Shopify – the good shop to Amazon's bad shop

It is the second-largest e-commerce platform in the US, yet remains anonymous. Will its new app change all that?

You probably will not have heard of Shopify, or be able to say what the company does, but you will almost certainly have used it. The joggers you found on Instagram at the beginning of lockdown and have worn continually since? Those Gymshark shorts you haven't used for months, now the gyms are closed? The coffee beans you bought online and ground at home, while you waited for the cafes to reopen?

Shopify provides the technology for anyone to set up a store and sell their products online, from the visible end of the website to the processing capabilities necessary to add stock, track inventory and complete sales. Because it is affordable, Shopify is favoured by small- to medium-size brands that can't afford to pay for costly, custom website builds. Basic packages start at 29 per month. About 1m brands use its services, including major names such as Pepsi and Fashion Nova, and 80,000 of those merchants are based in the UK.