Shopify Inc., Canada headquartered eCommerce giant platform that on-boards thousands of retailers now has bigger plans.
Currently, the retailer is looking to reinforce its labor force in Canada by hiring 1,000 more employees in Vancouver and launching it first operational office in the area.
Shopify, which has its HQ in Ottawa, offers eCommerce retailers the tech and platform they need to sell their products. The Jan 21 announcement included plans to expand the crew with a group of backend developers, product managers, data engineers, mobile developers, website developers and product designers from Vancouver.
The new team’s office will be situated at the Four Bentall Centre in Vancouver’s business district by the close of 2020.
Lynsey Thorntorn, Shopify’s VP of User Experience, who’ll head the office, said they targeted Vancouver for its rich and promising talent-base which they believe can support growth.
“We know it will take a few years to gather 1,000 competent staff, but that’s fine because we are after a longstanding commitment to Vancouver.”
“Shopify has the power, ability, brand reputation and level of production work to accomplish all that,” she added.
Currently, the VP and her team work from a temporary space opposite their new would-be office—the Four Bentall Centre.
The move is no surprise, however, as the e-commerce giant has been on a hiring and office-launching spree. Only last year, it rolled out a new Toronto-based office at the King & Portland Centre just near its mother’s office. Soon after, it publicized that it would rent over 23,000 m2 at the Well Complex—also located in Toronto.
The firm also has physical offices in Waterloo, Singapore, Berlin, Stockholm, Tokyo, and many other parts of the world.
Shopify, which has been focusing on VR (and AR), and increasing its list of retailers, is now looking to stand against Amazon by launching a series of e-commerce fulfillment zones in a bid to help cut the cost of shipping for US-based retailers—and speed up order delivery.
According to the VP, Shopify has plans to roll out parallel services in Canada but it will start small (by focusing on retailers making 10 to 10K shipments a day), and then grow to merchants who ship in bulks of up to 30K products a day.
The Vancouver crew is part of the plans to set up and launch the fulfillment service in Canada.
Final Words
Shopify has, so far, stood as the embodiment of what standing against Amazon should be like! Hopefully, the anticipated Vancouver team will bring a new perspective to the ever-thriving eCommerce platform.
Author Bio: Blair Thomas has been a music producer, bouncer, screenwriter and for over a decade has been the proud Co-Founder of eMerchantBroker, the highest-rated high risk merchant account shopify provider in the country. He has climbed in the Himalayas, survived a hurricane, and lived on a gold mine in the Yukon. He currently calls Thailand his home with a lifetime collection of his favorite books.