Loan Laux. Agency founder. AI operator.

I started as an independent developer specializing in Reaction Commerce (later Mailchimp Open Commerce, wound down after Intuit's acquisition of Mailchimp), a headless, API-first platform most agencies avoided because it required real engineering instead of a plugin marketplace.

That specialty became out:grow: a Dubai-based agency helping retailers and agencies ship headless commerce projects, with clients across Europe and Southeast Asia. In 2021, Trellis, a Boston-based e-commerce agency, acquired out:grow to build out its own headless commerce practice.

I stayed on through Trellis's growth, then its 2024 acquisition by Zaelab, running engineering across the combined team.

The full timeline, from the Reaction Commerce years through the acquisition to today, is the out:grow story.

Most teams are exactly where AI adoption breaks down: too busy delivering to run their own R&D, and underserved by consultants who only show up for enterprise-scale rollouts. That's the gap I've been building for, both at CommerceCopilot and now again at out:grow.

out:grow now runs AI workflow audits, forward-deployed engineers, and managed AI operations for enterprises, SMEs, and government teams. Not theory: the same hands-on approach I used with headless commerce, applied to AI.