Ottawa e-commerce giant Shopify is launching a new offering dedicated to enterprise retailers.
Named ‘Commerce Components’, the product is a composable stack specifically for large, global retailers, which Shopify defines as brands that range in gross merchandise value from $500 million to multiple billions in sales. Toymaker Mattel, the company behind brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Fisher-Price, will be one of its first users.
There are over 2 million live stores running on Shopify as of this month.
Commerce Components shares several features with Shopify Plus—Shopify’s e-commerce platform designed for high-growth merchants and the extension of its standard plans—but the company says that Commerce Components offers more flexibility for larger enterprises and their high volume of sales. One such example is use of APIs: while rate limited at the standard and Plus tiers, Commerce Components has no such rate limits.
According to a company spokesperson, this new product is also optimized for retailers who prefer to use individual components of Shopify in an “a la carte way,” integrating particular components with the rest of their commerce stack. Whereas users of the standard Shopify plans and Shopify Plus utilize a single platform to manage their business, Commerce Components allows retailers to take only what they need.
“Featuring an all-new back-office management designed specifically for enterprise, Commerce Components gives retailers the speed and flexibility needed to build for the future,” reads the company’s announcement.
Founded in 2006, Shopify claims to be the largest commerce ecosystem in the world. It announced a record-setting year in 2022 with combined Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales on its platform, adding up to $7.5 billion USD from merchants globally. That figure amounts to a 19 percent increase from last year.
Store Leads, which provides a platform for e-commerce data, reported that there are over 2 million live stores running on Shopify as of this month.
A Shopify spokesperson told BetaKit that Mattel has used Shopify’s platform for a number of years to power two of its brands: American Girl and Mattel Creations—Mattel’s toy production arm. The spokesperson noted that Mattel is bringing its entire portfolio to Shopify.
In addition to Mattel, other enterprise brands that use Shopify include home entertainment retailer JB Hi-FI, fashion and shoe brand Steve Madden, as well as office and home equipment company Staples.
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Targeting retailers at a larger scale, Commerce Components is Shopify’s latest move beyond DTC into providing a full omnichannel commerce solution spanning bricks and clicks. Last year, the company launched a new mobile point-of-sale product, with Shopify executives emphasizing the importance of retail on a call with investors.
Most recently, Shopify acquired American web framework provider Remix to bolster the former’s own headless commerce solution, which is the tool that helps build Shopify storefronts. Shopify also acquired San Francisco-based e-commerce logistics startup Deliverr to expand the former’s in-house fulfillment network.
Though one of Canada’s largest public tech companies, Shopify, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange, has not been insulated from the turbulent market. As COVID-19 restrictions subsided, e-commerce was put aside for the return of brick and mortar shopping. This shift in consumer behaviour, along with inflation, supply chain issues, and other factors in macroeconomics has led to mass layoffs across the tech sector, including Shopify, which laid off 10 percent of its workforce in July. In the last year, Shopify’s stock price has been slashed by nearly 70 percent, trading at $47 CAD as of press time.
Featured image courtesy Flickr.