Kitchener-Waterloo’s Seagram’s 19th century whiskey distillery is now home to Shopify’s newest office.
Shopify is known as a leading cloud-based, multichannel commerce platform created for various businesses of different sizes.
Business merchants can use Shopify software to manage their stores across multiple sales channels, such as the web, social media, marketplaces and more.
The new Shopify office in Waterloo is dedicated to Shopify Plus—a brand of Shopify that supports larger merchants, explained Loren Padelford, vice-president and manager of Shopify.
“Merchants like Kanye West, Kylie Jenner, Budweiser and Red Bull, etc. use Shopify Plus to sell their products online,” he said.
The Waterloo office currently employs around 110 individuals. However, the office is scaled to employ up to 300.
“We’re actively hiring and we’re trying to bring in the best employees in the world into the region. We’ve got a lot of room to grow,” said Padelford.
Padelford noted that the large pool of talent is what attracted Shopify to Waterloo.
“We came here because of the talent. The universities, the colleges, the tech community really give us that opportunity to scale up and grow which is hopefully what we came here to do,” he said.
From a hiring perspective, Shopify Plus hopes to recruit a high volume of students. Shopify offers students many co-operative education opportunities for those interested in engineering, sales, marketing, customer service and more.
“I’m very passionate about sales. I think sales is a great career option. I encourage students who want a career in sales, or have never thought about a career in sales, absolutely come check us out,” said Padelford.
In addition to the central location, Shopify Plus’ location in the distillery building allows for a historic touch.
Padelford explained that the mix of the old historic building with the new software and technology creates an interesting atmosphere.
The new space also offers employees a variety of amenities such as catered breakfast and lunch, a yoga room, fully-stocked kitchens and its own bar.
The walls of the building feature important sentiments to Shopify and company slogans, including “Act Like An Owner” and “Get Shit Done,” as well as chief operating officer, Harley Finkelstein’s well-known ‘hustle’ mantra.
“There’s no better place in Canada than Kitchener-Waterloo as a region,” Padelford said. “So it was obvious to me that we would set up here make this the home of Shopify Plus.”
