Company: Commerce Guys, Ann Arbor, MI
Company Description: Commerce Guys is the creator of Drupal Commerce, one of the fastest growing eCommerce solutions with over 25,000 active merchants worldwide. Drupal Commerce is a revolutionary software integrating commerce, content and community to create engaging Web experiences that bring e-retailers more traffic to drive more commerce.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Software - Electronic Commerce Solution

Nomination Title: Commerce Kickstart 2.0

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 525 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

Founded in 2008, Commerce Guys provides online merchants with innovative and powerful Drupal-based eCommerce solutions.  Over 1.5 million websites run on Drupal, the open-source content management system backed by a global community of over 900,000 users and more than 22,000 developers.

From solutions for the most high-traffic retail sites to enterprise-class offerings designed for small and mid-size merchants worldwide, Commerce Guys’ mission is to serve Internet retailers by helping them leverage the power of Drupal for their online stores with cutting-edge technology, expertise and open-source collaboration.

Drupal Commerce, created by Commerce Guys, is the leading open-source eCommerce framework enabling e-retailers to build flexible, high-powered commerce sites.  Live on over 27,000 sites worldwide, Drupal Commerce provides a leading-edge framework for complex product, content, community and context management.

Commerce Guys launched its breakthrough Commerce Kickstart 2.0 in July 2012. It’s an accelerated platform for the rapid development of Drupal Commerce-based sites.  Commerce Guys created Commerce Kickstart 2.0 to be the one-stop, free shop for rapidly creating powerful Drupal-based sites.  Within five minutes of downloading the software, users can have a demo store with a catalog that supports faceted search and great-looking product detail pages.  The tools in Commerce Kickstart 2.0 can save weeks of a company’s time when building their eCommerce site. Like Drupal Commerce, Commerce Kickstart 2.0 is completely free, supported by an active developer community, and backed by Commerce Guys’ unmatched expertise.

The Commerce Kickstart 2.0 program comes with: product catalog management, shipping options, a faceted search, advanced product imaging including zooming and slideshows, international shipping, payment gateways and frameworks, taxes administration tools and social media connections. It also has a robust help section with video tutorials.

Users can easily reshape their site to sell items ranging from physical and digital products to tickets and subscriptions.  Companies are able to add functionality and define their site’s layout using standard techniques.  There are a wide array of options for designing a page, selling products, billing and shipping to fit every audience and type of company.

Commerce Kickstart 2.0 provides a multifaceted, out-of-the-box baseline of functionality as a starting point for eCommerce sites with predetermined features and preselected configurations for dynamic, enterprise-level Drupal Commerce sites.  The platform runs on virtually any host and is effortless to install.  It makes eCommerce sites easier to administer and faster to launch, thus eliminating wasted time and headaches for teams creating complex custom sites. 

Commerce Kickstart 2.0 provides a solid platform for multifaceted eCommerce, yet enables e-retailers to retain their individuality with enough control and flexibility for creative agencies and developers to customize sites in line with branding, design and feature-set goals.  Commerce Kickstart 2.0 is available on Commerce Marketplace, which curates products for Drupal Commerce website developers, providing an easier way to build eCommerce sites.

Kickstart 1 & 2.0 have been downloaded 146,786 times.  Over 27,000 sites feature Commerce Guy’s Drupal-based solutions. Drupal powers over 2.7% of the web, and Commerce Kickstart 2.0 is the single most popular distribution in the Drupal ecosystem – Meaning, of all the thousands of Drupal specialty software, Commerce Kickstart 2.0 is the leader. 

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

Ryan Szrama is the Vice President of Community Development at Commerce Guys.  Ryan got his start in web development through an online sales company based in Louisville, KY. It was there that he nursed Ubercart through its infancy to its use on over 20,000 websites as the Project Lead and community face of the project.

Ryan joined Commerce Guys in 2009 and continued to lead Ubercart until branching out into Drupal  Commerce, a new initiative focusing on empowering users to build eCommerce sites with the best new features that Drupal has to offer. He focuses most of his time developing the code base, growing the community of contributors to the project and training new users online and at community events.

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