The Ottawa-based e-commerce startup Shopify has raised $100 million in a round of investment led by the venture capital firms OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners.
Founded in 2006, the platform allows brands and retailers to easily create online stores. Though it’s largely used by small businesses and entrepreneurs, Shopify’s customer list includes big brands and organizations like Budweiser, Gatorade and Crossfit.
According to Tobias Lütke, founder and CEO of Shopify, the new round of investment will be used to grow Shopify POS, a point-of-sale service that allows merchants to sell wares from their online stores in a physical location. The service includes hardware provided by Shopify including a cash drawer, stand, receipt printer and scanner.
“Shopify began as an easy way to sell products online. We used our previous funding rounds to expand into new areas that enriched our product and helped our merchants, like payments and mobile,” Lütke said in a release. “This new round of funding will help us further expand into physical retail with Shopify POS, so our merchants can easily sell their products anywhere at any time.”
Richard Wells, managing director at Insight Venture Partners said that the company is fast growing and has global potential. “The company’s expansion into offline commerce with Shopify POS further increases their opportunity with all retail merchants. Shopify has a bright future and we’re excited to be part of it.”
Shopify has also been experimenting with bringing its own brand into the brick-and-mortar world, opening a pop-up shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market last week to sell goods from select vendors on the platform. Last summer Shopify similarly ran a pop-up shop in Ottawa’s ByWard Market where the company is headquartered.
The announcement comes on the heels of independent research by Deepfield that showed the retailer garnered more than 1.5 million unique visits on Cyber Monday, more than large traditional retailers like Target, Best Buy or Walmart. According to the company, its stores sold over $100 million in products in a seven day period that spanned both Cyber Monday and Black Friday.
