Shopify is all around us$.$ Whether consumers know it or not, Shopify has become a ubiquitous part of

daily life, forming the backbone of e$-$commerce across millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of

transactions. Seamless and endlessly customisable for retailers, you might frequently purchase products

via Shopify without ever noticing it$.$ As of mid$-$March $2024,$ Shopify$$s market value is in excess of $$130$

billion, placing it as the third most valuable Canadian company after RBC and TD Bank.

Even though the company was founded in $2006,$ the Shopify story truly began in $2004.$ Three friends in

Ottawa, Canada, Tobias L$$tke$,$ Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake, who all had a passion for snowboarding,

set out to start their own online snowboarding equipment store called Snowdevil. As they searched high

and low for a suitable e$-$commerce solution to help get their business off the ground, nothing was

available on the market to make the creation of an e$-$commerce store as seamless as it should be$.$ E$-$

commerce merchants still had to move mountains just to get an online store up and running. As well as

building a site, merchants had to find a way to host it$,$ process payments and manage customer data.

While tools existed for many of those elements individually, nothing was available to bring them all

together. Spotify$$s founders employed emerging web app technologies of the time to create a unified e$-$

commerce system, just for Snowdevil. Other online retailers took note of Snowdevil$$s implementation,

and began enquiring about making use of it themselves. The team recognised they created something

powerful, and knew it could be useful to other people too. They transformed their software into a

dedicated e$-$commerce platform.

Shopify created an open$-$source template language, allowing more advanced users to create truly custom

store templates, significantly expanding the versatility of the platform for retailers both big and small.

Very quickly, the platform started to gain the attention of merchants both in Canada and around the

world. With Shopify already taking the online retail world by storm, the team looked for ways to take

things up a level. Shopify again looked towards new and emerging trends in the wider digital realm. In

$2007,$ Apple offered software developers the chance to make their own mobile applications for the

iPhone. So in $2009,$ L$$tke and the team asked the question, why can$$t we do this for e$-$commerce? Many

retailers had needs more niche or specific to certain industries, and all retailers wanted ever more

functionality, something Shopify couldn$$t satisfy completely by itself. Instead, Shopify decided, in the

spirit of what Apple was doing with app development, to leverage the growing community of Shopify

developers, allowing them to develop, and sell, their own apps for Shopify installations. Soon apps were

available for marketing, social media, shipping and SEO integrations, as well as additional design and

automation features. The App Store blew the door open for Shopify$$s versatility and functionality,

making the sky the limit with drag$-$and$-$drop ease of installation. The store accelerated Shopify$$s impact

upon e$-$commerce, bringing even more merchants into the fold.

In its current form, Shopify is an e$-$commerce platform that allows merchants to create an online store and

sell their products for a monthly subscription fee. Shopify defines its platform as a cloud$-$based system,

designed for multiple users, with scalability, reliability, security, and high performance. The first step for

the new merchant who wants to sign up for the platform is a $14-$day free trial. In order to do it$,$ they only

need to provide contact details and answer some questions about the business. It is not yet requested to

insert card data. During this period, the idea is to test all available features, such as marketing campaigns,

store designs, and applications, to find out what will be needed for the venture. After the $14-$day period,

users are able to choose the most suitable plan, select a definitive layout for their store, and include all

their products. They can choose which extensions and applications will be added to their plan $($there are

more than $1,500$ options$).$ All of this, of course, in the case of the regular user, among the three

subscription plans. The Shopify Plus merchant adapts all their e$-$commerce process via service on the

platform, since it is a different situation.

$3$

In the spirit of keeping current with digital advancement trends, Shopify also uses AI technology. Shopify

uses AI to enhance processes like pricing, marketing, inventory management, and customer engagement.

AI can personalize a user$$s sales funnel by meticulously analyzing customer data. This data$-$driven

approach allows the user to engage with their customers meaningfully and precisely, leading to better

conversions, and, in some cases, substantial revenue boosts.

Inventory management can be a logist