the:story
Built headless commerce. Now building AI adoption.
out:grow is an AI adoption practice for enterprises, SMEs, and government teams. Before that, it was a headless commerce agency, acquired by Trellis in 2021. The through-line hasn't changed: helping teams adopt hard technology before it's the obvious thing to do.
Here's the full timeline, so there's no confusion about who out:grow is today: an independent practice, run by its founder, focused on AI.
01:
Where out:grow started.
out:grow began in 2018 as a Dubai-based headless commerce agency, built around Reaction Commerce (later Mailchimp Open Commerce), the API-first platform most agencies avoided because it needed real engineering instead of a plugin marketplace.
The work was custom: bespoke APIs and storefronts in GraphQL and Next.js, decoupled from the usual Shopify or Magento backend, for enterprise clients across Europe and Southeast Asia.
02:
The Trellis acquisition.
The connection started on a podcast. Trellis CEO Isaiah Bollinger hosted Loan Laux on his show "The Hard Truth About B2B eCommerce" to talk headless commerce, recognized the depth there, and the two agencies spent months building toward a merger.
In 2021, Trellis, a Boston full-service e-commerce agency, acquired out:grow to stand up its headless practice, and Loan took over as Director of Headless, leading that division.
Trellis was later acquired by Zaelab in 2024, and Loan ran engineering across the combined team before returning to out:grow.
03:
Back, and independent.
out:grow now runs independently again, as an AI adoption practice, no longer part of Trellis or Zaelab. The gap it works in is the same one it found in headless commerce: teams too busy delivering to run their own R&D, underserved by consultants who only show up for enterprise-scale rollouts.
Today that means AI workflow audits, forward-deployed engineers, and managed operations, applied with the same hands-on approach.
out:grow also builds its own software. It is a Microsoft Partner, and WorldTimeFinder Pro, a Microsoft Teams app published on Microsoft's Marketplace, is billed by Microsoft. The appetite for hard technology that started with headless commerce now goes into shipping products.
04:
The timeline.
:
2018
out:grow founded, specializing in Reaction Commerce.
:
2021
Acquired by Trellis; founder becomes Director of Headless.
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2024
Trellis acquired by Zaelab; founder runs engineering across the combined team.
:
2026
out:grow relaunches independently as an AI adoption practice.