The story

I didn't set out to build a PIM. It happened anyway.

Q: Is Pelican a chatbot?

No. “We’re not a chat interface. We’re trying to build actual interfaces that people can just go in and be approving stuff quickly and doing their work fast.” Martin Cox, co-founder.

Q: Will Pelican show me the AI sales it drove?

No. “I don’t want a vanity dashboard that says since you installed Product Pelican your agentic sales have gone like this, because everyone’s agentic sales are going like that.” Martin Cox, co-founder.

Product Pelican started as a few audit scripts for Shopify merchants. It turned into a PIM that lives 100% inside Shopify.

01 · The accident

Audit, fix, repeat, oh shit.

It began with product audits: completeness checks, taxonomy gaps, SEO holes. Then AI to fix what the audits found. Then bulk actions. Then stitching. Then merchandising.

One day it clicked. Pelican had become a PIM, and it lived 100% inside Shopify. Turns out the right way to build one was never a separate system. It was to build it where the data already lives, with proper AI guard rails and the merchant in control.

“It’s in a lot of ways just solving all the problems with managing Shopify product catalogues that I’ve dealt with for the past 15 years.”

“The data can look quite good on the front end, but then you find out it’s held together by a lot of sticky tape and a lot of manual labour in the back.”
Martin Cox · Co-founder, Native App Co

02 · Why inside Shopify

Your data belongs in your store.

Native fields

Descriptions, categories, FAQs and metafields are written to Shopify's own structures, not an external database.

Nothing to sync

A traditional PIM is a second system you keep in step with your store. Pelican is your store.

Yours to keep

Uninstall Pelican and every piece of content stays exactly where it is.

03 · Why now

The model doesn't move the needle. Your data does.

“Catalog-powered AI search converts 2× higher than general AI. The actual moat is what the agent is pulling from. The model isn't the differentiator. Your data is.”
Khalid Chao · Senior Solutions Engineer, Shopify

“If you have a good catalogue that’s got the right data, and you’ve got the right people driving your strategy, then Pelican can help you do all those things with a lot more power, across a whole catalogue, not just a small batch of products.”
Martin Cox · Co-founder, Native App Co

04 · Who built it

Fifteen years in the Shopify ecosystem.

Mateusz Antczak

Co-founder, Native App Co

Founded his first app, Datajet, five years ago through his venture Code 57. Started out as a backpacker-turned-developer in Melbourne and is now one of the most accomplished app developers in the ecosystem. Based in Poland.

Martin Cox

Co-founder, Native App Co

Founded a Shopify agency back in 2013 and has spent 15 years in the ecosystem since, obsessed with leveraging out-of-the-box functionality and erring on the side of simplicity. Hosts The Shopify App Show, where he shares stories from independent app developers.

Together we share the vision of creating native experiences. Our motto "apps that don't feel like apps" sounds cheesy, but it actually drives every product management decision we make. We want stuff that is fast, intuitive and helps merchants to run their business without any fuss.

“The assistance we have received the whole way has been gold star. Martin and the team have been so accommodating in getting us set up and educating us to get the most out of Product Pelican.”

Patagonia · Shopify App Store review

05 · Media

Martin on the Add to Cart podcast.

Add to Cart · Episode 643

The Shopify App Store Is Not Dead. Martin Cox on What Has Changed | #643

Co-founder Martin Cox on why the Shopify App Store is not dead, and what has changed for the apps that win from here.

06 · The family

Apps that don't feel like apps.

Built by Native App Co in Melbourne.

Wishlists & B2B

Fish Wishlist & Quote Request

Wishlists and quote requests, stored natively.

View app → EU compliance

Omnibus Owl

Price history tracking for the EU Omnibus Directive.

View app → Store credit

Stork: Store Credit & Rewards

Native store credit and rewards.

View app →

07 · FAQs

About Pelican.

Can Pelican change my products without asking?

Not unless you tell it to. Every AI suggestion is a draft you accept or reject, one at a time or in bulk. You can turn on automation for tasks that are low risk and high volume, and we always recommend reviewing by hand for a couple of weeks first. We were pretty conservative early, particularly with rolling out automated data updates, because we wanted to trust our platform and we didn’t want to have any disaster stories in those first few months. Martin Cox, co-founder

Is Pelican a chatbot?

No. We’re not a chat interface. We’re trying to build actual interfaces that people can just go in and be approving stuff quickly and doing their work fast. Martin Cox, co-founder

Will Pelican show me the AI sales it drove?

No. I don’t want a vanity dashboard that says since you installed Product Pelican your agentic sales have gone like this, because everyone’s agentic sales are going like that. Martin Cox, co-founder

What's on the roadmap?

Workflows with roles, approvals and an audit log, then multi-store and multi-locale support. The changelog shows everything that has shipped. Read the changelog

Talk to the people who built it.

Book a demo with Martin, or install and have a look around.

Book a demo →