MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES 2020Canva’s graphic-design
templates help people
create everything from
posters and invites to
business cards and
web ads. The compa-
ny’s core product is
the increasingly flexi-
ble slideshow-maker
Presentations, which
now lets users edit
slide decks on mobile
devices (and optimize
them for small
screens); embed them
with video, maps, and
social media posts;
and share them via live
URLs. “We want to give
presentations the
interactivity that peo-
ple have come to
expect online,” says
Melanie Perkins,
cofounder and CEO.
A new enterprise tool,
released in the fall, lets
companies set their
own templates (with
controls for colors,
fonts, and logos), help-
ing to maintain brand
identity across large
workforces. Today,
Canva has more than
1 million people using
its paid products, and
more than 1 million
presentations are cre-
ated each week.FOR UNLEASHING
CORPORATE CREATIVITYAllbirds
The shoe startup
has used Shopify’s
website translation
and currency con-
version services to
handle transactions
as it has expanded
internationally.Brooklinen
The bedding start-
up’s founders
credit Shopify with
helping create a
sleek online store
that highlights
the brand’s lifestyle
credentials.Budweiser
AB InBev tapped
Shopify to power its
Budweiser gift
shop, allowing it to
sell socks, Christmas
ornaments, belt
buckles, and bar-
stools to beer lovers.LeSportsac
After the accessories
brand started using
Shopify’s AI tools
to target customers
with personalized
recommendations,
it saw a 7% rise in
conversions.in the United States and was responsible
for an estimated $300 billion in transac-
tions last year. (Shopify did approximately
$60 billion in gross merchandise volume in
2019.) But Lütke’s company has emerged as
a powerful alternative for merchants across
the globe who view Amazon with growing
suspicion. While the e-commerce giant
pushes brands to lower prices, put up with
counterfeits (and Amazon-branded knock-
offs), and spend heavily on Amazon’s ad
and warehousing services to stay relevant
in the site’s search results, Shopify remains
focused on empowering merchants. “We are
arming the rebels,” says Harley Finkelstein,
Shopify’s chief operating officer.
As brands have grown on Shopify, the
company has launched tools to help them
scale. It has added an array of payment and
logistics solutions (including premium
subscriptions for larger merchants) that
work across digital and brick-and-mortar
stores. Shopify Capital, which it launched in
2016 to offer small- and medium-size busi-
nesses loans with the option to repay from
future sales, has already doled out more
than $760 million. In January, the company
extended the service to entrepreneurs with
no credit or payment history or collateral by
offering them $200 starter loans, allowing
the most nascent of enterprises to join its
e-commerce ecosystem. While Shopify con-
tinues to introduce new features to its plat-
form—such as a chat function, launched
last year, that allows merchants to havereal-time conversations with customers—
the company also has a marketplace with
more than 3,000 third-party apps that
assist sellers with everything from ac-
counting to hosting raffles. Shopify even
has an analytics arm to help merchants
identify which social media sites are fuel-
ing sales and assess where to spend their
ad dollars. “Shopify is no longer just an
e-commerce platform,” says Finkelstein.
He prefers to refer to the company as “the
world’s first retail operating system.”
Shopify is now rolling out its most am-
bitious project yet: a fulfillment network
that’s poised to offer sellers two-day ship-
ping. The company has knit together seven
distribution centers in such states as Cali-
fornia, Georgia, and Ohio, and plans to in-
vest $1 billion to increase their capabilities
over the next five years. It spent $450 mil-
lion last September to acquire the robotic
logistics startup 6 River Systems, created
by some of the same team who developed
the automated warehouse system Amazon
bought in 2012. Shopify has already started
to offer two-day shipping to select mer-
chants, with more to come.
In creating this network, the company
is harnessing its greatest untapped re-
source. “When you aggregate our stores,
you end up with one of the largest retailers
in the world,” Finkelstein says. “Instead
of keeping these economies for ourselves,
we are focused on distributing them to
small businesses.”RETAIL STORIES
46 FASTCOMPANY.COM PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMIAN BENNETT MARCH/APRIL 2020
How Shopify helps brands move their goods