When the COVID-19 pandemic began and brick-and-mortar stores closed businesses flocked to Shopify. The problem? Consumers weren’t forgoing in-person shopping for good, skewing Shopify's forecasts.
When Kim Kardashian unveiled her beauty line SKKN with a Los Angeles mall pop-up in November, the world took note of her minimalist store, where concrete tissue boxes sold for US$89 and spheres of eye cream went for US$105.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began and brick-and-mortar stores closed, big-name brands — Remy Cointreau, Crayola and Glossier — and pandemic-rattled small businesses flocked to Shopify. The interest pushed its stock up to an all-time high of $213 last November and inspired the hiring of 2,021 employees in 2021 alone.By this spring, the company long lauded as Canada’s top unicorn had seen its pandemic gains erased.
For Finkelstein, resiliency starts with making retailers — big and small — see his company as a one-stop shop.That means getting retailers who power online stores with Shopify software to also use the company's point of sale hardware, seek funding from Shopify Capital and manage and deliver orders with its burgeoning fulfilment network.
“There's always going to be this competition, this sort of natural tug of war between the two, but at the end of the day, they're both going to coexist,” said Romanoff.On top of laid off employees, key staff who shaped the company — chief financial officer Amy Shapero, chief operating officer Toby Shannan, chief product officer Craig Miller, managing director of revenue Ian Black, director of product marketing Arati Sharma — departed during the pandemic too.
That will mean maintaining investor confidence in a company that slipped out of a profitability and by Romanoff’s estimates, is unlikely to meet that threshold by the end of this year.
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