Shopify is all around us. Whether consumers know it or not, Shopify has become a ubiquitous part of daily life, forming the backbone of e-commerce across millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of transactions. Seamless and endlessly customisable for retailers, you might frequently purchase products via Shopify without ever noticing it.

Despite its dominance today, Shopify came from humble beginnings, born out of a necessity, the ideas of three enterprising young minds, and an obsession with snowboarding.

The Beginning - Unleashing The Snowdevil.

Even though the company was founded in 2006, the Shopify story truly began in 2004. Three friends in Ottawa, Canada, Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake, who all had a passion for snowboarding, set out to start their own online snowboarding equipment store called Snowdevil. As they searched high and low for a suitable e-commerce solution to help get their business off the ground, they ran into a problem. No such solution existed.

Nothing was available on the market to make the creation of an e-commerce store as seamless as it should be. In what was then an increasingly Web 2.0 world, where content creators were being given the power of user-friendly publishing tools and content management systems such as WordPress and Blogger, e-commerce merchants still had to move mountains just to get an online store up and running. As well as building a site, merchants had to find a way to host it, process payments and manage customer data. While tools existed for many of those elements individually, nothing was available to bring them all together.

So how could Lutke, Weinand and Lake start selling snowboards their way? They had to create something entirely new. Lütke, a brilliant software engineer looking for an alternative career path, sought to make use of his technical skills to pursue what had become a passion project. He decided to employ emerging web app technologies of the time to create a unified e-commerce system, just for Snowdevil. After a few months of development, Snowdevil was ready for launch.

The Lightbulb Moment.

Other online retailers took note of Snowdevil’s implementation, and began enquiring about making use of it themselves. The team recognised they created something powerful, and knew it could be useful to other people too. After one successful snowboarding season came and went, Lütke, Weinand, and Lake set about transforming their software into a dedicated e-commerce platform. In 2006, the platform was ready for launch. First called Jaded Pixel, the company soon adopted the name Shopify, to signify the ease of creating your own online store with its tools.

Shopify created an open-source template language, allowing more advanced users to create truly custom store templates, significantly expanding the versatility of the platform for retailers both big and small. Very quickly, the platform started to gain the attention of merchants both in Canada and around the world.

There’s An App (Store) For That.

With Shopify already taking the online retail world by storm, the team looked for ways to take things up a level. After finding inspiration from Web 2.0 content management systems to create the platform itself, Shopify again looked towards new and emerging trends in the wider digital realm. In 2007, Apple launched the iPhone, and a year later the App Store. The store offered software developers the chance to make their own mobile applications which took advantage of the iPhone’s innovative multi-touch display and internet connectivity. It also offered users an incredibly easy way to infinitely expand the functionality of their phones, with apps designed to solve a dizzying array of problems, all available to be installed with virtually no technical know-how.

So in 2009, Lütke and the team asked the question, why can’t we do this for e-commerce? Up to that point, the platform already streamlined the creation and management of stores, but many retailers had needs more niche or specific to certain industries, and all retailers wanted ever more functionality, something Shopify couldn’t satisfy completely by itself. Instead, Shopify decided to leverage the growing community of Shopify developers, allowing them to develop, and sell, their own apps for Shopify installations.

Soon apps were available for marketing, social media, shipping and SEO integrations, as well as additional design and automation features. The App Store blew the door open for Shopify’s versatility and functionality, making the sky the limit with drag-and-drop ease of installation. The store accelerated Shopify’s impact upon e-commerce, bringing even more merchants into the fold.

Payments, POS, Plus And Beyond.

As the successes kept rolling in, Shopify kept adding more to its growing list of capabilities. In 2013, the platform took steps beyond e-commerce websites, with the launch of Shopify Payments; a payment system enabling merchants to take credit and debit card payments without having to work with a third party payment gateway. In the same year, Shopify took its first steps out of the virtual realm, with the release of Point Of Sale devices for real world transactions, enabling retailers to combine brick and mortar purchases with online purchases.

While Shopify became the go-to platform for smaller and medium sized businesses, many larger businesses started to make use of the platform, with some of the world’s biggest brands interested in leveraging its ease of use and reliability. In 2014, the company took steps to cater to this demand with the launch of Shopify Plus.

Shopify Plus is a more exclusive tier of the service specifically for larger retailers with a higher volume of sales, with tailored support and services specifically for a much larger retail operation. The Plus programme now means Shopify provides e-commerce stores for brands such as Gymshark, Heinz, and Staples, serving customers in hundreds of countries around the world. Plus signifies the next phase of Shopify’s global expansion.

In the years since the launch of Plus, Shopify has only continued to grow even further. With Shopify Markets making it easier than ever before for businesses to expand internationally, the Shopify Fulfilment Network, an integrated logistics provider for Shopify merchants, and Shopify Capital, a venture capital provider for new businesses seeking funding, there’s no limit to Shopify’s growth.

A Bright Future.

When Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake started their fledgling snowboarding equipment store 18 years ago, they had no idea their creation would evolve into such a global revolution. Shopify is now home to over 1.75 million merchants, supporting hundreds of millions of transactions across the world. Now the company looks beyond the web to find even more ways it can help support retailers to create innovative products and services. And it’s safe to say, we’re all fully on board.

Thinking about making the move to Shopify? Explore our Migration services and get in touch.

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