“We want you to come to San Francisco for dinner!”

Those were the words when DTAILS' founder, Kim Eriksen, picked up the phone one day in May 2016. Shopify's Partner Manager was calling with what sounded like an informal dinner invitation. The dinner turned out to be a cover for the meeting’s actual purpose, namely to get Kim to start the first Shopify Plus Partner in the Nordics.

And why Kim? Well, it wasn't a random roll of the dice. Kim is one of those who knows the most about Shopify on Danish soil. If not the one. For over 20 years, he has had his own webshop (morfars.dk) and has been very active in Danish e-commerce with several board positions, including several years in the trade association FDIH (now Dansk Erhverv Digital Handel). In 2013, Kim moved his webshop to Shopify, which hardly anyone had heard of at the time. But Kim saw the potential and with Shopify, he got the opportunity to transform the business from being a part-time webshop, where many hours were wasted on self-development.

But it also had its challenges. At the time, Shopify was built for American webshops, and therefore there were quite a few shortcomings concerning shipping and payment. As a Danish webshop, it was difficult to gain traction – the local adjustments that would significantly improve Shopify were not easy to implement. But Kim is not the type to just settle. He established a Shopify Denmark network and held annual Shopify User Group meetings where he and others shared experiences. On behalf of more than 200 webshops, he could finally act as a spokesperson for Shopify. It helped. Shopify gained momentum in Denmark.

Shopify went international in 2016 – that was when the invitation to San Francisco came. Already on his way home on the plane, Kim drafted his plan: I want to create the consultancy I myself would dream of being a customer of! As a webshop owner, he had been a customer of various agencies and consultancies. Therefore, he was not in doubt about what would drive DTAILS. Integrity was at the top.