Shopify Announces New Way For Big Retailers To Use Its Platform

Commerce platform Shopify announced today that it is giving large retailers a way to integrate individual Shopify components with their own systems.

“For the first time, we’re giving the world’s largest retailers access to Shopify’s component infrastructure,” Shopify said in the announcement. Toy maker MattelMAT
will be one of the first companies to utilize this new access to sell to consumers.

Shopify was born as a way to help small businesses easily begin selling goods online. Now, it is looking to fuel future growth by courting large enterprise retailers with sales volumes in the billions.

Shopify saw explosive growth during the first years of the pandemic, but its stock plunged in 2022 as growth slowed. In the company’s most recent earnings call at the end of October, Shopify executives highlighted large brands as a key growth target.

Shopify is unveiling Commerce Components by Shopify for large retailers. It opens Shopify’s infrastructure to allow brands to integrate their existing services with Shopify’s modular components for their own custom needs.

“Commerce Components by Shopify opens our infrastructure so enterprise retailers don’t have to waste time, engineering power, and money building critical foundations Shopify has already perfected,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said.

The new offering, Finkelstein said, frees enterprise retailers “to customize, differentiate, and scale.”

An ‘a la carte’ Shopify option

Arpan Podduturi, Vice President of Product at Shopify, explained that Commerce Components in effect lets large brands shop for, and choose, the Shopify tools that are the best fit.

“It’s optimized for retailers who’d prefer to use individual components of Shopify in an a la carte way – integrating those components with the rest of their commerce stack,” Podduturi said.

For example, he said, retailers can use Shopify’s checkout component, but continue to manage product inventory, or manage customer data, elsewhere.

“Enterprise retailers bring a unique set of technical needs that require multiple products and platforms to work together,” Podduturi said. “They want optionality, and the technical freedom, and to compose their own technology stacks.”

The new offering gives large retailers and brands an option other than Shopify Plus, which is an entire package of components offering end-to-end commerce solutions.

Toy brand Mattel is currently using Shopify for two of its brands, American Girl dolls, and Mattel Creations, its fan and collector site for special edition items. It now will bring its entire brand portfolio to Shopify as one of the first enterprise retailers to use Commerce Components, Shopify said in the announcement.

Sven Gerjets, Chief Technology Officer at Mattel, said Mattel’s experience with Shopify for Mattel Creations convinced it to expand its use of the platform with Commerce Components.

“We first worked with Shopify on a project called Mattel Creations, a platform for creators to reimagine the most iconic toys in the world.” Gerjets said. “Creations empowered Mattel to move quickly, meet our customers where they are, and most importantly leverage Shopify’s infrastructure to scale globally. It was hugely successful,” he said, “and we’re excited to transform our brand offerings using Commerce Components.”

Finkelstein and Mattel President and Chief Operating Officer Richard Dickson are scheduled to give a keynote talk at the National Retail Federation convention later this month on “Partnering for the future of commerce with Mattel and Shopify.”

Other large enterprise brands that have been using the Shopify platform are fashion retailer Steve Madden, beauty brand Glossier, and office and home supplies retailer Staples.

According to Shopify, its platform powers over 10% of U.S. commerce and has processed over half a trillion dollars in transactions.