The Shopify Partnership Saga!

Shopify is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario that serves as a platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement tools.

With more than 1,700,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries using the Shopify platform around 1.58 million websites run on the Shopify platform as of 2021. Total revenue for the full year of 2020 was US$2.929 billion.

With such mind-boggling numbers, we took a look at Shopify's strategy and how it leverages its partnerships, licensing, and vendor relationships and broke it down! Let's look at some strategies they have adopted to grow rapidly.

Efficient delivery & logistics

Shopify is one of the companies that is obsessed with supply chain initiatives and focused on delivery, shipping, and logistics. Right out of the CFO's mouth on the earnings call “We plan to invest in building features that will further reduce friction for buyers at more points along the shopping journey from discovery to delivery, creating value for both our merchants and their buyers.” It has been collaborating with multiple companies in the last year or so. Let's take a deeper dive into the details :

• GreenDropShip: This partnership allows Shopify merchants to use an automated mechanism with the fulfillment of import natural and organic products.
• Shippo: With this, tasks such as automating workflows, printing labels, scheduling pickups, tracking shipments, and handling returns can be done through a single pane.
• ShipperBee: This integration will allow merchants to offer customers a regional shipping alternative at the checkout — one that is cost-effective and environmentally friendly than standard shipping methods.
• Rapidus:?This partnership will allow merchants to work with one-hour and same-day B2B delivery services.
• Sendle: With this partnership, the Shopify platform will allow merchants to print labels and schedule parcel pick-ups without leaving the Shopify platform.

Shopify wants to make merchant discovery easier and we can clearly see a pattern by studying the following business relationships

• Pinterest: Merchants can now turn products into shoppable product pins using the Shopify Pinterest channel.
• TikTok (Bytedance): Shopify merchants can now create and manage TikTok marketing campaigns directly from the Shopify platform to connect with youth via in-feed video ads through this partnership.
• Facebook: Facebook Shops will enable merchants to create customized Facebook and Instagram storefronts. This tool was the outcome of this partnership.
• Walmart: A very interesting partnership that allows Shopify's sellers to integrate with Walmart Marketplace. This gives Walmart an extra 100M+ monthly visitors to explore and purchase products from smaller brands.

Capital Access & Friction

Shopify is looking to reduce different barriers small businesses face during this process. With the sheer number of businesses it supports, even small changes will impact 1+ million customers. Some of the initiatives that they have taken to push this are :

• Alipay: Partnering with a digital wallet platform based out of China broadens payment platform options for merchants based in the US. Shopify merchants can now accept payments from Chinese users which is much easier than going through a third party. This strategy helps it to expand and acquire more across Asian markets.
• TendoPay: Customers from the Philippines can use the “buy now” and “pay later” options and allow them to pay for those purchases in 2–24 month installments.
• Coinpayments: The Coinpayments’ crypto payments processing platform will allow Shopify merchants, allowing them to accept cryptocurrency as payment.?

Overall Shopify has a great sizeable market and happy customers and the partnership strategy it has been leveraging is something that will take it to greater heights! What are your thoughts??

Collated By:?Areeb Sanadi??&?Kashish Pahwa?