Shopify Unite 2018 Report

Our team is back in Japan after spending a week in Canada for Shopify Unite 2018. This year the conference was hosted in Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦 at Evergreen Brickworks.

We attended UNITE in San Francisco last year, this year however we definitely felt the Canadian vibe, things were a lot more laid-back. The main highlights from this year were the keynote speeches by Shopify leadership, and a surprise visit from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau! (see video below):

Like last year, a lot of exciting announcements, I’ve put together a quick summary the major ones below:

Announcements

• New Shopify Tap and Chip Card Reader
• Shopify Physical Spaces
• Services Marketplace
• Multi-currency powered by Stripe
• Local payment methods powered by Stripe
• Built-in fraud detection
• Multi-location inventory management
• Dashboard Localizations in several languages
• 3D model support in Shopify (AR/VR)

Keynotes

Tobias Lütke (CEO of Shopify)

Tobias Lütke decided to look back on the history of commerce for his keynote talk. He talked about the history of commerce in Canada, and Shopify’s decision to move the conference this year to Canada. You can check out his keynote speech below:

Satish Kanwar (VP of Product)

• Death of the traditional retail (5000 stores close shop last year)
• Offline sales are not dead, Shopify betting on multi-channel retailers (merchants selling both online and offline)
• Shopify POS Updates
  • 70,000 retailers have used Shopify POS App
  • Unified Order View
  • Added tipping
  • Customer View for Shopify POS
  • EASDK (use existing Shopify API’s with POS)
  • Planned release in Summer 2018
• Tap and chip reader for POS
  • Tap-based checkout fastest checkout experience
  • Planned release in Summer 2018
  • 49$ USD (This fall released tap & chip reader)
• Shopify pricing changes for POS (simplified pricing, only one price for both online/offline sellers)
• Shopify Physical Space
  • Shopify to start opening co-working spaces across North America
  • Aim to provide 1-on-1 training with Shopify experts for entrepenuers
  • Will help with all aspects of your business: printing, supply, taxes, everything

Daniel Beauchamp (Head of AR/VR)

• New AR/VR team at Shopify headed by Daniel Beauchamp
• Partnership with TapCart app for delivering AR/VR experiences
• Shopify merchants using VR/AR capabilities in Shopify: Fashionova
• New 3D model support for Shopify stores
• Can use multiple variants with 3D models in Shopify
• Launching 3D warehouse for sharing 3D model assets (shared with other merchants)
• Service marketplace to request experts to build 3D models for you

Lynsey Thornton (Director of UX)

• Locations
  • Simplified Inventory Management
  • Manage inventory in multiple locations
• New Marketing dashboard in Shopify
  • Digital marketing advice for merchants
  • Create and manage your ads in one-place
  • See exactly which ads are successfull and through which channel
  • Planned release summer 2018
• Advanced Discount Types
  • e.g. Buy-1 and get one free
• One-click checkout with ApplePay (Dynamic Checkout available today)
• Locations (Simplified inventory) multi-location
• Inventory API
• Fraud Protect

Mohammad Hashem (Financial Services)

• Multi-currency (JPY) only Stripe
• Local Payment Methods for Shopify
• Shopify goes Multilingual

Quick Summary

This was my second time attending UNITE, each year I am impressed with how well the Shopify team can execute and deliver on new product ideas for the Shopify platform. I think we are seeing a strong comitment from Shopify this year to start expanding services globally with the launch of dashboard localization, multi-currency, and local payment methods.

If you have time, one of our favorite talks at this years UNITE was on Designing High Impact Teams, presented by Shopify’s head of Talent Acquisition Anna Lambert:

Event Pics!

Japanese Partner Dinner:

Justin Trudeau on stage: