CartStars

CartStars is the most exclusive friendwork for eCommerce’s top 5%—a curated space where leaders build, learn, and scale together.

What Makes CartStars Different
- Invitation-only—membership is earned through participation, not fees.
- Peer-driven—no sales pitches, just trusted advice from industry leaders.
- Curated vendor ecosystem—only partners recommended by members.
- Beyond digital—private platform, local meetups, and executive retreats.

Why It Matters
Great businesses aren’t built alone. CartStars brings together the brightest minds in retail and eCommerce—leaders who are shaping the future and willing to share what they know.

Know a CartStars member? Ask them for an invite.

Founder & CEO

Diversity Plug

Download the FREE diversity plugin to view diversity statistics as you cruise around the Internet. If the data isn't available, tweet companies to join the share to care initiative to publicly disclose their diversity data.

Founder

Inveterate, Inc

 Director Of Partnerships

Gladly

Trusted by hundreds of companies including Crate & Barrel, Ralph Lauren, and Warby Parker, Gladly is the people-centric CX platform that puts customers and agents at the center of every conversation to kickstart and nurture more natural relationships, driving long-term brand loyalty, revenue, and support efficiency.

Based in San Francisco, Gladly was founded in 2014 and is privately backed by industry leaders including Greylock, GGV Capital, NEA, Glynn Capital, FutureFund, and JetBlue Ventures.

Manager, Strategic Partner Program

dotdigital

The dotdigital platform is an omnichannel marketing solution for B2C, B2B, and NFP marketers in the Americas. Import data, build segments and triggers and create relevant marketing campaigns that engage your customers on their favorite channels. Don’t limit yourself to email marketing; personalize your marketing messages across SMS, push notifications, live chat, and social ads.

Speed and ease of use are at the core of what we do, so our omnichannel marketing features can help you reach your goals faster. If you want to increase marketing ROI, boost sales revenue, drive more qualified leads, or boost donor growth – dotdigital is the single-sign-on platform you need.

Sr. Enterprise Account Executive

SAG-AFTRA

Actress

Demandforce

The Demandforce software-as-a-service application is used by thousands of customers to grow revenue, keep clients coming back, and manage operations more effectively. Demandforce connects Demandforce clients to over 100 million consumers via email communications, text messaging, and online services. Demandforce has achieved 26 quarters of over 80% year-over-year quarterly growth and is led by a management team with over a decade of experience developing and delivering web-based applications that drive real, tangible business value. As of February 2016, Demandforce is proud to now be a part of the Internet Brands family.

Senior Account Executive

Yelp

Account Executive

Lion Management Group, Inc.

CEO at CartStars | Cultivating an Empathetic & Resilient Community for eCommerce Leaders

Two years ago, I had a lightbulb moment.

As a newly minted Director of Partnerships, I gathered seven experienced colleagues to get their honest feedback on a tech solution I was evaluating. No agendas. No sales pitches. Just real advice from people who understood my KPIs.

Their insights saved me $40,000 and a year of frustration.

That’s when it hit me:
 In an industry with 8,000+ tech tools and 4x as many agencies, leaders don’t need more noise. They need trusted, agenda-free connections.

That’s why I built CartStars.

CartStars is the exclusive friendwork for eCommerce’s top 5%—a curated, high-trust space where senior brand, retail, and eCommerce leaders ($10M+ revenue) connect with peers to share insights, solve challenges, and build real relationships.

What makes CartStars different?
✅ Invitation-only—membership is earned through contribution.
✅ No sales pitches—just real, peer-driven conversations.
✅ A curated partner ecosystem—only solutions recommended by members.
✅ Digital + in-person—our platform and executive events create real impact.
✅ Your friendwork in your pocket—get answers instantly from trusted peers.

We believe the best executives don’t scale alone. They grow by building relationships with other smart, kind, and engaged leaders—without wasted time, bad deals, or endless sales cycles.

CartStars is invite-only. If you know a member, ask them to invite you.

🔗 Learn more at CartStars.com

Debbie Kemunto Pearce

We’re finally out.


For almost three years, CartStars felt like one long sprint inside a burning building.
 
Build the thing.
Fix the thing.
Hope it holds long enough to build the next thing.

Chaotic. Ridiculous…Beautiful.
The kind of pace only founders understand.

But somewhere along the way, the rhythm changed.

For the first time, we’re ahead.
Preparing with intention.
Planning next year… in the year before it. (Who am I? 🤣)

I used to watch our members plan Black Friday in February and think,
What is this life? Teach me your peaceful ways!

But the truth is, this feels right.

Because when the fires quiet down, you finally see the things that matter.

The people you want to build with.
The standards you refuse to lower.
The future you can shape on purpose, not by accident.

And that’s where this next decision came from.
Depth over breadth.
Two partners per category.
Chosen by the CartStars, not by us.
Chosen because the humans behind the work are good to work with.

That’s our North Star for 2026.
 
What’s yours?

#CartStars #retail #ecommerce #partnerships #growth #thoughtleadership

Founder, CartStars | Building the room where top retail and eCommerce minds grow together.

No one owes you anything.


Not their time.
Not their trust.
Not their belief in what you’re building.

I learned that early.

Maybe that’s why the last three years have meant so much to me.

Because the only reason CartStars works,
is that the best service providers in this industry decided to give us something they didn’t have to:
Their partnership.
Their excellence.
And their reputation… long before we had one of our own.

Every partner who has ever worked with us was recommended by our members.
Which means before they ever worked with CartStars, they worked with you.
They earned your trust first.
We simply inherited it.
And I don’t take that lightly.

So today I just want to say thank you.

To every team that showed up for our members, solved real problems, and made this ecosystem better.

So here’s to the partners who have been part of this journey,
past, present, and now officially, 2026.

85SIXTY, AB Tasty, Absolute Web, adMixt, AthenaHQ, Bark-Ai, BTR Media, CommerceNext, Flexport, Friendbuy, Instant, Intelligems, Keynes Digital, Kimonix, Klaviyo, KODIF, LettrLabs, Loop, Loop Subscriptions, ShipHero, Nishe, Nostra, Oceans Talent, Opensend, OrderProtection.com, Passport, Poplar/ Share Local Media, Power Digital Marketing, Redo, Retention.com, Rise.ai, Rivo, SARAL - The Influencer OS, SiteVibes, Skio, Stay AI, Stord, & the rest in the comments!

We see you.
We appreciate you.
And CartStars is better because of you.

If you’re reading this and you’ve worked with any of them,
tag them below.
They deserve it.

#CartStars #retail #ecommerce #trust #partnerships

You can’t buy this.


“So what’s the difference between a sponsorship and a partnership at CartStars?”

I get why they ask.

From the outside, the difference looks cosmetic.
A nicer word.
A softer label.

But I’ve never liked soft labels.

A sponsorship is transactional.
You pay. You get visibility. Your logo shows up somewhere it wasn’t yesterday.
Fair enough.

But a partnership is different.
A partnership is work.
An agreement to grow together.

Our partners show up for our members.
We show up for their teams.
Both sides bring something the other can’t.

That is why we are so strict about who becomes a partner here.
You are not buying a list.
You are entering an ecosystem.

If you are here only to take, you will hate it.
If you are here to give, you will feel at home.

Because you don’t get anywhere good by taking without giving.
Not in this industry. Not in this community.

And for CartStars, “partner” is not a nicer word for sponsor.
It’s a promise.

You bring your best work.
We bring our best people.

And when both sides grow from that,
It doesn’t need to be defined. It's felt.

#CartStars #retail #ecommerce #partnership #thoughtleadership #growth

Speed over space. 


If something didn’t click quickly,
I assumed it was wrong.
Or I was.

So I’d look at people who welcomed a slow start and feel almost envious.
They got time.
Time to build processes.
Time to make mistakes without an audience.
Time to breathe before they had to prove anything.

But CartStars never gave me that.
It felt like a long, quiet hallway.
No hockey stick.
No “we blew up overnight” story to tell on a podcast.

At first, I thought that meant we were behind.
But now, the view from the climb feels different. 

Like The Pillars of the Earth.
Ken Follett spent ten years on that book.
ten years tracing every stone,
every choice,
every consequence.

A world built slowly enough that the foundation actually holds.

It’s the kind of story you can’t speed through,
because it wasn’t written that way.

CartStars unfolded the same way.
Carved into place, not rushed into existence.

That’s why I’m grateful we did not get everything we wanted quickly.

You can engineer speed.
But you can’t fake depth.
And depth is what we’re here for.
So I plan to take my time.

Because overnight success is a fallacy.

#CartStars #retail #ecommerce #growth #journey #thoughtleadership

We've heard the whispers. 


"CartStars has too many rules." 
"Other platforms get 6X the sponsorship."

But here's what we keep hearing: "Other rooms don't feel the same."

Because vendors can't pay to be in the room. 
They have to be recommended by members who've used them. 

And they don't make astronomical investments, which means there's air.

Not pressure and pitches.

This year, Allison Gagnon from Tibi sat next to the Videowise team at Torrisi.
No topic. Just dinner.

Twenty-seven live shopping episodes later: $2 million in sales.

Everyone wins. 
Leaders discover what works from peers. 
Vendors doing great work grow. 

And we get to keep building the room.

Receipts in comments :)

#CartStars #retail #ecommerce

Can we fight about it?


When Justin texts you with:
“Hey… what about a boxing match for charity?”

You know something that sounds unhinged,
is about to make perfect sense.

Raising $1,000,000 for charity, 
across clean water, emergency medical care, and cancer research.
That kind of purpose has a way of settling everything into place.

So here we are.
Eight exhibition matches.
Sixteen brave (or slightly unhinged) eCommerce leaders.
Five hundred people in the audience.

All of us trying to do something that looks a little impossible.
And therefore all the more worth it.

I’m part of the donations and boxers team alongside
Anas Hoque at Klaviyo and Bradley Johnston at Opensend.

And yes…
I may or may not be stepping into the ring myself.
You’ll have to show up to find out.

Huge thanks to the incredible group making this real:
Justin Silver (our fearless Chair),
Ben Walter, Emmanuel Kamau, Alexander Lazoff,
Jess Cervellon, Bryce Alsten, Lauren Sawyer ☀️,
Ian Korer, Grace Nicklas,
Bill Murphy, and Josh Garellek!

See you in Vegas on March 24th at The Space.
Let’s make this count. 🥊


#retail #ecommerce #charity #fightforcharity #shoptalk #shoptalk2026

I said yes.


To new ideas.
New experiments.
A few questionable decisions I’m still pretending were strategic.

Eventually, the team started saying I was “subscribing” to everything.
And honestly… fair.
My credit card has been through character development this year. 😬

But when our members started nominating their picks for the 2026 CartStars partnerships in the subscription category,
something unusual happened.
No noise.
No debate.
No fourteen-way tie.
(If you’ve been in eCom long enough, you know that alone is a miracle.)

So if you lean in closely,
I’ll tell you what I’m subscribing to next year:
Skio and Loop Subscriptions!

Chosen by members who don’t just plug into a stack.
They stay in it. 
With skin in the game.
And receipts in their dashboards.

So…yes, I’ve said yes to a lot this year.
But this is the subscription I’d sign twice!
Everything else can stay on free trial 😏


#CartStars #retail #ecommerce #partnerships #subscription

Marcel Petitpas

I help boutique agencies and consulting firms measure and improve their profitability.I started Parakeeto to create what I couldn't find: The right combination of Finance, Operations and industry specific expertise I could trust handle profitability, and just tell me what I needed to know.When I went looking for that, here's what I found:- All the tools, accounting principles and benchmarks felt like they’re stuck in the past, treating anything that wasn't hourly billing like an edge case.- Accounting firms and fractional CFO’s didn't get deep enough into operations to drive actionable change.- Fractional COO’s and Ops consultants didn't have the financial acumen or visibility to connect those dots either.- There was no standard for metrics, benchmarks, and formulas around profitability. When I asked my friends how they calculated metrics, I'd get different answers.It was obvious that a solution had to exist that bridges the elusive gap between finance and operations without being prohibitively expensive, complicated, or time consuming.A solution that didn’t require me to change all my software, processes and accounting data, or require me to track and update an impossible number of data points. So we started Parakeeto, the world's first Profit Management Firm.WTF Is that you ask?We combine the best parts of fractional CFOs, COOs, accountants and data engineers into one comprehensive consulting service specifically designed to help agencies measure and improve their profit.We've built proprietary tools and processes to help us pull together data from any set of ops and finance tools, and turn it into accurate and trustworthy reports you can actually benchmark against the industry apples to apples.We act as "Fractional Chief Profit Officers" for our clients, and take care of measuring their finance and ops metrics, reviewing the numbers with them, and coaching them every step of the way to better profitably.We’ve been focused exclusively on this since 2018 and have served over 300 firms around the world.From small shops with just a hand full of staff, to global agencies with hundreds.If you're sick of flying blind and leaving money on the table, we can help.Learn more at https://parakeeto.com

As a speaker and consultant - my primary focus is helping creative and digital agencies, consultancies and service businesses optimize their profitability and get a hold of their core metrics.

In my keynote talk & training “Advanced Agency Profit Optimization” I share:

- The 3 core metrics that are at the heart of every service business that must be measured and mastered. 
- The exact formulas to accurately track them in your service business.
- The benchmarks industry leading agencies are achieving to make 2-3X more net profit than their competition.
- The 5% tweak that can boost profit by over 100% and increase valuations by over 400%
- Free tools and resources to start implementing these metrics in any agency today.

On my podcast - The Agency Profit Podcast - I interview thought leaders and successful agency owners on their tactical strategies for optimizing operations and profitability and truly mastering the service business model.

As a consultant, I help fast growing agencies go from 7 figures to 8 and beyond by helping them get the systems in place to measure and manage their operations for maximum growth and optimal cash flow. 

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking on stages like the DigitalMarketer.com Agency Partner Training Day and being a guest on industry leading podcasts like The Digital Agency Show with Brent Weaver, The Grow Your Digital Agency Show with Robert Kraven and The Bureau Briefing with Carl Smith. 

For more information about what I do, or to inquire about a podcast or speaking appearance, visit:

https://marcelpetitpas.com

My journey to less-shitty positioning part 3: Updates to the website based on your feedback.

If you're new here, I've been posting over the last few weeks about Parakeeto's challenges with positioning, specifically being better at explaining "what we are" and "what clients get"

I was able to collect a ton of great feedback from all of you who generously took a moment to comment, send me DMs + emails and share your thoughts. More than anything, it really made it clear what questions I had to answer more explicitly on our website.

It also helped me separate the problem into two distinct buckets:

1. Our positioning (are we trying to create a new category, or compete in an existing one? If so, what category is that and how do we articulate it?)

2. What do clients get when they buy from us (What is it? How does it work? How long does it take? What does it cost? Who is it for? etc)

This helped me realize that while the positioning piece will probably take a little while longer to get right, the tactical questions were low-hanging fruit that I could and should just attack quickly.

As such, I spent the weekend hacking away at our site and making a bunch of updates to the copy. It's still not where I think it should be, but I'm hoping it's a step in the right direction and answers a lot of the questions that were unclear.

I'll leave a link in the comments if you're curious, or care to share your opinions 😁

Helping Digital & Creative Agencies Measure and Improve Profitability Best Selling Author, Keynote Speaker & CEO

There’s a pricing model nobody is talking about that I think needs more attention.

I call it “Abstracted Time & Materials”, and you can think of it as a middle ground between T&M billing and flat, deliverable-based, productized, or value-based pricing.

The idea is simple: take hourly billing and add a few layers of abstraction.

One way to do this is by abstracting the time unit. Instead of selling hours, try selling half-days, days, weeks, bi-weekly sprints, or months.

Another way is to abstract the team. Instead of tying rates to individuals, tie them to groups of people in a cross-functional team.

This pricing model is great for firms doing high-value work that is high-risk, or very fluid and undefined in nature (complex engineering, solving novel UX problems, etc.).

It allows them to benefit from the risk mitigation and margin protection that time-based billing models offer, while still allowing them to capture some of the upside that flat or value-based pricing models offer.

The broader the team and/or time unit, the more opportunity there is to make a higher margin — either by lowering the average cost per hour (ACPH) of the team working on the project or by being more efficient with time within that block.

Many projects using this pricing model also have a backlog with sizing for each item. Sizing can be used as another mechanism to throttle velocity and scope as the project progresses.

This is also how “unlimited” pricing models (like Design Pickle or Superside) work.

I’ve found the conversation around pricing to be fairly binary. At times, we forget there’s a middle ground between time-based billing models and flat, value-based, or productized models — overlooking hybrid options like this one that sit in the gray area between them.

This matters because there’s often a lot of gray in the context that firms operate within, which necessitates these kinds of hybrid models.

On the latest episode of the Agency Profit Podcast, Kristen Kelly and I talked about the difference between custom work and productized services — and which one is better for profitability.

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that the answer was “it depends” — and the reasoning behind it is exactly what you’d expect from us.

I think this was a fascinating discussion, and one that (I hope) offered a bit more nuance than the typical content around this topic, which often leans heavily toward the idea that productized services are inherently better.

A link to the full episode is in the comments.

taplio

The Battle

Debbie Kemunto Pearce

Marcel Petitpas

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreDebbie Kemunto Pearce's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMarcel Petitpas's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Debbie Kemunto Pearce

Marcel Petitpas

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Debbie Kemunto Pearce's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMarcel Petitpas's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreDebbie Kemunto Pearce's LinkedIn Performance