Episode 99: An 18-year Ecommerce Journey with Kevin Stecko of 80sTees.com

"I think perpetual unhappiness with everything about an entrepreneur's business is probably the only way they're going to be successful, right? Always be thinking that something needs to be improved." - Kevin Stecko, 80sTees.com

Our guest for the last episode before we hit the 100 mark is my good friend Kevin Stecko from 80sTees.com. We jokingly call Kevin as one of the "grandfathers of ecommerce", having started his business way back in 1999. He has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in the business, and has gone with the wave of changes of what made ecommerce what it is today. In this episode we talk about his entire ecommerce journey--how everything started, where he stands in his ecommerce business now, and the joys and challenges of being in a constantly changing business for 18 years.

This episode is quite longer than usual, and that's because it's fully packed with lessons from Kevin's almost 2 decades of ecommerce experience. Below are the highlights:

• The funny story of how Kevin and I met
• How 80sTees started and how the littlest things can change the course of one's life
• How starkly different ecommerce was back then
• My own start at eBay
• When he decided to quit his job and give ecommerce his full time attention
• The interesting story of his transition to Shopify which included a website hacking and a visit by the Secret Service
• His experience with Shopify Plus and how he got around Shopify's SEO problem
• His inventory and fulfillment struggles
• His big picture outlook on ecommerce

This has been a really fun conversation with Kevin (especially the Secret Service stuff) and it is a good close before we hit the 100th episode. It's always great to hear about a fellow entrepreneur's ecommerce experience, but hearing from someone who's been riding the ecommerce wave for almost 2 decades is nothing short of amazing.

Resources mentioned:

AsiaInspection Stamped.io 80stees.com Shopify

Thanks for listening to this episode and feel free to post any comments down below or message us at support@ecomcrew.com. Stay tuned for our special 100th episode next week!