Profile

Online commerce giant Shopify was founded in 2006 by snowboarding enthusiasts Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake. Although the company was originally a mere online snowboard shop, it pivoted into ecommerce software when the founders couldn’t find what they were looking for online — a platform for users to sell goods while simultaneously growing their brand in the digital space.

Shopify’s success is now legendary. As of May 2021, the company announced that it had more than 1,700,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries using its platform. In return, the software company earns subscription fees. Subscriptions range from $29 per month for entrepreneurs to $2,000 and up for large companies. It also offers shipping, digital payments, and fulfillment, all under the umbrella terms of merchant solutions.

In 2020, Shopify emerged as a clear coronavirus stock winner. In fact, the Ottawa, Canada-based company has been one of the fastest-growing stocks of all time, up more than 5,700% since its IPO a little over six years ago. As of 2021, Shopify is the largest publicly traded Canadian company by market capitalization. The upstart is now challenging the likes of eBay and Amazon.com for market dominance. Shopify’s total revenue for the full year of 2020 was $2.9 billion.

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Key Products

Oberlo

This business tool helps source suppliers for ideas or prospective sellers. Oberlo has a powerful search engine that can inspect a marketplace of products to determine which are viable for direct import into a brand’s Shopify store. Upon receiving an order, users can fulfill it through a dropshipping supplier by means of Oberlo, which handles all shipping requirements to save time and effort.

Offset

Offset is a unique application that neutralizes emissions caused by shipment processes to fight climate change. The app is able to precisely calculate how much emission potential is present in generated shipping orders and display it as an Offset-branded, easy-to-understand algorithm. The cost savings are sent directly to forest protection initiatives. Offset sets up a dashboard for environmental impact visualization, with details such as how many trees were protected, and shares the statistics with customers.

Shopify Email

This marketing application makes business promotion via email a cinch. Users can go to the Shopify admin dashboard to send branded emails to subscribers with ease. With a wide variety of prefabricated templates that incorporate a company’s logo, product images, descriptions, and more, Shopify Email brings advertising accessibility to the most common form of business communication.

ReConvert

Shopify has developed a toolkit that maps out promising customer retention strategies. ReConvert allows users to compose custom “thank you” or order confirmation pages that entices customers for repeat business. Users can also personalize landing pages with a drag-and-drop builder and implement other features such as countdown timers, recommendations, after-payment surveys, and tantalizing reorder buttons. In essence, ReConvert takes care of all the nuts and bolts of customer retention.

Corporate Responsibility

Environmental Impact

The Sustainability Fund from Shopify gives out around $5 million a year to the most promising and impactful solutions and technology that exist to combat climate change. The company has also committed to investing at least $1 million annually for carbon sequestration efforts.

In 2018, Shopify decommissioned all of its data servers in order to power its platform exclusively through Google Cloud. The company always seeks out LEED-certified office space in the interest of prioritized energy efficiency, water savings, and sustainable site development. As of now, most of Shopify’s physical square footage is certified as LEED Gold or Platinum.

Charitable Causes

Tobi Lütke, the founder of Shopify, and his wife established The Thistledown Foundation to foster technologies that work to reduce global fossil fuel reliance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization shifted its focus into relief funding. Its resources have since gone mainly into supporting academic research on the virus and honing PPE supply chains. Lütke’s charity pledged $5 million to the organization Fast Grants, which handles the allocation of research grants for COVID-19 researchers.

Diversity & Inclusion

Countless ERGs have been created to cover the diversity of the entire Shopifolk community. Groups for women, Asian, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, LGBTQ+ employees, and those with disabilities, focus on generating talent acquisition opportunities and professional development.

The company has been a long-time sponsor of the Ladybug Podcast, an all-women program that promotes inclusion in the tech sector and aims to bring new and diverse voices into the discussion.

Shopify has partnered with Black Professionals in Tech Network to address the talent gap in the industry. Black professionals are given access to skill building programs and executive sponsorships, and are connected with a dependable peer network.