Updated Dec 15, 9:30 a.m.
Shopify has defied all expectations for a Canadian tech player. Not only is it now the platform of choice for 200,000 retailers in 150 countries, it’s the first Canadian tech startup to be valued at more than $1 billion since the dotcom bust.
In May, it made good on its billion-dollar-unicorn status, cashing in for $131 million in a blowout dual IPO on the NYSE and TSX, and showing the world that Canada’s tech scene is ready to rival New York and Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, its revenue for the first half of 2015 nearly doubled (up 93%).
Though it started off targeting small and midsize businesses, national and global brands have turned to Shopify to power online and physical shopping experiences. Brands like Herschel, Tesla Motors and the L.A. Lakers use Shopify to power everything from shoppable emails to mobile app storefronts to pop-up shops. Budweiser currently uses it to sell its Red Lights goal trackers online.
Brennan Loh, Shopify’s head of business development, says that one of the major factors that’s appealed to both small businesses and enterprise brands is Shopify’s customizability, which gives retailers much more freedom to express their personality than a seller profile on Amazon or eBay. “We’re looking to give the entrepreneurs the power to do what they want and represent their brand how they want, without technology telling you ‘Here’s how you have to do this,'” he says.
Shopify co-founders Tobi Lütke and Daniel Weinand
More so than any other ecommerce provider, Shopify has managed to bridge together all aspects of digital and physical retail, so brands can really give a consistent experience wherever they want to operate, be it on a desktop website, mobile marketplace or brick-and-mortar store.
And they’re constantly looking for new frontiers for retail. Like social. This will be the year that ecommerce went social, and that’s in no small part thanks to Shopify. This year it announced partnerships with Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter to make social shopping experiences available to brands and retailers.
On Pinterest and Twitter, that’s taken the form of “buy now” buttons that let customers instantly purchase items that catch their eye when others in their social circle post about them. On Facebook, Shopify has worked to create a full social storefront where brands can make their entire catalog available for browsing and purchase. Brands can link their social ads back to shoppable product pages, so customers can click or tap through an ad and buy the item without ever leaving Facebook’s app.
That’s an incredibly important development, says Loh, because consumers spend 84% of their in-app time in just their five top apps, according to Forrester. Getting shoppable products in front of consumers while they’re on their top apps — which usually include social platforms like Facebook — is one of the best ways that brands can drive sales in mobile.
Beyond social, Shopify also formed a partnership this year with Amazon to connect merchants more easily with Amazon services such as search, payment and delivery, and another with Uber, for courier delivery in select cities. “We’ve been on this huge wave of partnerships and product integrations that is really shaping what the future of commerce is going to look like, and we couldn’t be more excited to be at the centre of it all.”
This story was updated to reflect new growth in Shopify’s merchant count since this story was written.
