Ask an agency to build your online store, and most will start by showing you their packages. Aldy Ginanjar's team starts somewhere else. "We never started from our services," Aldy told us. "We started with the questions to our customers," about the problem they face right now.
Sometimes the answer is that the merchant needs a different agency. Aldy is fine with that too.
What they do
Expatify is a Shopify-focused digital agency based in Jakarta, Indonesia, helping brands build, manage, and scale their e-commerce operations. Its services extend beyond Shopify website development to Shopify Plus solutions, platform migrations, custom integrations, mobile commerce applications, and ongoing technical support. It was founded in 2016 and first built sites on other platforms, such as Magento and WordPress. Once the team found Shopify, it moved everything there.
Expatify is an official Shopify partner. That is different from being one of the many freelancers who build Shopify stores. Shopify, which started in Canada, does not have big teams in every country, so it works with local partner agencies. Expatify meets its Shopify manager every month to plan how to bring more Indonesian merchants onto the platform. Aldy says only a few agencies in Indonesia are official Shopify partners listed in Shopify's Partner Directory.
Expatify operates with a focused team that prioritizes agility, close collaboration, and responsive execution. For Aldy, staying adaptable allows the team to respond to changing merchant needs. Aldy is co-founder and chief operating officer, alongside founder and chief executive Irawan Arif and co-founder and chief technology officer Binsar Harseno. Besides its head office in Jakarta, it has offices in Bogor and Yogyakarta.
Your problem first, their services second
Every project starts with questions about the merchant's problem. Then the team designs a solution, as a wireframe, a mockup or an integration with another system. Then it lets the merchant decide whether to use Expatify or another agency.
The work does not stop at launch. Expatify sells a monthly retainer, and every two weeks it meets with merchants to review technical improvements, discuss new requirements, and identify ways to continuously improve their e-commerce experience. Aldy describes the goal as taking a merchant "from zero to become a hero".
Expatify believes that sustainable commerce growth requires more than just traffic acquisition. While search engine optimisation and digital advertising can help businesses attract customers, the underlying commerce experience, technology, and business strategy also play essential roles.
What makes a fashion store work
About 80% of Expatify's merchants sell fashion. The rest sell things like bikes, eyeglasses and electronics for the home, such as humidifiers.
After that many fashion stores, Aldy's advice is simple: give shoppers information. Not many merchants are open about the fabric, the materials or how the clothes are made, and more and more shoppers care, because clothing has a real effect on the climate. The second piece of advice is about the experience of buying: a clear size guide and try-on photos make it easier to buy.
Customers in North America
Expatify already works for brands far from Jakarta. Baltini, a luxury fashion store in the United States that sells labels such as Balenciaga and Gucci, has kept Expatify on a monthly retainer for almost two years. And Polygon Bikes, a bike brand from Indonesia, is now working with Expatify to open its own Shopify store in Canada.
Asked why a brand should choose Indonesia over India or China, Aldy's answer was trust. "We can guarantee that their idea is their idea, not ours," Aldy says.
There is plenty of choice for a brand that needs Shopify help. Shopify's own partner directory lists agencies around the world. Agencies such as We Make Websites, Swanky, Pixel Union and Fuel Made build stores for large brands, and freelancers on Fiverr and Upwork take on single jobs. What a brand rarely gets from a freelancer is an official partner that stays on after launch, and what it rarely gets from a big agency is a focused team that starts from the business problem and stays on after launch.
A stealth project
Inside Expatify, the team is also building a software product under a different brand name. It is still in stealth. What Aldy would say is that it comes from working inside Shopify every day: the team found something missing in how Shopify connects to other systems, and believes the product can serve merchants around the world, not only in Indonesia.
What they are looking for
Expatify is open to more merchants in North America and Europe, from brands building a new Shopify store to brands that already have one and need a team to look after it and keep improving it. Reach the team through expatify.co.id.
Why it is bigger than it sounds
Going offshore for your online store is not about saving money. It is about finding a partner you can trust: one who starts from your problem instead of selling you a package, and who keeps your idea yours.
This breed of agency sells a relationship, not a website. Shopify lets anyone build a store, so building is no longer the scarce part. Expatify is one of only a few official Shopify partners in Indonesia, and it earns on a monthly retainer, with a strategy call every two weeks. Baltini has stayed for almost two years. It starts every job from the merchant's problem, lets the merchant pick another agency if that fits better, and looks past traffic to the store, the technology and the strategy that turn visitors into sales. And because it sees the same gaps across many stores, it is now turning one of them into its own product.
The formula: when a platform makes building easy, the value moves to the partner who stays, and trust becomes the product. The same play fits partners for HubSpot, Salesforce, Webflow and Xero, and teams in Vietnam, the Philippines, Colombia, Kenya and Poland serving brands far away.
The risk in one line: a retainer has to prove its worth every two weeks, and AI tools that can build a store will keep raising the bar. If you run an online store abroad, pick the partner who asks about your problem before showing you a price list.
What to watch
The first thing is the stealth product. An agency that turns what it learned from its clients into software can sell it to every Shopify merchant, not just the ones it has time to serve.
The second is the Canadian store. A brand from Indonesia selling in Canada through its own Shopify store is the kind of project that would bring Expatify more work on this side of the Pacific.
The third is North America. If more brands like Baltini stay on retainer for years, trust will have done the selling.