Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Barb H. | Delivered October 24, 2019

Shopify

Goals

Provide an overview on Shopify, including key markets of business, current advertising campaigns or marketing case studies, and information on company structure 

Early Findings

Shopify primarily targets small and medium businesses, but recently has began to invest more resources into encouraging larger and enterprise size companies to use the platform as well.
The company has seen rapidly growing revenues, earning $1.1 billion in 2018, compared to $.2 billion in 2015. 
Shopify’s revenue comes from two streams, subscriptions to users to access the platform and tool for their shop and merchant services, which are fees from payments, shipping, and other purchase related expenses. 
The company had approximately 5,300 users as of June 2019. 
Shopify’s merchant revenue has had an annual growth of 60% in the last four years, and their subscription revenue has had an annual growth of 40% per year. 
Shopify has a total team of around 4,000 total employees. 
 One source notes that Shopify’s key competitive advantage is that they create highly customizable e-commerce tools which integrate well with social media, to make marketing and store design accessible. 
Shopify has recently received press related to their investing in their own fulfillment network, which will allow those on their platform to better compete with e-commerce giants like Amazon. 
The company is expected to invest  around $1 billion into the initiative.
In order to launch this program, the company recently acquired 6 River Systems, a warehouse fulfillment solution provider, for $450 million. 
Shopify went public in 2015, and its IPO raised over $131 million.  
Shopify’s CEO Craig Miller doesn’t consider their growth a marketing strategy, but rather a growth strategy. 
This growth strategy was primarily based on an intentional use of free trials to get new users invested in their store creation before paying a subscription fee. 