San Francisco-based Kit, which manages social marketing via SMS, has been acquired by Shopify.
In a blog post, Kit CRM CEO Michael Perry expressed excitement to carry out a “shared vision” to help small businesses.
“I have been working in the SMB world since I was 7, and feel very fortunate that I get to work everyday on something I care deeply about. I am grateful for the amount of support I’ve received that allows me to do so, and I will continue to dedicate my life to this,” said Perry, who has been working in family businesses and the small business ecosystem for over 20 years. “I am ready for the next chapter and the opportunity to grow Kit at Shopify.”
Speaking on the phone with BetaKit, Perry was still “on top of the world” following the announcement.
“We were invited to join Shopify in New York City last year for their retail tour, and I was absolutely blown away by their level of commitment to help entrepreneurs find success,” said Perry. “It inspired us as a business to work closer with them and to further push the envelope in terms of innovation.”
Perry said that Kit has been working with Shopify for well over a year. “In that short period of time, just through their app store, we helped thousands of businesses across 30 different countries,” said Perry. “It’s been our laser focus to help small business owners across the world to be successful and now with this acquisition and partnership with Shopify, we’re not expecting to help just thousands, but tens of thousands.”
Kit will continue to run as an independent company under Shopify, with the entire Kit team remaining at its San Francisco office. As the service is also available through ecommerce giants like Etsy, Big Cartel, Tictail, and Bigcommerce, Perry couldn’t confirm as of yet whether Kit would become exclusive to Shopify and said those details would likely be ironed out in the near future.
“Kit is still available in the app store, and over time obviously we’re looking for deeper integrations and working on other aspects of the business, things like conversational commerce, and bringing that intimacy back to the merchant-seller relationship,” said Perry. “We believe this is going to be a big piece of the pie in the future. We’ll continue to build Kit and other messaging bots and products directly related to that.”
Kit was founded in 2013, and, using SMS, users can carry out their marketing tasks. Through Kit, users can run Facebook ads and carry out sponsored content on Instagram, update fans with Facebook posts and email marketing campaigns, and send personalized thank you emails to customers — all based on the commands given through SMS.
