Inception
Shopify and its 1.7m merchants across 175 countries are an economic powerhouse. A truly positive development from the age of disruption, Shopify is creating more jobs than Walmart.
6 years after its IPO, Shopify has grown to a US$200b valuation. Just as impressively, there are now 3 listed companies that started as Shopify stores: FIGS, Allbirds and Oatly. This isn’t just a look into the scale and growth of e-commerce, but a look into Shopify as one of the greatest economic enablers of our generation.
In the age of disruption, anyone with a laptop can become a retailer. Internal data from Shopify revealed the site has created 3.6m jobs. 0.1% of all adults are employed by a Shopify merchant. For reference, Walmart is the biggest private employer in the world with 2.3m employees.
The company calculated that their merchants have created over US$300b of economic value in 2020 including almost US$6b in developing countries. Shopify’s scale can sometimes be underestimated. For every $1 in revenue that appears on their cash flow statements, over $40 has been generated for users.
The question becomes, just how many more Shopify side hustles may become billion-dollar public companies. The recent Black Friday sale saw Shopify merchants register US$2.9b in sales in 24h. The eCommerce platform peaked at US$3.1m in sales traffic per minute. Looking deeper into their data, 72% of sales were made on mobile devices. The best performing categories were clothing, beauty and homewares. Shopify supports 1.7m businesses across 175 countries. Read more about their record-breaking day in their news release here.