YouTube, Shopify Partner to Offer Creators Livestream Shopping Option

Creators and merchants on the Shopify e-commerce platform can now feature their products across their YouTube channels, thanks to a new partnership between the two businesses. The new collaboration allows creators to link their Shopify stores to their YouTube channel, offer livestream shopping, and enable viewers to purchase their products without leaving YouTube. Shopify users can get started by visiting the "Shopping" tab in their YouTube Studio.

In a press release Tuesday, Shopify said merchants would reach over 2 billion monthly logged-in users on YouTube through this partnership.

Total Retail's Take: Shopify is used by millions of merchants across 175 countries who will now have another way to sell their products, provided they have a YouTube channel. That, combined with the millions of people who go on YouTube every day, means more eyeballs than ever on businesses that have a Shopify account. As Shopify's Vice President of Merchant Services Kaz Nejatian told Fast Company, "Hopefully what we’re doing is creating a new venue for entrepreneurship in a way that didn’t exist before.”

Google, which owns YouTube, has been expanding access to shopping features for some time now. It has streamed live events like Coachella and Brazil's Paulistão soccer tournament and made them shoppable for viewers, Variety reports. With this latest update, the company is also introducing a new shopping destination in "Explore" for viewers in the United States, India and Brazil, which features relevant shoppable content. It plans to expand this feature into other countries later this year.