Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein, joined TheStreet to discuss how the e-commerce company is approaching a potential U.S. recession. "We have traditionally done very well during recessionary periods, again because small businesses are created then and large companies look to move to really great innovative software where the total cost of ownership is reasonable and that's Shopify" says Finkelstein.
Full Video Transcript Below:
J.D. DURKIN: Let me start with the R word. How are you preparing for a possible recession? We see the guidance out here. You know as well as I do the conversations kind of being pushed away from 2023, but 2024 for a possible recession, albeit maybe a bit of a mild one, that's not off the table. And if it could be a situation where consumers very easily recognize a tightening of economic conditions, and I'd have to imagine there is some place, some plan from where you sit in case that happens. How much of that potential plan for a possible recession are you able to share?
HARLEY FINKELSTEIN: Yeah so for the long tail, sort of the small businesses or people that are aspirational entrepreneurs that have an idea in the shower in the morning that want to set something up and they want to do so at their mom's kitchen table or they're at their coffee shop, they tend to actually build businesses during recessions for a few reasons. One is if they lost their job, they want to replace their income. If they have less hours, they want to supplement their income. Entrepreneurship tends to be a really, really good thing to do in these recessionary periods. That's the first thing.
But when you look at the larger brands, again, going back to the Black Decker's of the world and the Ma's of the world and the Staples of the world, these are brands that we've seen come to Shopify. They also look to replace very expensive, dilapidated software with new modern software that's going to allow them to sell everywhere, anything at any time. Again, they come to Shopify for that. So we have traditionally I mean, we were around in 2008. We have traditionally done very well during recessionary periods, again, because small businesses are created then and large companies look to move to really great innovative software where the total cost of ownership is reasonable and that's Shopify.
