We've just hired Damir Velagic as our US Director of Sales. Damir joins us from Shopify and Oracle, and he's based in Seattle. It's a small hire on paper, one person, but it marks something bigger for us: Digismoothie officially has a foot in the US market now.
Why the US, and why now
Almost everything we've built so far has been for merchants already operating in Europe: Czech and Slovak brands, CEE partners, and enterprise clients like Philips who needed their European markets connected and running well on Shopify. What we've noticed more and more, though, is a different kind of request coming from the other direction: American merchants who've built a solid business at home and see Europe as the obvious next step, but underestimate how much work "obvious" actually is.
Shopify Markets vs. expansion stores, VAT registration, per-country payment preferences, multi-currency pricing, localized content that doesn't read like a translation, GDPR, logistics across a dozen different regulatory regimes: none of it is exotic if you've done it before, but it adds months to a project if you haven't. That's the gap we think we can close. We've spent years inside European Shopify Plus setups, running multiple markets under one account, and that experience doesn't automatically show up on a US merchant's radar unless someone is there to make the case for it in person.
Damir is that person. Having a US-based Director of Sales means American merchants get a local point of contact instead of a time zone gap, without losing the European depth we've built our name on.
We've done this before, just from the other side
Two projects show what we mean by European depth. Philips came to us needing separate, localized Shopify stores for Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, each connected to a global product feed and to Philips' own ERP and pricing systems. Dedoles, the Slovak apparel brand, needed the opposite fix: a legacy custom platform that couldn't keep up across 15 markets. We migrated them to Shopify, and returning-customer growth is up 20% since.
Both projects required the kind of market-by-market judgment that's hard to fake: knowing which payment methods matter in which country, how ERP integrations actually need to be structured for European tax and fulfillment rules, and where a single template genuinely can't be copy-pasted across borders.
That's also the profile of one of our newest clients: Codex Labs, the Silicon Valley skincare and biotech brand that already sells through dermatology clinics and aestheticians across Slovakia, Ireland, the UK, Germany, France, and Austria. Codex Labs is exactly the kind of merchant our US expansion is built for: an American company with genuine traction in Europe already, ready to scale that presence rather than start from zero.
Meet us at DotDev in Toronto
Hiring someone based in the US only means something if we show up. Damir, together with the rest of the Digismoothie team, will be at DotDev, Shopify's developer event in Toronto, July 21 to 22. If you're attending and want to talk about expanding into Europe, running a multi-market Shopify Plus setup, or anything in between, come find us.
5 questions for Damir
We asked Damir to answer a few questions about the move and what he's seeing in the market.
1. What made you leave Shopify and Oracle to join a Shopify agency?
I loved my time at companies like Shopify and Oracle because I learned how world-class technology companies solve problems at scale. But over time, I realized I wanted to be closer to the merchants and have a more direct impact on their growth.
Joining Digismoothie gives me the opportunity to combine strategy, technology, and execution. Instead of simply recommending a platform, we’re helping brands build, optimize, expand internationally, and solve real business challenges every day.
What excited me most was the opportunity to help build Digismoothie’s presence in the U.S. from the ground up. That’s the kind of challenge I’ve always enjoyed.
2. What's the biggest misconception US merchants have about expanding into Europe?
Many merchants think expansion is simply about translating their website and turning on international shipping.
In reality, Europe is dozens of different markets, each with unique customer expectations, payment methods, tax requirements, regulations, fulfillment strategies, and shopping behaviors.
The brands that succeed treat Europe as a collection of local markets rather than one destination. When you build the right foundation from the beginning, growth becomes much more predictable and scalable.
3. For merchants who already sell in a few European countries, where do you see them losing money without realizing it?
Inefficient checkout experiences, missing local payment methods, and storefronts that aren't fully localized. Those three things quietly cost merchants more than almost anything else.
Take Austria and Germany. Same language, same currency, but customers in each country expect different payment methods at checkout. A store that only supports what works in Germany is turning away Austrian customers without ever knowing it. Language is the same story from a different angle. Customers in the Nordics or the Netherlands understand English perfectly well, but a storefront in their own language still converts better, even for shoppers who could easily read English.
None of this shows up as a broken feature or an error in your dashboard. It just shows up as a conversion rate that's a little lower than it should be, market after market, until it adds up to real revenue left on the table.
4. What does Digismoothie do differently from an agency that only serves European clients, or only serves US ones?
We understand both sides.
We know how U.S. merchants think, how they buy technology, and how they grow. At the same time, Digismoothie has years of experience helping brands operate successfully across Europe.
That combination allows us to bridge the gap between strategy and execution. Whether a merchant is expanding into Europe or entering the U.S., we understand the technical challenges, the operational realities, and the local market expectations.
5. If someone wants to talk to you about this at DotDev, where can they find you, and what should they bring to the conversation?
Come find me at the Partners & Paces Fun Run + Breakfast on Wednesday morning, or anywhere around the Digismoothie team during DotDev.
I love meeting builders. Bring your roadmap, your growth goals, or the ecommerce problem you’ve been trying to solve. Even if we don’t have all the answers in the first conversation, I’d love to exchange ideas and see where we can help.
If you're building a US brand and Europe is on the roadmap, or you're already there and it feels harder than it should, get in touch. Damir would be the one you'd talk to.
