From $100 and a Government Laptop to a $10K/Month Shopify Agency

Who built it, and what they built

Vishal Goswami is an eCommerce consultant and the founder of Friction Studio, a Shopify agency based in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The agency designs, builds, and grows Shopify stores for DTC brands, with a focus on conversion-focused design and functional user experience.

Friction Studio started in January 2020 and has grown to a team of 12. The agency now works with Shopify Plus merchants and reports an average of $10k/month in revenue.

Where the idea came from

Vishal taught himself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript at 17, using free internet tutorials and a laptop issued by the government for being a scholar. He was working on WordPress for local clients when he discovered dropshipping and Shopify, and built a store of his own.

He posted that store design in a Facebook group full of brand owners. The post drew traction and led to his first client, which kicked off his work designing and developing Shopify stores for small brands.

In 2016 he started an agency with a partner and built it into Official Shopify Experts, but left in late 2020. In December 2020 he started over under the name Friction Studio, with roughly $100-200 to invest and zero clients.

He saw a gap: brands struggled to find someone who understood their vision and could translate it into a storefront that actually converted visitors into customers.