Huge fan of Shopify for a number of reasons:

 1. Shopify is a plug-and-play solution to getting you into the eCommerce business. Sign on with Shopify and you are in business as quickly as you can take pictures of your merchandise and put a price on it. Effortless. Streamlined.

 2. As a software product, Shopify fulfills the promise of the Internet as a means of creating “digital real estate” whereon a tech savvy digital business woman (see what your “woke” Big Red Car did there?) can reach the entire world without having to undertake a huge tech effort to get her store open.

This is a huge victory, a fulfillment of an enormous promise.

 3. Shopify has made the transition from being the “thing you add to get into eCommerce” to being the core of your eCommerce effort while still allowing you to integrate other apps such as shipping labels.

 4. Shopify can do things that a “real” store can struggle with — multiple credit cards being charged for a single purchase (called a “split tender”), discounts, store credits, layaways, deposits, refunds, inventory management, employee PINs, and bar codes — lots more.

 5. Shopify can assist in developing customer intelligence including managing customer IDs, shopping history, order history, and can integrate bricks-and-sticks and online customers. It can use an integrated email app to develop customer contact programs.

 6. Shopify is closing the loop by adding such integrated products as accounting (QuikBooks, Xero), Mail Chimp, package tracking messaging (iMessage Business Chat – Apple), customer service communication.

It is becoming a full solution. Unfair — not “becoming” — IS a full solution. Bravo.

 7. Shopify can provide inventory, sell through, and other sophisticated analytics.

 8. All of this leaves the merchant more energy to focus on products, a beautiful thing.

 9. Last, it has been a stock to watch from its 2015 IPO until now. It has been a 20X — twenty bagger.

Shopify the stock

Shopify came public in May 2015 at $17/share. You can see for yourself how that has worked out for anybody lucky enough to get some of those IPO shares.

Of late, there has been a bit of frothiness because of a perception that the stock price is overrunning its shadow, but if you have a 20-bagger, you have to expect a bit of that.

The only fly in the ointment is the fact that the company has still never turned a profit. That bothers me.

Shopify has a good track record of providing accurate guidance and hitting their numbers. They say they will be profitable shortly, but still — four years after IPO? Hand me the fly swatter.

So, there you have it. What do you think?

Tell me a Shopify story.

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Be good to yourself. You deserve it. Sow a little love if you get a chance.