A small team of builders who happen to run marketing.

The story, in my own words

I'm Rafat Afrad. I've spent the last decade running growth inside ecommerce and DTC brands, mostly on Shopify and Amazon. I started Cart Ignite in 2022 because I kept seeing the same gap: brands wanted senior operators who'd actually run the work, not slide decks from a junior account manager. So I built that team.

Over the next few years we got to work with brands I'm genuinely proud of. Rhino-Rack on global ecommerce. Urth on DTC across four regions. Loco Love on premium retail and direct. Mask Co. on an end to end Shopify and paid build. The NSW State Government on public sector digital programs that had to clear a very different bar.

Then 2024 happened. I watched the same outputs that used to take a team of five get drafted, tuned and reported on by AI agents running quietly in the background, with one senior operator approving the work. So I rebuilt the agency around that. Every Cart Ignite engagement now ships the automation layer that handles the repetitive jobs, so the humans on our side, and yours, can do the thinking.

We're proudly based in the Northern Rivers and work with brands across Australia, the US, the UK and Europe. Small team. Senior bench. No middle layer.