Shopify is a Canadian company that develops software for e-commerce. It created a SaaS platform for online and offline stores that provides functionality for payment processing, advertising and marketing, product delivery, and customer support.
Shopify brand history
Shopify was founded in 2006 in Ottawa by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinland and Scott Lake, who wanted to sell snowboarding equipment online but couldn’t find a suitable off-the-shelf solution. Lutke then personally developed an online store on the Ruby on Rails framework’s Liquid optensource template and launched it under the name Shopify in June 2006.
In June 2009, the company launched its own Shopify App Store, and allowed the platform to integrate with external resources via APIs. In April 2010, it released a mobile app for the Apple App Store, allowing merchants to manage their stores through iOS devices. That same year, the Ottawa Business Journal recognized it as Ottawa’s fastest growing company. Shopify received $7 million in venture capital investment in December 2010 and another $15 million in October 2011.
In 2014, the platform had nearly 100,000 registered sellers and revenue reached $105 million – double the year before. In February of that year, it introduced Shopify Plus, a platform for large businesses with additional features and expanded support. In April 2015, the company held an IPO, and its shares appeared on the New York (SHOP) and and Toronto (SH) stock exchanges’ listings. This procedure increased its value by $131 million.
In September 2015, Amazon shut down its Amazon Webstore service and recommended Shopify as a recommended alternative, amid which the Shopify brand’s share price rose 20%. Then it also allowed users to sell products through social media, opening a Facebook store integrated with the platform. In April 2016, the company announced Shopify Capital, a service that provides sellers in the US with a line of credit of up to $2 million.
In January 2017, Shopify announced an upcoming integration with Amazon that gave its users access to sell items on Amazon through their online stores on Shopify. In October 2018, the company opened its first customer location in Los Angeles, and in January 2019, it launched Shopify Studios, its own TV and movie studio. In March of that year, Shopify completed an integration with email marketing service MailChimp, and in April it announced an integration with Snapchat that allowed merchants to manage ads on that service directly through the Shopify platform.
In June 2019, the company launched its own shipping division, and in August it introduced Shopify Chat, a built-in online chat service for stores on the platform. In March 2020, Shopify announced a full business shift to remote working – due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 5,000 of its employees went “remote”. In November 2020, the platform began partnering with Chinese payment system Alipay, allowing it to increase the number of international purchases and transactions.