The URL shop.ca, once the home of a large Canadian e-commerce player in its own right, will now redirect to Shopify’s Amazon-like online megastore.
Shopify has purchased the domains shop.ca and shop.us from Toronto-based Emerge Commerce for $375,000 USD ($536,000 CAD). The domains will now automatically direct users to Shop app as the company continues to nurture the presence of its digital marketplace in an increasingly competitive sector. Chinese online shopping app Temu made strides in the market this year, becoming the most downloaded app in Canada in 2024, according to Apple’s annual app store data.
Shopify now holds a storied asset in Canadian e-commerce history in its hands. Founded in 2011 by Drew Green and Trevor Newell, Shop.ca was an early Canadian Amazon competitor, providing an e-commerce platform and digital marketplace.
The company received a healthy amount of venture funding, but eventually laid off most of its staff before declaring bankruptcy in 2016. Over about five years, Shop.ca had raised $72 million in equity financing, but cumulatively lost the same amount.
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Emerge, an e-commerce and subscription service rollup company, purchased the Shop.ca domains and eventually re-launched Shop.ca in 2018 as a platform that provided coupons alongside retail content and shopping guides. Emerge CEO Ghassan Halazon told BetaKit at the time that the new model was “content meets commerce,” rather than a pure e-commerce marketplace.
However, according to a statement by Halazon, the Shop.ca domain had not been performing in some time and it was time to make another change.
“The Shop domains had been idle and non-revenue generating in recent years under Emerge ownership,” Halazon said. “As such, management felt that monetizing these dormant domains via a sale to Shopify, in return for non-dilutive cash proceeds to fund future growth plans, made perfect sense.”
Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.
Feature image courtesy Shopify.