At VOICES 2022, BoF’s annual event where global changemakers gather to inspire innovation and reimagine the fashion industry’s future, BoF’s Rahul Malik spoke to Shopify president Harley Finkelstein about the collective opportunity in entrepreneurship.
The “Shopify Effect”, a term coined by the company, embodies the notion of using commerce as a force for good. Within that framework, Shopify prioritises harnessing its technology and network of nearly 2 million merchants worldwide — representing around 10 percent of the total global e-commerce market share — to empower entrepreneurs using its platform and promote conscious consumption across its user base.
In 2022, a series of roundtable events taking place in Milan and Paris saw business leaders from companies such as Valentino, Prada, Bulgari, Jacquemus, Coperni and Isabel Marant connect under the Chatham House Rule to share insights and learnings with each other, as well as the opportunities and challenges they discern in the market. Conversations focused on strategic imperatives needed to navigate the uncertain socio-economic environment, including price raises and evolving consumer sentiment.
“When you give the right people the right tools at the right time, incredible things happen,” said Shopify president Harley Finkelstein. “If you aggregate all individual, independent Shopify merchants, they will be the second largest retailer in America.”
Here, BoF shares actionable insights from the Q&A session on how, regardless of size, fashion businesses can leverage their influence to drive conscious consumption and establish meaningful communities at a time of increased market volatility.
Entrepreneurship’s Role in Economic Growth
HF: Entrepreneurship enables us to do amazing things, it gives us leverage and scale, and it is the greatest tool to solve a problem. Last year 5.4 million business registrations were filed in the US — that’s the highest in 20 years.
New entrepreneurs get their first sales on Shopify every single minute — that’s the whole purpose, the whole mission of the company. Our technology and code base drove $7.5 billion in business on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the real story with that $7.5 billion is how technology enabled people to self-actualise, to commercialise a hobby, to sell something that is meaningful to them to the rest of the world.
Technology as a Community Development Driver
HF: In 2021, Shopify supported 5 million jobs. Those are jobs in local communities for manufacturing, retail and technology.
For many of our sellers, entrepreneurship was not done out of passion — it was entrepreneurship by necessity. In 2012, Ben Francis created Gymshark out of his college dorm room. It is now a categoric leader that competes with companies like Nike. Heather Hasson and Trina Spear founded Figs following a coffee shop conversation about why frontline healthcare workers can’t have great fitting, good-looking, comfortable scrubs. They are now a publicly traded company that completely changed the hospital scrubs industry.
The cost of failure is the lowest it’s ever been […] people can try things — if they work they can scale, and if they don’t they can try something else.
We’ve never seen businesses scale like this before — the technology makes it possible, but it’s the entrepreneur who is driving. Shopify is the story of 2 million entrepreneurs.
Enablement and Risk Mitigation
HF: The cost of failure is the lowest it’s ever been for entrepreneurship. 20 years ago, to start a business venture you would have had to take out a loan, mortgage your entire life. Now people can try things — if they work they can scale, and if they don’t they can try something else.
To quantify it, the creator economy is a $100 billion per year economy, with a 4 percent participation rate — meaning 96 percent of creators don’t participate in it. Shopify Collabs is one way we leverage technology to connect incredible content creators with incredible brands. Today, every brand is trying to get a content creator, and every content creator wants their own creator brand. And so we created this AI-powered “matchmaking” service that connects great content creators, in certain verticals with great brands’ verticals, and ultimately both sides are able to monetise and grow, and it leads to really great success.
This is a sponsored feature paid for by Shopify as part of a BoF partnership.
