Shopify just destroyed your startup’s secret Santa program. Today, the Ottawa-based, IPO’d company announced that each employee would be receiving an $1000 bonus for the holidays – to be spent with Shopify merchants.
While some might accuse the company of attempting to game its (gaudy) numbers, it’s a fairly epic example of a startup eating its own dogfood. Here’s how Shopify social media lead Dayna Winter described the company’s thought process behind the decision:
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Every day my team curates a steady social stream of some of the best products sold by Shopify stores everywhere. Sometimes it’s not enough to simply tweet about them – I frequently find myself lurking in the checkout.
While we’re hitting “add to cart” a little more often these days, we wondered: what if all of our holiday gifting dollars were spent solely on Shopify stores? And, what if we gave every Shopify employee a $1000 holiday bonus to do just that? Simple math. Our workforce of ~1000 would collectively inject over a million dollars back into the Shopify community.
Shopify is encouraging its over 200,000 merchants to tweet or Instagram Shopify employees to sway their purchasing decisions, while also asking them to make a $5 purchase at another merchant’s store. What goes around comes around, right?
