How Shopify Became the Go-To Ecommerce Platform for Startups Dissatisfied with options for online storefronts, a snowboard seller and his friend built one themselves. Now thousands of other businesses use their customizable store builder.
By Katherine Duncan •
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Tobias Lütke was frustrated. He knew he had something great to sell (a line of elite snowboards), but he couldn't find a practical way to retail his merchandise online. Even with years of professional programming experience under his belt, Lütke found that his efforts were continuously thwarted by rigid e-commerce platforms with limited design options, making it difficult to integrate with other services.
"At one point, in an especially frustrated moment on a Friday evening, I said, 'Well, if I spend all weekend working really hard, I can probably create the software myself and then we won't have any of these problems anymore,'" he says.
