Devrims #TechTalk 070: Josh Kohlbach Talks About Building Woocommerce Success

In our 70th Devrims TechTalk, we had a converfstion with Josh Kohlbach, the founder of Rymera Web Co, a company behind some of the most popular WooCommerce extensions, including Advanced Coupons and Wholesale Suite. With a unique background that blends programming, sales, and marketing, Josh shares his journey from being a top-performing telecom salesperson to running a successful software business in the WordPress ecosystem. We discuss how his tools help WooCommerce store owners overcome key challenges, his insights on AI-driven automation, and his advice for developers looking to build and market their WordPress products.

Devrims: Josh, thank you for joining us! You’re described as a mix of computer programmer, marketer, and salesperson. How did this unique combination come to define your professional journey?

Josh: Thanks for having me! I actually started programming at age 13 and it was always my dream to one day have a software company (like Bill Gates). But when I got to university I was a bit disillusioned and didn’t really know what I wanted, so I hit pause on that dream for a while.

While figuring that out, I ended up working in a sales role for a telco here in Australia (Telstra) and it really helped me come out of my shell. I had some great mentors, eventually growing to be the top ADSL sales person in Australia at one point. They rewarded me with a free trip with behind the scenes passes to the Gold Coast Indy 500!

But I really missed building things, especially programming. So I went back to university to get my IT degree. Little did I know that I’d be using those sales skills in the future! It isn’t enough to just code—you also have to know how to sell what you’re making and that past experience in sales really helped me grow Rymera into one of the top WooCommerce extension companies.

Devrims: With over a decade in business, what inspired you to start Rymera Web Co to help WooCommerce store owners grow their online businesses?

Josh: I’ve always been drawn to solving problems for real businesses. I noticed that many WooCommerce store owners were struggling with things like wholesale pricing, discounting, and scaling their stores. That’s where Advanced Coupons and Wholesale Suite came in—they were built to fill gaps in WooCommerce’s core functionality.

But we didn’t start out that way, we did a lot of consulting in our early days and it was only after a few years we really focused on helping ecommerce store owners. As soon as we did that it clicked that it was more than just building plugins—it was about helping store owners succeed by giving them powerful, easy-to-use tools that actually helped them get past problems and grow their stores. Seeing store owners grow their stores is what keeps me motivated.

Devrims: Rymera offers several tools for WooCommerce store owners, like Advanced Coupons and Wholesale Suite. What makes these tools stand out, and how do they address pain points for users?

Josh: The biggest thing that makes our tools stand out is that they are built to solve specific problems and solve them in a complete way.

Advanced Coupons helps stores create powerful promotions like BOGO deals, loyalty programs, and cart conditions, which WooCommerce doesn’t offer out of the box. You can run any type of promotion and we’re always adding more features that our store owners are wanting to try for growing their stores.

Wholesale Suite makes it easy for stores to sell to wholesale customers alongside retail customers, with custom pricing, bulk ordering, and tax-exempt rules. We recently released Wholesale Payments as well because we identified that as a missing piece in the wholesale puzzle.

We’re also launching StoreAgent.ai, a newer project that grew out of my interest in AI and automation. Running an online store takes a lot of time, and many tasks are repetitive. I wanted to see if we could develop AI-powered agents to handle things that were previously difficult to automate. We’re still expanding its capabilities, but it already has agents that can answer customer questions about products, generate product descriptions, and more—all without store owners needing to do a thing.

All of these are designed to fill real gaps in WooCommerce’s default setup while being simple enough that store owners can start using them right away—no complex setup needed.

Devrims: What inspired you to create one of WordPress first affiliate marketing tools, and how did it shape your journey in the ecosystem?

Josh: Affiliate marketing has always been a great way to grow a business, and early on, I saw that WordPress didn’t have a solid, easy-to-use tool for it. That’s what led me to create one of the first WordPress plugins focused on affiliate marketing.

It was a great learning experience because it taught me how important ease of use and clear marketing are when launching a WordPress product. That mindset carried over into the other plugins we built—keeping things simple, effective, and valuable for the user.

Devrims: Security and performance are big concerns for Woocommerce stores. Does managed WordPress hosting help improve these in your opinion?

Josh: Absolutely. Managed WordPress hosting takes a lot of the technical headaches off a store owner’s plate. They handle security, caching, backups, and server performance, so you don’t have to.

For WooCommerce stores, this is especially important because they rely on speed and uptime to keep sales flowing. A slow or insecure site can kill conversions, so using a quality managed host is definitely worth it.

Devrims: Let’s do some quick rapid-fire questions 

Devrims: As someone who writes frequently about e-commerce and WordPress, what trends are you most excited about in these spaces right now?

Josh: A few things excite me right now:

1. AI-driven automation – AI tools like StoreAgent are helping store owners work smarter, not harder. AI is becoming practical, not just a gimmick.
2. Emerging markets – WooCommerce is being adopted in emerging markets at a fantastic rate. As online shopping grows in these regions, we’re seeing a surge in new store owners and entrepreneurs using WooCommerce to power their businesses because of its open source nature and great multi-lingual and multi-currency support.
3. Better reporting – I feel like quality reporting can be a great lever for store owners, I’m seeing a lot of excellent 3rd party tools for analyzing store data like Metorik, CRM plugins like FluentCRM and Hubspot, and this is also why I recently invested in one called StoreRadar.com.

Devrims: What does your workspace look like? We’d love to get a quick tour!

Josh: Haha, it’s pretty simple! I keep my desk relatively clutter-free, with just my laptop, couple of monitors, a good mechanical keyboard and a Logitech MX Master 3 mouse (my favourite). I like a minimalist setup—less distraction, more focus.

Maybe I’ll record a quick video tour one day!

Devrims: You’ve built successful products in the WordPress space, what advice would you give to developers looking to create and market their own WordPress/WooCommerce products?

Josh: Three big things:

1. Solve a real problem – Don’t build something just because it sounds cool. Make sure there’s real demand for it.
2. Simple ideas executed well – A lot of plugins fail because they try to do too much. Solve one problem really well.
3. Marketing matters – The best product won’t sell itself. Build a strong content marketing strategy, create useful guides, and talk to your audience.

Devrims: Lastly, who are some inspiring individuals in the WordPress/Woocommerce community you think that should be on our TechTalk?

Josh: There are so many great minds in this space! A few I’d recommend following:

Syed Balkhi – Founder of Awesome Motive and WPBeginner, a huge driving force behind making WordPress more accessible to everyone.

Angie Meeker – GM of OptinMonster and an expert in lead capture and opt-ins, helping businesses maximize conversions and grow their email lists effectively.

James Kemp – Core Product Manager at WooCommerce, leading the development of new features and shaping the future of ecommerce on WordPress.