Shopify Raises $100 million. Targets online and offline shopping.

Shopify, the company that now powers over 80 000 online shops, with almost $1.5 billion in sales generated on it platform, announced it has raised $100 million. Existing investors, as well as new ones, such as OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, chose to extend the initial $22 million investment.

Target: Clicks as well as Bricks.

Shopify is, as CEO Tobias Lutke mentions in its most recent blog post, the “fastest growing ecommerce platform in the world” but it seems this is not enough. The company plans to bridge the gap existing in small to mid companies’ approach to multichannel shopping.

The future, it seems, lies not only online or in an online vs offline struggle but rather in a 360% approach to customer care and sales.

Earlier this year Shopify announced Shopify POS, a point-of-sale solution designed for stores already running on Shopify’s platform. These stores can now easily use the software and hardware provided by the company to ensure a better care for their customers, independent of channel.

Rags to riches

The company was founded in 2004, when CEO Tobias Lutke and co-founders were trying to find a way to sell snowboards online, legend has it. Because they were not able to find an affordable application to help them do that, they built it themselves. Later on they thought it would be better to rent the software as a SaaS solution rather than try and sell snowboards. “That was the best decision of my life” says Lutke.

It took the company 6 years of bootstrapping until they finally got their big brake. Th first investment came in 2010 ($7million) and than 2011 ($15 million).

Now they sit on $122 million in investments and the company is probably the most interesting Canadian tech company of the moment. As the market’s demand for affordable, flexible solutions to multichannel retailing increases, so will Shopify’s market value.

Author: Mihai Mike Dragan

Mihai Mike Dragan is an ecommerce expert and the cofounder and COO of Oveit, a global company focusing on live experiences technology, both virtual and in-person. Mike has an experience of over 15 years in building digital products, with a focus on ecommerce. He has worked with some of the largest consumer brands in the world, advising on their digital go to market strategy.   Mike Dragan is also the author of the "Understanding Omnichannel Retail - beyond clicks vs. bricks" ebook, a guide for companies that understand consumer behaviour across media. He holds two degrees, one in International Economics and one in Computer Science. View all posts by Mihai Mike Dragan