Sellers flogged $41bn-worth of stuff on Shopify's platform last year
of businessman that has been out of fashion for hundreds of years, the word merchant still has a ring to it. It conjures up medieval Europe, with its mercers, skinners, haberdashers, guilds and gold-buttoned liveries. It brings to mind ambitious venturers, bankrolling crusades and conquests, opening up spice routes and making history—for good and ill. It runs through literature and art, from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Holbein.
The company came about by accident. Its boss, Tobi Lütke, epitomised the new breed of digital merchants when he set out, with friends, to build an online snowboard shop, Snowdevil, in 2004. At the time, selling online meant one of a few things. You could spend a small fortune, either on developing your own sales channel or paying someone liketo build one for you, which only deep-pocketed firms could afford.
Unlike Amazon, Shopify keeps out of the relationship between merchants and their customers. To the buyers, it is invisible. To the sellers, who flogged $41bn-worth of stuff on its platform last year, it can be indispensable. They range from fashionistas of the Kardashian clan, mattress sellers, gym-wear specialists and Canadian marijuana growers to venerable brands such as Lay’s potato chips . Some have grown with Shopify from scratch to selling billions of dollars of merchandise.
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