According to a Grand View Research report, the global B2C e-commerce market is expected to grow 12% annually to $7,724.8 billion by 2025. The growth in the industry is attributed to increased disposable income levels and rising internet and smartphones penetration. Billion Dollar Unicorn Shopify is helping retailers establish and improve their dot-com presence to drive this growth.
Shopify’s Financials
Ottawa-based Shopify was founded in 2006 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake when they set up an online store, Snowdevil, to sell snowboarding equipment. When the three were setting up the store, they realized that there did not exist a service that allowed them to list their products on a number of marketplaces while retaining the ability to maintain their own brand and establish relationships with their customers. To fill this gap, the three set up Shopify.
Today, Shopify provides a cloud-based commerce platform focused on the SMB segment. It allows merchants to use their software to run their business across sales channels, including web, tablet, and mobile storefronts, social media storefronts, and brick-and-mortar and pop-up shops. Shopify helps its merchants get a single view of their business and customers across multiple sales channels. Businesses can leverage Shopify to manage products and inventory, process orders and payments, build customer relationships and conduct analytics and reporting.
Shopify recently reported its third-quarter results that surpassed all market expectations. Revenues for the quarter grew 58% over the year to $270.1 million. It ended the quarter with a net loss of $23.2 million, compared with $9.4 million loss reported a year ago. On an adjusted basis, net income came in at $0.04 per share compared with $0.05 per share reported last year. The reduction in the net income was attributed to an increased spending on sales and marketing initiatives to increase market share and the establishment of its first brick-and-mortar store to sign up more entrepreneurs. The Street was looking for revenues of $257.2 million for the quarter with an adjusted loss of $0.04 per share.
