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Renaud Teasdale

Kickflip empowers brands to build professional product customizers in a completely visual interface without writing a single line of code.

Tell us about yourself?

I started out my career as a designer at New Balance, where I discovered mass customization and worked with factories in America and South East Asia. The potential of mass customization is huge. It allows businesses to sell unique products that are specifically tailored for each customer. This means that businesses can reach new customers who are looking for exactly what they want. And it allows businesses to build closer relationships with their existing customers.

I was reading ‘Getting Real’ by the Basecamp guys and figured out we could build an online platform to help any business sell custom products online.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

I believe in the adage “Do things that don’t scale.” This means that when you’re starting out, it’s important to do things that are not efficient in order to grow your business. For example, when we first started Kickflip, we would manually set up product configurators for our customers. It was time-consuming, but it allowed us to learn about our customer’s needs and how to best use our product.

Now, our platform is completely self-service and allows clients to develop their own product customizers. But it took us a long time to get there. So my advice would be to make things that scale as soon as possible! And surround yourself with people who will help you achieve that.

What problem does your business solve?

Kickflip Team
Kickflip Team

Building a product configurator from scratch can be very expensive, especially if you’re working with an agency. The upfront cost of development can be significant, and there are ongoing costs for hosting and maintaining the configurator.

We wanted to democratize product customization; that’s why we founded Kickflip. A self-serve SaaS solution that makes it easy and affordable for businesses of all sizes to create product configurators and sell custom products on Shopify, Prestashop, WooCommerce or any other eCommerce platform.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

Product customization should not be only for the Nike, Ferrari and Apple of this world. We want to lower the barriers to entry and make product customization available for businesses of all sizes. Shopify is a huge inspiration for us. They created a platform that allows anyone to start an online store and sell their products. We want to do the same for product customization.

What is your magic sauce?

Being a design-driven company, we believe that product customization should be easy and fun. That’s why we’ve designed our platform to be user-friendly and easy to use. We’re also focused on making our product configurators look great on any device, whether it’s a phone, tablet or desktop.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

In the next 5 years, we want to help businesses of all sizes, from creators to Fortune 500 create the best product configurators and sell custom products on their websites. We want to boost their conversion rate, average order value and customer satisfaction.

To do this, we’re going to continue to invest in our product and make sure it’s the best product configurator builder on the market. We’re also going to expand our sales and marketing efforts so that more businesses know about us and can take advantage of our platform.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

When we first started Kickflip, we were a team of three co-founders. But after a few years, it became clear that one of the co-founders was not aligned with our vision for the company. We had some tough conversations and eventually bought him out. It was a difficult decision, but it was the right thing to do for the future of the company.

How can people get involved?

You can find Kickflip on the Shopify app store or visit our website at www.gokickflip.com and start a free 14-day trial today!