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And now, onto this week's Shopifreaks newsletter….
? Stock News
Mon, Mar 1st – Open: $1,315.00 – Close: $1,309.94
Fri, Mar 5th – Open: $1,154.97 – Close: $1,131.01
Today (Mar 8th) – Open: $1,126.04
1) Last week I reported that Shopify completed a public offering of 1,180,000 Class A subordinate voting shares at a price to the public of US$1,315 per share, which is its 3rd equity financing in the past 9 months. These moves have put Shopify on some investors' watch lists. Chris MacDonald of Baystreet.ca says, “These moves can be signals to the market the company believes its share price is overvalued and may not remain so over the long term.” Others say it's merely an opportune time for a company in growth mode to add cash to its balance sheet. Which side do you agree with?
2) Todd Gordon, founder of TradingAnalysis.com, says Shopify has 52% upside ahead and could be the best way to play the surge in e-commerce shopping. He went on to say, “The chart of Shopify is well-contained in an uptrend channel. Believe it or not, they don’t face technical resistance till $2,000.” Visit TradingAnalysis.com for more obvious predictions. LOL.
3) Investment company Gifford Fong Associates bought Shopify, Salesforce, Zoom, Franklin Resources, and Viatris, and sold Tesla, Intel, AMD, and Micron Technology. Gifford Fong Associates owns 134 stocks with a total value of $429 million. They are currently holding 7,000 shares as of 2020-12-31.
4) Zacks Investment Research reported that they expect Shopify to report sales of $819.35 million for the current fiscal quarter, compared to $470.00 million during the same quarter last year, which would indicate a positive year-over-year growth rate of 74.3%. Other analysts have provided estimates for Shopify's earnings, with the lowest sales estimate coming in at $643.51 million and the highest estimate coming in at $890.80 million.
? Shopify News
1) Shopify won the first round of court battles against RageOn, the store that it said violated their platform AUP (acceptable use policy) by selling clothes with QAnon, Proud Boys and Nazi images. RageOn sought an injunction last week to force Shopify to re-enable its store, arguing that it faced financial ruin otherwise, but the judge ruled that they can simply go elsewhere to other e-commerce platforms. RageOn founder Mike Krilivsky said his company is bleeding money and nearing bankruptcy without access to Shopify, and begged them, “Please, don’t kill our company.” What are your thoughts? Do you think Shopify should re-enable RageOn's store?
2) Postscript, the SMS platform that helps Shopify customers communicate with their customers via text and stay compliant doing so, raised a $35M Series B. Up until now, Postscript has been a one-way broadcasting system, but now they're working on expanding into two-way interactions, allowing customers to do things like re-order, manage subscriptions, and write reviews through SMS. Postscript is exclusive to Shopify and only works on their platform.
3) LockeBio has launched a new e-commerce platform they've dubbed the “Shopify for Pharma”. LockeBio allows pharma companies to launch their direct-to-consumer prescription brands online, complete with customizable intakes, video consultations, electronic medical record keeping and a built-in pharmacy network in the U.S. and Canada. Plus it's fully HIPAA/PIPEDA/PHIPA compliant. Do you think Shopify should enter the pharma market or stick to small business and retail? They've already embraced CBD in the past year.
4) Shopify is under fire again for allowing unscrupulous stores to sell on their platform. This time it was for a Shopify store selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination certificates. Currently there is no national or international database for verifying vaccinations, and paper record cards are the only way to tell if an individual has been vaccinated. Since they are easy to forge, scammers quickly rose to the occasion, but Shopify was quick to respond.
5) Famous, a no-code platform that allows merchants to create engaging mobile friendly landing pages, announced the launch of their new Shopify friendly platform Famous Pro. They are currently running 50% off intro pricing until Mar 31.
6) WeCommerce, a Shopify app development company, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Stamped.io, a customer review and loyalty program SaaS company, for $110 million. WeCommerce owns several popular Shopify apps including Pixel Union, Out of the Sandbox, Yopify, SuppleApps, Rehash and Foursixty, and they are currently on the hunt to acquire more apps with growth potential. So give WeCommerce a ring if you're trying to sell your app.
7) TikTok expanded their Shopify partnership into the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Integrations with the social media platform have been in place in the USA since Oct 2020 and are slowly rolling out across Europe starting in those countries.
8) Shopify took a jab at Amazon on Twitter last week for Amazon Basics ripping off a popular bag by the brand Peak Design. It's not the first time (or the last) that Amazon has been under fire for using seller data to create knock off private label products. Shopify tweeted, “alexa, define ‘amazon basic'”.
? Shopify Apps
Last week Shopify added 31 new apps to the Shopify App store. Here are a few that look promising.
1) Canteen Deposits & Fees – Collect fees for bottle deposits, recycling fees, environmental fees, setup fees, etc. based on item quantity. $9.99/month.
2) Full ROAS Calculations – Automatically track the results of your ad spend, including discount code usage, with simple return on ad spend (ROAS) statistics. $7.90/month.
3) E-mail Cross Sells – Send personalized bundle upsell e-mails to your customers based on their previous purchases. $19.99/month
4) NotifyMe – Receive text messages for various store events such as new orders, payments, and fulfillments. 100 messages free. $2.99 per additional 200 messages.
5) Metrics Hero – Measure the important KPIs of your shop such as profit per order/product, ad spends, and more by synchronizing the data of your Facebook campaigns in real time. Free.
6) Emwish – Show a personalized message on the order confirmation page to give your customers a big thank you and/or tell them what to expect after placing the order. Free.
7) Squadkin Product Compare – Let your customers compare similar or recently viewed items in a clean and simple user interface. $1-$8/month.
8) Daily Inventory – Automate any inventory updates you need to do on a daily basis for products such as fresh foods. Free – $15.00/month.
9) Ant E-mail Collector – Immediately deliver discount codes after e-mail submission with homepage pop-ups. Returning customers will merely see a welcome message. Free.
10) Shop Greener – Gives your customers the chance to make their deliveries greener with an option to add a small fee to their checkout to buy carbon offsets. Free.
? Shop of the Week
Every week in the Shopifreaks newsletter, I feature a Shopify store with a positive mission. If you'd like to nominate a store, e-mail [email protected] or hit Reply to any of my newsletters and share their website and story.
This week's Shop of the Week award goes to WildFlowerBooks.com – an independent publisher with a mission to support mother nature.
In 1992, award-winning conservation photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter fell in love with California's spectacular wildflower blooms in the Mojave Desert's Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve and spent the next three decades photographing the wildflowers.
Their new coffee table book, “Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change,” is a thoughtful collaboration of many hearts and minds dedicated to protecting nature's beauty. Check out their shop and show them some love on Facebook.
? Thanks for being a Shopifreak!
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See you next Monday!
PAUL
Paul E. Drecksler
www.shopifreaks.com
[email protected]
PS: A duck was about to cross the road when a chicken said, “Don't do it man! You will never hear the end of it…”