Business
How a Failed Snowboard Shop Led to Shopify
Shopify began as the software behind Snowdevil, an Ottawa snowboard shop that didn't last. What happened, why the software outgrew the store, and what operators can take from it.
In 2004, a 24-year-old German programmer named Tobias Lütke started selling snowboards online from Ottawa under the name Snowdevil. The most valuable thing the store ever produced turned out to be the software it ran on. By 2006 that software had become Shopify. Years later Lütke reflected that he'd never really been in the snowboard business. He'd been in the business of helping people sell things online.
