Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. It is also the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services “including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools to simplify the process of running an online store for small merchants.
Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Unsatisfied with the existing e-commerce products at the time, they decided to build their own.
Lütke used the open source web application framework Ruby on Rails to build Snowdevil’s online store, and launched it after two months of development. The Snowdevil team was joined by Cedric Lütkemeier and Werner Smit in October 2004.
Smit became the CTO and Lütkemeier became the CEO of the company. In February 2005, Shopify raised $250,000 as its first round of seed funding.
The company launched its platform in June 2006. In November 2009, Shopify acquired Select Start Studios Inc., a Toronto-based software company that develops iPhone applications. The following year, Shopify launched an iPad app for its platform.
In 2010, Shopify started its Build-A-Business competition, in which participants create a business using its platform over a four-week period. The winners of the competition receive cash prizes and mentorship from entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Tim Ferriss, Jason Fried, Casper von Klitzing and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In 2011, Shopify acquired Jet Cooper, a Toronto-based design studio specializing in user experience design. That same year, Shopify launched a free mobile app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
In 2012, Shopify acquired Tictail, a Swedish e-commerce company founded by Carl Waldekranz and Sjoerd Steehouwer. Tictail’s platform enables fashion brands and other retailers to create online stores on web and mobile platforms.
In 2015, Shopify announced that it had raised $131 million in Series C funding led by OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners. [17] The following year, it raised $100 million in Series D funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Meritech Capital Partners.
[18] In 2018, Shopify announced that it had raised another $1 billion in Series E funding led by Tiger Global Management with participation from Dragoneer Investment Group and TPG Capital. [19][20]As of September 2019[update], Shopify has over 800 employees[21] with offices in Ottawa (headquarters), Toronto,[22] Montréal,[23] New York City,[24] Los Angeles,[25][26] San Francisco,[27][28][29] Waterloo,[30] Berlin,[31][32][33] Sydney,[34][35][36] Tallinn,[37][38][39] Vilnius[40], Dublin[41], Ghent[42], Glasgow[43], München[44], Portland,[45][46][47] Tokyo.[48][49].
Is Shopify available in South Africa?
Yes! You can absolutely use Shopify in South Africa.
Here are some things you’ll need to keep in mind:
1. You’ll need to use a third-party payment processor like PayFast or 2Checkout.
2. Shipping can be expensive and slow from South Africa.
3. There may be some slight differences in taxation.
Other than that, though, you can absolutely use Shopify to run your online store from South Africa!
