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Mage Camp is almost here, and we’re introducing the people who make it possible. We caught up with Kristaps Gailitis, Chief Marketing Officer at scandiweb, one of our sponsors at this year’s event in Manchester on 14 October.
Click on the video above to watch the full interview with Kristaps Gailitis.
Kristaps Gailitis is Chief Marketing Officer at scandiweb, a Latvian eCommerce agency that has worked with Magento since the early days and with around 700 Magento stores. He explains why Mage Camp’s merchant-first, not-for-profit approach convinced scandiweb to sponsor, and shares how the agency has expanded into SaaS products, including Expedio, which speeds up the Magento backend, and Ari, an AI agent for Magento tasks. He names the cost of getting the most from Magento as merchants’ biggest challenge, and explains how Ari tackles it.
On the day, the scandiweb team will be in the marketplace showcasing Expedio and Ari, with another announcement planned the day before the event.
“Mage Camp’s premise is the opposite: everyone gets something.” - Kristaps Gailitis
Could you introduce yourself, your role, and what scandiweb does?
Kristaps: I’m Kristaps, Chief Marketing Officer at scandiweb. scandiweb is a Latvian-based eCommerce agency working with global brands such as Puma, Acer, Samsung and the New York Times, among many others. For merchants, we help with not only development but also paid ads, digital marketing, SEO, AEO and AI, of course.
When it comes to Magento, we’ve been working with it, I believe, since the very beginning, in 2008. We’ve seen all its phases: Magento 1, Magento 2, the PWA phase and more. Since then we’ve worked with roughly 700 Magento stores, and honestly that’s our bread and butter.
How has scandiweb changed or grown over the last year?
Kristaps: Technology changes so often that we usually don’t try to follow trends. Often we set new ones ourselves, which the market then follows. Previously we were known for ScandiPWA, but technology is now so easy to adapt that we’re working more and more with SaaS products ourselves, and not only in eCommerce, but across the whole network of industries around it.
For example, we have Operlayer, which handles back-office documentation. We built AnswerRank, which works with AEO, LLM results and performance metrics. We also recently acquired Legacy Bridge, which works with AS/400, IBM’s software, something new to us but quite exciting.
My personal favourite is Expedio. There’s been quite a bit of buzz in the past few weeks about what we’ve created, which essentially makes your Magento 2x faster. We like to compare it to what Hyvä did for the frontend: they maximised what’s possible with the Magento frontend, and we did the same for the backend with Expedio.
Besides Expedio, there’s also Ari. You know how there’s Lovable on the web, and vibe coding and so on? That’s what Ari is. Basically, you vibe code your Magento: upgrades, Hyvä installations, even setting up Expedio. Anything you would ask your dev team to do, Ari can do. So we’re big into SaaS at the moment.
How long have you been part of the Magento/Adobe Commerce community, and what does being part of it mean to you?
Kristaps: Personally, a little over five years, starting with scandiweb. It was completely new to me then, but I’ve since been to many events, both attending and organising them. Even in five years, you get the feeling that you know everyone and have met everyone, and it really does feel like a community.
It’s important to me because that’s where we’ve built most of our business at scandiweb. There’s a lot of synergy in the community, for agencies, merchants, technology providers, everyone. And it’s great.
Why did you decide to become a sponsor of Mage Camp?
Kristaps: At one of the recent events, Meet Magento, I had a chance to speak with the Mage Camp team. I still have their invitation card. We talked about the principle behind such events, what’s happening with Meet Magento and what an ideal event could look like. I align with that philosophy: you can’t just organise these events for the sake of organising them. Often there’s one winner, the organisers, and everyone else is disappointed.
Mage Camp’s premise is the opposite: everyone gets something. Merchants who attend hear lovely stories and meet many other merchants, which is often a disappointment at other events if there aren’t many merchants there. With Mage Camp, it sounds like it’s different. The same goes for sponsors, because it makes more sense to invest in an event like this.
Mage Camp is merchant-first and not-for-profit. Why does that matter to you?
Kristaps: We’ve seen the alternative. Some events claim to be merchant-first, and in the end there are a lot of disappointed people. Non-profit and merchant-first means it’s not biased, the event is sincere, and everyone is happy with the time and money they’ve invested.
What can attendees expect from scandiweb on the day? Is there anything special planned for your stand?
Kristaps: At Mage Camp there will be me and two colleagues from scandiweb, and we’ll mostly showcase two things: Expedio and Ari. One day before the event, we’ll make another announcement about Expedio, and at Mage Camp we’ll show exactly what it is. I think a lot of people will be happy, merchants and agencies alike.
What’s the biggest challenge you see merchants facing right now, and what’s one practical tip they could act on today?
Kristaps: Making full use of Magento. It’s a great platform: very customisable, with a great ecosystem of extensions, themes and so on. But to really use it to the max, you have to invest a lot, which often means investing in technology and not as much in customer acquisition or marketing in general.
With Ari, we’re helping to solve the development cost issue, because it can drastically reduce the cost of development. It can be used by agencies and by merchants. In the end, merchants can make full use of Magento and spend more on marketing and other initiatives.
What advice would you give a merchant attending Mage Camp for the first time?
Kristaps: Speak with as many people as possible. It’s an event by people for people, like any other. One of the most important things is connecting, getting as many opinions as possible and asking as many questions as possible. If you have a problem you want to solve, ask people about it, and you’ll often hear more than one solution. So speak with as many people as possible.
What are you most looking forward to on 14 October, and what would make the event a success for you?
Kristaps: The same as for merchants: speaking with as many people as possible. It’s as simple as that. Speaking with people and creating more connections is the only thing that matters to me.
Where do you see the Magento/Adobe Commerce ecosystem heading over the next year or two?
Kristaps: It’s hard to answer, because technology changes far too fast to really predict. But I do think people are moving into this vibe-coding space. There’s an old notion that you need a big development team to get something done with your platform, and I just don’t see that being realistic in the future. Beyond that, it’s hard to say.
Is there a merchant success story you’re especially proud of?
Kristaps: A very recent one. We recently launched Ari, and we caught up with one of our first customers for it, a rather small merchant. He told us that something that previously took him, say, a week to develop or implement, he can now do in hours, and he can do several such things per week. That really makes me happy, because it means smaller merchants can grow their platform and be happy with their eCommerce.
Where can people find you or learn more?
Kristaps: At Mage Camp we’ll have a booth in the marketplace, so come and say hi to me and my colleagues. We’ll be showcasing interesting, exciting things. If you want to learn more about Ari, we recently launched a new website for it, withari.ai. And if you want to hear more about Expedio, go to scandiweb.com. See you there!
scandiweb is a full-service eCommerce agency trusted by more than 700 brands, including Puma, the New York Times and Samsung. With over 600 specialists across 45 countries, it offers strategy, development, UX, growth marketing, data and AI services, and has delivered Magento projects since 2008. It is an Adobe Commerce Gold Partner and a Hyvä Platinum Partner, and builds its own products, including Ari, an AI agent for Magento, and Expedio, which speeds up the Magento backend.
Find the scandiweb team in the marketplace in Manchester on 14 October. Here’s what you can do there:
Scandiweb is a full-service eCommerce agency helping B2C and B2B brands build and grow on Magento (Adobe Commerce), Shopify and other leading platforms. As the team behind ScandiPWA and a leading Hyvä partner, they create exceptional online experiences.
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