Shopify has launched a studio to produce content that celebrates entrepreneurship—the lifeblood of the Canadian e-commerce platform used by more than 600,000 businesses around the world.
The news was announced in a release Wednesday, but Studios has been active for a few months, producing a number of profiles of entrepreneurs. It is being run by Jason Badal, who joined Shopify from Rogers Media last summer; production deals are also in place with three international production partners: Anonymous Content, Spoke Studios (part of Brent Montgomery’s Wheelhouse Entertainment), and Saville Productions, the award-winning company behind Werner Herzog’s Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected World and From One Second to the Next.
Shopify declined a request for an interview, but said in a statement that content will range from short-form videos and podcasts to docu-series and feature length documentaries for streaming and traditional platforms.
“Studio Films,” for example, will be 20 to 30-minute stories about “an inspired individual who has taken the leap into entrepreneurship, overcoming adversity.” The “Nowhere Else” docu-series, meanwhile, “examines the relationship between where individuals live and what they choose to create.”
“The entrepreneurial mindset has fuelled discoveries, built industries, and led to every significant innovation that’s shaped our society,” said Badel in the statement. “We believe that spirit is inherent and present among us all, whether we realize it or not, and Shopify Studios’ content aims to inspire the next wave of creators and iconoclasts to embrace and manifest the possibilities before them.”
Launching Jan. 30, the “Vanguard by Shopify Studios” will be a weekly podcast exploring “secret economies at the vanguard of culture.”