Today, Shopify announced that it acquired Waterloo-based Boltmade, a product design and development consulting firm.
Shopify says that the acquisition will help it accelerate the development of its cloud-based Shopify Plus product, which targets high-volume Shopify businesses that need enterprise-grade capabilities. Shopify Plus offers unlimited sales and bandwidth, and its customers include Wikipedia and Tesla.
“We first worked with the Boltmade team in early 2016 and quickly realized the team’s huge potential and depth of talent,” said Loren Padelford, VP of Shopify Plus. “Shopify is committed to investing in talent. The acquisition of Boltmade will bring a strong group of designers and engineers to Shopify Plus. We’re thrilled to have them join our team to help shape the future of commerce for larger merchants.”
Boltmade’s 21-person team, which designs and builds software products for both early stage startups and Fortune 500 companies, will join the Shopify Plus office in Waterloo.
“Shopify has had a big impact on commerce by helping businesses of all sizes achieve success. Earlier this year, we jumped at the chance to work on a project with them,” said Jim Murphy, founder and President of Boltmade. “We’re excited to be joining Shopify Plus to help some of the most recognizable, fastest-growing brands in the world sell billions of dollars of product.”
This is Shopify’s second acquisition this year. In April, Shopify acquired San Francisco-based Kit, a virtual marketing assistant that manages social marketing for businesses via SMS.