AI for SMB ecommerce

Big-brand firepower, without the big team.

Hoptroop is a platform that simplifies ecommerce for small and mid-size merchants. AI does the repetitive grunt work that used to take a whole team, and the things that stop being doable by hand once you scale.

Our first product, Merzo, leverages AI to help Shopify stores improve customer retention.

Meet Merzo → Why we exist

The problem

Running a store is a dozen jobs. Bigger brands have a team for each.

Larger brands staff every step of the journey. An independent brand has to do all of it, usually with two or three people. So shoppers default to the big marketplaces, because small brands struggle to make an impression that sticks.

Set up the storeConnect channelsGet visibleHelp shoppers find youEngage themTrack the funnelRun campaigns & flowsBring them back, again and again

Our approach

AI as the team you couldn't afford to hire.

Two kinds of work, one platform.

01 · Offload

The repetitive grunt work

Setup, syncing, segmenting, scheduling, follow-ups, reporting: the recurring tasks that normally mean hiring specialists or burning the founder's evenings.

02 · Go beyond

What manual work can't do well

Reading every customer's story across every channel and deciding the next best action for each one. Past a few hundred customers, no spreadsheet or team keeps up. Software can.

First product · Merzo

Retention that treats every customer as a cohort of one.

Merzo is Hoptroop's flagship. It uses AI-driven personalization to decide what to send, to whom, on which channel, and when, so first-time buyers turn into repeat customers.

Join the Merzo waitlist →

Why retention first

Work the funnel in reverse.

Most brands pour money into acquisition first. Much of it is wasted, because everything downstream leaks.

Step 1 · Start hereRetention

Get the engine purring: customers come back, again and again. This is where brands make their money.

Step 2First-time conversion

Then tighten the funnel that turns visitors into first-time buyers.

Step 3Acquisition

Only then scale the marketing flows that bring new people in.

Fix the leaks before you turn up the tap. Working in this order saves effort and spend upstream that would otherwise vanish into a funnel that can't make it count. That's why Merzo comes first.

Why we're building this

"I've run an SMB ecommerce store. Every one of these problems was mine first."

Karthikeyan Iyer, founder. AI gives small brands a real shot at doing what only larger players with bigger teams could afford.