Spring 2027 · Asheville, NCSpring 2027 · The Horse Shoe Farm ·Asheville, NC
CommerceRetreat is the anti-conference. No booths, no badges, no pitches. You leave with one change shipped to your store and a crew of merchants you'll keep for years.
72 seats. Applications reviewed for fit.
CommerceRetreat 2027 is a 72-person retreat for Shopify merchants doing $1M to $10M, held in Spring 2027 at The Horse Shoe Farm, a private estate near Asheville, North Carolina. Hosted by Jay Myers of the Shopify1Percent podcast, it replaces conference keynotes with live store teardowns, merchant crews, and one committed change per attendee. Tickets are all-inclusive and admission is by application.
Why this exists
You've done the big ecommerce conference. 800 people, a sponsor floor, a keynote you forgot by baggage claim, and a notebook full of theory with nothing to show for it Monday morning.
And the great operator communities? Most gate at high seven figures, and none of them were built Shopify-first. If you're running a store between $1M and $10M, there's no room that's truly yours.
We got tired of waiting for someone to build it. So we are.
merchants, curated for fit. Not 800 strangers.
of the estate is ours. No outsiders, no badge scanning.
change shipped to your store within 30 days. That's the whole point.
booths, badges, or sponsor keynotes. Ever.
Presented by Shopify1Percent
Your host
I'm Jay Myers. I've run online stores since 1998 and moved to Shopify in 2009. In 2012 I co-founded Bold Commerce, where we built the first upsell app ever on Shopify, then the first product options, subscriptions, and memberships apps. At our peak we had 32 apps and were the largest Shopify App Partner in the world.
These days I host Shopify1Percent, where over 100,000 subscribers get one practical improvement per episode. No fluff, no theory, just what's working in real stores right now. The show has run hundreds of conversations with the operators, founders, and app builders shaping Shopify. CommerceRetreat is what happens when we get a room of them in one place.
But CommerceRetreat isn't about me. The room is the product. Seventy-two sharp merchants, hand-matched into crews, solving each other's real problems around real fires. My job is to get the right people on the property and get out of the way.
How it works
Five minutes. Tell us about your store, your revenue band, and the number-one thing you're trying to fix.
If accepted, you're matched into a crew of 8 to 10 merchants. You'll meet on a call two weeks before, study each other's stores, and arrive as old friends.
You'll write down the one change you're making, say it out loud to your crew, and get on a call 30 days later to prove you shipped it.
The crew system
Two weeks before the retreat, you meet your crew of 8 to 10 merchants on a call. You get a one-page dossier on each of them: their store, their revenue band, the number-one thing they are trying to fix.
Then you do the homework. Visit each other's stores, place a test cart, read the About page, poke the mobile checkout. By the time you land in Asheville, nobody is making small talk. You already know what everyone is working on.
Your crew sits together at dinner, works together on Saturday, tells stories around your own fire, and gets on a call 30 days later to check whether you shipped the thing you said you would.
“Most events give you a room full of strangers. This one gives you eight people who have already read your About page.”
Friday night
Crew Fires under a sky you can actually see.
The weekend
One big content morning, wrapped in food, fires, and enough unscheduled time to actually get to know people. Optional early mornings. Never mandatory anything. And the Saturday afternoon block is genuinely yours. Nap, paddle, sit on the porch. We built the white space on purpose, because the best conversations tend to happen in it.
Not your usual sessions
Real attendee stores on the big screen, pulled apart and rebuilt live by Jay, a guest expert, and the whole room.
A live Shopify1Percent recording with Jay on the mic, plus an operator roundtable with real numbers. Both recorded with you in the room.
One fire per crew. One true story each. No mics, no polish. This is where the friendships happen.
Crew versus crew game show built from the room's own survey data, with a local bourbon flight alongside.
A random product from someone's store on every dinner table. Ten domains on a card. Argue, vote, reveal at dessert.
Bring units of your product, leave with a bag of everyone else's. The best swag bag in event history.
On the mic
Three live recordings, three operators who've actually built it. Sessions are being finalized, so the topics land closer to the weekend.
CEO, BattlBox
John has run BattlBox through just about everything a founder can face. He scaled it to $4.5M in year one with no funding, landed a Netflix series, sold the company, then bought it back and took it private. Today he leads with content and community, publishing at a volume most brands cannot imagine.
Session topic announced closer to the weekend.
Co-founder, Fresh Chile Co
Chris built Fresh Chile from a farmers market table into the top 1% of Shopify and eight figures, though it did not turn a profit until year six. He is blunt about that. He has grown a subscriber list past a million and a community that out-engages brands many times his size.
Session topic announced closer to the weekend.
CEO & Co-founder, eCom Email Marketer
Jimmy has spent two decades in the trenches of e-commerce marketing. He co-founded Sendlane, helped build it into a retention platform used by thousands of Shopify merchants, and now runs eCom Email Marketer while co-hosting the Send It podcast. He is obsessed with the boring-but-profitable parts: deliverability, repeat purchase rate, and the email flows most brands leave half-finished.
Session topic announced closer to the weekend.
More speakers to be announced. Every session is built around real numbers from real stores.
Every night
One long table. Seventy-two seats. No head of it.
The venue
CommerceRetreat takes over The Horse Shoe Farm, an 85-acre riverfront estate on the French Broad, 20 minutes from the Asheville airport. Every home, cottage, and suite on the property is ours. Farm-to-table dinners at the Silo Cookhouse, a pool and hot tub with a Blue Ridge view, pickleball on the lawns, a game room in the Farmhouse, and a spa in a renovated barn if that's your thing.
You'll also meet Nelson and Marley, the resident sheep. They don't do teardowns, but they're excellent listeners.
Photos: The Horse Shoe Farm.
Who's in the room
This room is built for Shopify merchants doing roughly $1M to $10M, with a handful above and below when it makes the room better. Operators only. No agencies trawling for clients, no vendor booths, and any partners in the room attend as peers, capped hard.
We're looking for the right mix of brands, categories, and stages, which means not everyone gets in year one. That's not a velvet rope thing. A room like this only works if every single person in it can teach you something.
We also hold one seat per category. If you sell coffee, you will be the only coffee brand in the room. That means you can talk openly about what is working without watching your competitor take notes.
Casual is mandated. No suits, no pitch decks, leave the sales hat at home.
Your crew chat stays open. The 30-day call is already on the calendar. The yearbook lands on your desk a few weeks later with your commitment printed inside. You are not buying a weekend, you are joining a small group of merchants for the year.
The ticket
Two tiers, and the only difference is timing. The first 30 merchants accepted and confirmed lock the Founding rate. Once those seats are claimed, it moves to Standard. Same weekend, same everything.
Founding Merchant
$1,795
first 30 confirmed seats
Standard
$2,195
You are not charged when you apply. If you are accepted, you confirm your seat and pay then, and the first 30 to do that get the Founding rate.
For context: big-conference tickets run $450 to $750, and that is before a hotel, three dinners out, and a ride back every night. This is the whole weekend, handled, with the entire property to ourselves.
The 1% Guarantee
If you leave without one change worth more than the price of your ticket, tell us before you fly home and the ticket is on us.
Questions
72 Shopify merchants, one estate, and one change that pays for the trip. Or another year of notebooks.
Applications reviewed for fit. Not everyone gets in year one.
