Shopify

Here is an update from the Blog:

2023-03-14 ... Unaffected by Bank Failures
Shopify, the platform upon which this site rests, was, according to the news, one of the companies caught up in the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. According to Shopify, payouts to us will not be affected. So far, no problems. But also, I don't understand banking, let alone the details of the relationship between Shopify and SVB.

Our website accepts orders guaranteed by all the major credit cards, PayPal, and (a recent surprise to me!) ApplePay. When a customer orders a product from us, a PENDING charge is noted on the customer's account. But our website is set to accept payments individually, and only upon our explicit request. So when a customer places an order on WeatherWool.com, we are notified that funds are available, but the customer will not actually incur the charge until we box the order, at which point we accept that specific payment. If we've miscounted, or if an item fails final inspection, we don't accept the payment and there will be no debit from the customer's account.

The Lending Library relies on this procedure. When someone orders from the Library, but the item is already in possession of another customer (and this can be seen from the detail of each item in the Library), we let the new order sit. It we don't accept payment within a week or so (about 2 weeks with PayPal), the order expires and the customer never sees an actual charge.

There is 2-night "float" between when we accept a payment and when that payment is deposited in our account at Chase Bank. If there is any problem with us getting paid, we'll know pretty quickly. So unless Chase were to reverse previous payments into our accounts, any problems with SVB would affect only a couple of days worth of business ... I guess.

Anyway, so far, so good. And Shopify has specifically posted that our type of store is unaffected.

Shopify (link jumps to Shopify.com) is the e-commerce platform that hosts this website.

Shopify makes it remarkably easy for a little company to have a storefront on the world wide web.

Large companies will usually have a team of people dedicated to their web-store, but for us, that is not a possibility.

Although I am almost entirely responsible for the website now, it was Debby who did the initial setup on Shopify. She can do just about anything once she sets her mind to it, but she said getting the basic site going required no technical knowledge and she had the skeleton going within a day. Mostly all you need is the energy to read their tutorials and step through the set-ups.

Shopify is hugely important to us, and what they have achieved is remarkable. I guess the world agrees because their market-cap was over $100 Billion, but has dropped down to $38B as of September 2022. Still a huge number!

WeatherWool products are always pure-American, and so I wish Shopify was not a Canadian company. Because our website is not our product, I don't see using Shopify as a violation of our pure-USA philosophy. And maybe it's even a good thing, because I really love Canada and a couple of other countries, and have always felt a little bad about shutting them out.

One huge drawback, though, is support. If something goes wrong, working with Shopify, like many other large companies, can be a nightmare (like now ... see Blog of 6 September 2022).

Feel free to contact me if you want more thoughts on working with Shopify.

Thanks --- Ralph

14 March 2023 --- Ralph