observant. Seek knowledge first (proper knowledge, of course).

When you get to a certain level that you have both knowledge and power to create, that is the right time to start. If you are launching a product, make sure you are bringing something unique to the table. Even if there are similar products, services, or apps, make sure you put your imprint on it and stick to your guns.

I do not want to sound too philosophical, but to create something means that you care for people. You are a problem solver who wants to create solutions that can make an impact in specific niches.

Of course, all of this takes dedication to the process, which is resulting in a lot of hard work and sleepless nights but depending on how bad you want to create your “thing,” you are going to see progress even in failure.

Pick the right team, which might be tricky at times, but with time comes experience. You will soon know what you are looking for in a specialist.

Well, that’s the foundation. It sounds simple but there are constant roadblocks in launching something brand new, so get used to it. Dedication pays off.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We are always looking for the best and brightest in our industry, so if you've got what it takes to be a growth hacker—as well as know-how direct response marketing works--then come join us!

For more information, applicants can contact our team at [email protected] or write to us at the chat form on our website.

Where can we go to learn more?

• Website
• Shopify app
• Facebook

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