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Shopify Opens New Office in Toronto with Plans to Double Local Workforce By 2022

Shopify Inc. has opened up a new office at 620 King Street West, as part of a move to expand its presence in Toronto, and double its workforce in the city.

The new office, opened on the 16th of May 2019, will be its third office in the Toronto area. The other locations, being its offices at 80 Spadina Avenue and 420 Wellington Street West. The company is hoping that this new move will create approximately 800 jobs by 2022; with a good number of the new positions aligned around R&D jobs like designers, product managers, and content strategists, engineers, and data analysts.

Just like in the other offices, this new office will hold a space for other tech-related organizations in the city to host events completely free of charge,the space would include a stage, bleacher seating, and a video wall.

Shopify’sdirector of UX for app and partner platform Amy Thibodeau, quoted on ITbusiness, says the decision to further expand in Toronto instead of taking their business into new cities such as Vancouver where they have no presence at all, was due to the fact that they already have a prior experience of the Toronto business landscape and have found it to be quite supportive of the tech industry . She also says Toronto has a reputation as a great place to live and that both of these elements will appeal to potential employees.

“We’ve been invested in Toronto for a long time. And what we found is that Toronto is just a great place to scale a company like Shopify. It’s got a thriving community of engineers, and designers, and entrepreneurs,” said Thibodeau. “And it’s also a really multicultural city, which is important to us because Shopify is currently used by over 800,000 merchants in about 175 different countries around the world. And so it’s really important that we be able to attract a workforce that’s representative of that kind of diversity. And then the other thing that we find about Toronto is that it’s a great place to live. And so it’s not just a great place to find talent, but it’s also a really good place to attract talent to.”

Just last year, the other offices contained in the Shopify complexes, helped put on more than 150 events, hosting more than 10,000 people over the year. Thibodeau said this was a way for Shopifyto continue to engage the community.

“This is just part of our on-going strategy… and this is just part of that continued commitment to the community. We want to be part of the community. We want the community to be able to access our space.”

In a press release, Shopify states that the new office would be designed with the help of local merchants.

“Our new office is designed to put our merchants at the heart of how we work. This includes dedicated portrait walls of the independent business owners we support and furniture sourced from Shopify merchants like Canadian woodmakerWazo Furniture, Toronto-made East West Futons, and modern designer retailer The Modern Shop, which is 100% Canadian owned and operated. ”



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