Windsor, Ont. isn’t usually a name that comes to mind when thinking of technology hubs, but a new ecommerce platform has named the city as its global headquarters.
Shopivo Inc., a newly created ecommerce platform “for makers and retailers around the world” with a focus on entrepreneurs and small businesses, announced on Tuesday that its office will be located in Walkerville, Ont., just east of Windsor.
“Windsor is quickly becoming an innovation hub with a supportive and inspiring startup environment. Shopivo will benefit from the impressive talent thriving in the area as it prepares for the first stage of the platform launch, a free centralized ecommerce website builder,” stated the press release.
According to Shopivo’s Instagram page renovations have now begun at the new office space, located at 1785 Walker Rd, Windsor.
It will house around 25 employees and the ecommerce platform is currently looking to hire developers, designers and product managers to help with its official site launch, which is expected sometime in the new year according to the Windsor Star.
In conjunction with the headquarters announcement, Shopivo also launched the beta version of its platform, which touts the new company as “a free ecommerce platform designed to provide secure and transparent transactions for merchants and customers around the world.”
It calls its platform unique because it “creates an environment that encourages effective feedback and communication, responsible commerce, safe and secure value transfer.”
While it remains to be seen if Shopivo will see the worldwide success it hopes to achieve, it is interesting that it chose Windsor as its home base.
Head of product development for Shopivo, Jasper Sidhu explained the choice in the release, “our latest endeavours with Shopivo require a headquarters to support our rapid expansion. We’re excited to bring Shopivo to Windsor and look forward to tapping into the experienced pool of talent here.”
In recent years the Windsor community has been attempting to draw attention to the city as a valuable place for technology companies, as WETech Alliance, an organization attempting to build a regional tech community in the Windsor-Essex area, stated on its LinkedIn page, “[the area’s] emergence as a growing tech hub continues to gain momentum as a new ecommerce startup company will launch its headquarters on the edge of Walkerville,” (referring to Shopivo) .
And while we now know Canada is out of the running for the new Amazon HQ2, Windsor was originally involved in a joint bid with Detroit, Michigan attempting to entice the ecommerce giant to set up headquarters close to Windsor in order to take advantage of both the American and Canadian tech job market.