Meet Josh
Hey, I’m Josh Kohlbach, the CEO & Founder of Rymera, the makers of Wholesale Suite and StoreAgent.ai, along with a few other popular WooCommerce-focused products.
I’ve been building software in the WooCommerce space for over a decade, helping store owners run their businesses more smoothly. My background is in software development and entrepreneurship, but at my core, I love solving real problems for ecommerce businesses with tools that actually help them grow and compete with the big guys.
What inspired you to create Wholesale Suite & StoreAgent?
That’s a big question, let me tackle it one at a time!
Wholesale Suite started because I noticed a big gap in WooCommerce. It’s great for retail, but there was no built-in way to handle wholesale pricing, efficient wholesale ordering, or multiple levels of wholesale accounts. The store owners I knew were struggling with this, so we built Wholesale Suite to make selling to wholesale customers easy. At first it was built for one client, but then we released it on .org and it took off since there was a real market need for this.
StoreAgent however is more new, it came from my interest in AI and automation. Running an online store is super time-consuming, and a lot of the tasks are repetitive. I wanted to see if we could create AI-powered agents to automate some of the things that were previously hard to automate. We’re still building, but there’s already agents that handle things like customer product questions, generating product descriptions, and more, without them having to lift a finger.
How does Wholesale Suite & StoreAgent stand out from other plugins?
I’m proud to say that Wholesale Suite is the most complete wholesale plugin for WooCommerce, we work really hard to ensure this. A lot of other plugins only handle one part of wholesale pricing or orders, but we built an all-in-one solution that covers everything—pricing, order forms, tax handling, customer approvals, and now invoice payments too.
StoreAgent is different because it doesn’t just offer AI features—it provides AI-powered agents that actually do the work for you. Most AI tools require a lot of input, but we’re aiming to make StoreAgent more autonomous in the long run. We want to automatically run the agents and surface actionable insights to store owners only when they’re needing input to continue on.
What are the biggest challenges businesses face in running a WooCommerce store, and how does your plugin help?
Personally, my biggest challenge as a business owner is time, I know a lot of our store owner customers have the same issue. It’s a constant battle of way too much to do and not enough hours in the day.
In terms of WooCommerce itself, I would say that the main issue is that WooCommerce doesn’t come with built-in solutions for everything, especially for non-standard businesses (which, ironically is where WooCommerce shines in my opinion).
Wholesale Suite fixes this by making wholesale pricing, customer management, and order handling seamless inside WooCommerce. It’s all about centralizing your business processes around your store, regardless of the type of customer.
StoreAgent tackles a different challenge—repetitive tasks that eat up time. So this is my attempt at solving the time issue of business owners that I mentioned before.
Can you explain how StoreAgent’s AI agents work?
Sure! StoreAgent’s AI agents work like smart assistants for your store. Instead of just giving you suggestions, they actually do tasks for you.
For example, our Product Questions agent can answer common customer questions about your products automatically and it then saves the questions and answers to a custom post type which then displays on the product page. This helps answer future questions, increases conversion rate, and makes your SEO better (it’s excellent UGC content!)
What role does AI and automation play in your plugins?
Automation is a huge part of what we do at Rymera as a whole.
For example, we have an extensive suite of 1000’s of automation tests that constantly test our code. We also leverage automation internally in our project planning and everyday tasks.
From my perspective, AI is putting automation on steroids. Now, AI takes it further—it doesn’t just automate tasks, it actually lets you automate tasks that were previously un-automatable. You can make smart decisions out of fuzzy inputs and data.
We’re applying this both to our products, like with StoreAgent.ai and also to our internal processes to make us more efficient as a company so we can serve our store owners better.
What are the biggest trends shaping the SaaS & AI industry today?
I think there are a few big shifts happening:
- AI is now doing a lot more than just generating text. Businesses are looking for AI that actually gets stuff done. That’s what we’re focused on with StoreAgent.
- Niche SaaS products and building your own apps to solve problems. With AI tools like Bolt.new and Cursor, the big technical knowledge barrier is being removed. Instead of big, all-in-one platforms, I’m seeing more and more people creating specialized tools that solve one problem really well. Sometimes they’re even doing it just to solve their own problems with no intent on making that tool public.
- Human creativity burst thanks to AI. AI is removing the 80% of repetitive tasks and activities we’ve previously had to do ourselves. Like typing out the same boilerplate code, or writing the same email by hand. This is freeing up braincycles that were previously wasted, leaving people more creative than ever before.
What lessons have you learned from building and managing multiple SaaS products?
One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that simplicity wins. It’s ironically very hard to make something simple. A lot of software tries to do too much at once, but the best products, the best features, focus on solving a big problem really well.
Another big lesson is that customer feedback is everything. Some of the best features we’ve built in Wholesale Suite and StoreAgent came directly from talking to users and understanding their struggles. It’s key to building a great product that solves real problems, so listen to what people are telling you (either by their actions or their words).
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs looking to enter the SaaS industry?
Start by solving a real problem. The best SaaS businesses are built around understanding customer pain points and creating something that makes their life easier. Remember, it’s far easier to sell a headache tablet than a vitamin.
Did you enjoy our interview? Do you have anything to say to our community?
Absolutely! I love sharing insights and talking about ecommerce, WooCommerce, and AI. To everyone out there running a business—keep experimenting, keep optimizing, and don’t be afraid to try new things. Also, if you ever have ideas or feedback on how we can make our tools better, I’d love to hear from you!
