Shopify adds collaboration tool to connect brands with content creators

Dive Brief:

Shopify this week launched a new shoppable content feature, Shopify Collabs, which aims to connect creators with the platform’s millions of merchants, according to a press release.
The tool is intended to match creators and merchants together with a focus on passions and sensibilities, helping one another capitalize off of their respective careers and further emphasizes the role shoppable content holds as a marketing tactic.
The new feature follows other efforts by Shopify to distinguish itself in the shoppable content space as platforms like TikTok grow and comes as the company faces a slowdown in the number of new merchants being added.

Dive Insight:

The creator economy has skyrocketed, estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, but some creators have difficulty establishing economic independence while maintaining authenticity. To help them gain their footing, Shopify Collabs offers a platform for them to find brands they would want to partner with. Likewise, marketers can partner with creators they feel reflect their brand, offering an additional method to drive sales as many struggle amid economic turmoil.

"For Shopify merchants, Collabs is a new way to find potential customers at a time when it's never been more difficult or expensive," said Amir Kabbara, director of product at Shopify, in the release. "By giving merchants the ability to discover and partner with creators that align with their brand, they can tap into the power of community-driven commerce to reach consumers in new and meaningful ways."

Creators and marketers can find each other by scrolling through the platform after making a Shopify Collab account. Once a partnership has been identified, creators can use Shopify’s Linkpop, its free link-in-bio tool, to curate a selection of products to highlight in their content. The new tool also offers features like unique links and discount codes for creators to share.

Because Collabs falls under the Shopify umbrella, merchants can continue track inventory, order and customer information in real-time across channels. The tool also manages the back-end payout to ensure both the creator and merchant get paid.

The unveiling of Collabs comes as Shopify looks to win-over merchants as rising costs and lower consumer spending draws business away from the platform, which has seen its stock drop amid plans for global layoffs. The first half of the year saw only 71,000 net merchants added, according to Reuters, compared with 680,000 at the peak of the pandemic and 314,000 last year. The addition also comes as Shopify looks to become a dominant force in the shoppable content and creator space, following recent partnerships with Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and TikTok.