Companies that shifted their retail efforts online during the pandemic made their first sales with
The Ottawa-based e-commerce company was seeing new clients make their first sale roughly every minute before the health crisis, which fuelled a
"Consumers are voting with their wallets," said
His company has managed to benefit from the pandemic's temporary lockdowns that have forced entrepreneurs to seek online sales options like Shopify's in order to survive.
But if lockdowns are soon lifted, it could become harder for Shopify to rack up new merchants and ensure pandemic gains aren't erased when consumers have the ability to head back to brick-and-mortar stores.
The company's executives revealed Wednesday that they'll try to keep shoppers and merchants hooked by pouring money into strengthening Shopify's delivery fulfilment network and targeting international brands that would benefit from e-commerce.
The fulfilment network, which has been positioned as a competitor to
It's currently focused largely on signing customers up and on a research and development warehouse it opened in Ottawa in 2020.
"We will use 2021 to continue improving product market fit to focus first on quality and merchant delight before we scale our fulfilment capabilities." said chief financial officer
The company, she added, will focus on accelerating merchant onboarding and investing in automated technologies.
It will also encourage more international entrepreneurs to join Shopify, but Finkelstein wouldn't say what countries will be the target of those efforts.
"We don't necessarily want to single out any particular country, but there are places where you've seen us do quite well. We've been in
"We want to be the best product in market in those geographies, and so we're not just going to simply go into those markets just for the sake of it."
His remarks came as Shopify, which keeps its books in
Revenue for that fourth quarter, which ended
The increase came as subscription solutions revenue climbed to
Merchant solutions revenue rose to
On an adjusted basis, Shopify said it earned
Analysts on average had expected an adjusted profit of
New merchants using Shopify's software during the quarter include Yamaha, Hallmark and Nestle's Purina brand, said Finkelstein.
Shopify shares fell by almost 7 per cent in morning trading to just over
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Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)
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