“Poor design begets poor customers” – for that reason Shopify’s most popular feature, and its biggest competitive differentiator, is its design flexibility, which leads users to create highly attractive online shops

Ottawa company, jadedPixel Inc. is the creator of Shopify, a hosted e-commerce application. jadedPixel was founded by Tobias Lutke and Scott Lake in 2005. One year later, in 2006, jadedPixel launched Shopfiy, an application that provides the online necessities and securities to individuals and businesses who want to sell products through an online retail store. Shopify currently has nine on the company team, including ongoing entrepreneur and open source developer Lutke as CEO.

Shopify’s applications allow users to create an account for their new store, upload products to their e-shelves, set up a payment system and view orders and completed transactions. Shopify promises that users can get their store up and running in minutes and offers full SEO, inventory tracking and product and content management. “Shopify-ed” stores are known for their stylish, gorgeous online store fronts and well-designed structure and shopping options.

Shopify’s tag-line is ambitious but apt: a shop in minutes, a business for life. There are currently over 37,000 accounts created on the Shopify platform.

Why Ottawa

Lutke emigrated from Germany to Ottawa, Ontario, and co-founded jadedPixel to start an online snowboarding retail store. This store was in fact the first Shopify store and, because it worked so well, the new Shopify company was created to sell this tool to savvy online entrepreneurs. Lutke is also an open source developer for Ruby on Rails, the premier open-source framework for developing database-backed web applications.

Shopify’s VP of Design, Daniel Weinand, also a German ex-pat, also chose to live in the thriving National Capital region of Canada because it suited his professional and technological interests as well as his active and artistic lifestyle.

Canadian, Cody Fauser, currently CTO of jadedPixel/Shopify, met up with Shopify creators through the Ruby on Rails community. The Shopify Director of Business Development, Jeremy Cochrane is an Ottawa native with years of experience in the software industry and spent the last 4 years in a business development and relationship management role.

With its origins as an online snowboarding retailer, it is no surprise that the Shopify executive team is comprised of avid snowboarders. Fortunately, Ottawa offers many near-by ski hills, including Camp Fortune, Calabogie Peaks and Mont Ste. Marie.

Luckily for the energetic folk at Shopify, the City of Ottawa describes the region as a giant outdoor playground featuring mountains, beaches, camping, skiing, golfing and hundreds of freshwater lakes. Ottawa has the world’s largest outdoor skating rink and over 850 parks. In addition to all the outdoor activities Ottawa has to offer, Shopify employees also enjoy walk-to-work, downtown lifestyles. Shopify’s office is located in the heart of Ottawa’s central, lively and historic Byward Market.

Business advantage

Shopify’s design flexibility is its most popular feature and is also the feature that differentiates it drastically from other e-commerce applications. Buyers expect style and flare to accompany great product. Says the Shopify site, “Poor design begets poor customers.” For that reason, the company offers users a variety of stylish, ready-made themes, an option to work with a design professional for a custom-tailored solution or the option to design and build a unique shop from scratch.

Shopify has invested in innovation and in its best feature – its design capabilities. Vision, Shopify’s proprietary theme design tool, is freely offered to all users. Vision is a stand-alone application, requiring nothing but a text editor and a web browser, that helps users create a unique shop theme. Vision provides a test database and on the fly visualization using Liquid Code, a jadedPixel/Shopify extraction that has been in use since June 2006. Liquid Code is now used by other hosted web applications.

Many of Shopify’s application features are also its business differentiators. Shopify offers:

• Flexible pricing that suits businesses of any size

• Unlimited scalability – from sole proprietor to enterprise scale shops

• Reports and statistics on site traffic, new orders and sales in real time

• Built-in representation on all major search engines

• Automatically generated sitemaps

• Inclusion in Shopify’s own search engine

Shopify currently promotes its thriving affiliate program, offering a healthy 20% revenue share to successful affiliates. As Shopify’s own community of online retail shops continues to grow, there is unlimited growth potential for this affiliate program.

Future growth plans

Shopify makes intelligent business decisions and continues to innovate. In June 2007 Shopify moved its data center from Fort Worth, Texas to high availability facilities in Toronto, Canada.
The center, located at 151 Front Street, Toronto, serves as Canada's premier Carrier Hotel and is home to more than 150 telecommunications companies.
Shopify shops are growing in number and scope. As Shopify customers grow, so does Shopify itself. Possible future Shopify features include: bulk shipping updates, more flexible coupon code creation options and customer membership.

Contact information

jadedPixel Inc.
+1-613-562-1666
www.shopify.com

Download a PDF version of this story here.

Download a PDF version of the story here.