Shopify just became the biggest company to launch a Substack newsletter

Shopify’s entrance is the latest sign that brands, including large, publicly traded companies, are taking Substack seriously as a marketing channel. As Modern Retail previously reported, brands of all sizes, particularly companies in the fashion and beauty space, have flocked to Substack in the past year. Since 2022, the number of publications and subscriptions in the fashion and beauty category has more than doubled year-over-year, according to Substack.

But while many brands have been enthusiastic about launching a Substack, it has been proven more challenging for them to sustain momentum. The RealReal, for instance, went nearly three months without posting new content between June and September before resuming in the fall. American Eagle took a similar hiatus over the summer, prompting speculation about whether the brand was abandoning the platform altogether. American Eagle resumed posting in late September after it tapped Tariro Makoni, author of the Substack “Trademarked” to take over from “After School” writer Casey Lewis.

For Shopify, the move is about joining the online conversations around entrepreneurship that have increasingly migrated to Substack. But the question remains whether Shopify’s sheer size and name recognition will be enough to stand out in an increasingly crowded space.

“Some of our Shopify partners were already [on Substack], and we were like, ‘Wow, these entrepreneurship conversations are happening in this space and we’re not part of it,'” said Dayna Winter, Shopify’s newsroom lead, who spearheaded the “In Stock” project. “If we’re an entrepreneurship company, we should be there.”

More ‘unbuttoned’

The newsletter is intended to feel more “unbuttoned” than the company’s other communication channels, Winter said, while also complementing Shopify’s existing newsroom, which primarily publishes corporate news. With “In Stock,” the idea is to tap into Substack’s burgeoning popularity through recurring features like “Decoded,” a new-to-Substack series about the real-life strategies powering the businesses of various Shopify merchants. Other posts include Q&As with brand founders and even first-person essays from entrepreneurs.

The Substack effort builds on Shopify’s long-running investment in storytelling. Beyond its newsroom, the company has a robust content strategy that includes the Shopify Blog — a hub for guides, tutorials and merchant spotlight — as well as official podcasts. Shopify also publishes an engineering blog focused on developer insights and a resource library for small businesses. Put together, the various arms of Shopify’s content strategy work together to “drive towards the same mission of pushing entrepreneurship and making entrepreneurship more common,” Winter said.

In the future, Shopify also plans to use its own commerce data to shape what it publishes on Substack. Winter said the team is developing ways to surface insights from Shopify’s massive merchant base and turn them into stories readers can act on. One early example is “Viralify,” a recurring data-driven series that spotlights trending products across Shopify stores in real time. “Because we power millions of merchants, we obviously have so much data and we’re able to see product trends emerge as they’re happening,” Winter said. That data can inspire merchants who can act on those trends, as well as consumers, who can discover independent brands, Winter added.

The newsletter, published twice a week, is free to subscribe to. That said, Shopify is exploring partnerships with Substack creators in the entrepreneurship space. This could include co-written pieces or guest contributions from independent writers and founders, rather than traditional brand sponsorships.

Indeed, it’s clear from the newsletter’s early installments that brands are the target audience. But Winter also said the newsletter aims to appeal to a large audience or “anyone in the orbit of an entrepreneur.”

Notably, Shopify opted for individual author bylines rather than anonymous or generalized posts, making the content of “In Stock” feel more like a magazine than Shopify’s corporate newsroom. “In Stock” is authored by a four-person team, consisting of Winter herself and other members of Shopify’s communications division. Future posts will spotlight internal subject-matter experts from various departments at Shopify, including VPs, with specialized knowledge of a range of retail topics, from product development to artificial intelligence.

Although Shopify has a steady pipeline of stories in the works, Winter said the company’s Substack strategy will change over time based on audience feedback. Shopify plans to use Substack’s interactive features, including Notes, comments and polls, to learn what readers want to see more of and to experiment with new formats. “We’re seeing how people are specifically reacting and commenting on stories,” Winter said. “That will give us more granular feedback about what’s actually resonating, who’s sharing what and what they are saying about it.”

‘A bit of a playground’

Shopify is part of a growing wave of brands experimenting with the platform as a long-form, editorial alternative to increasingly saturated social platforms. For brands, a Substack newsletter is less about driving sales and more about offering readers a window into the brand’s world.

Major brands are also increasingly experimenting with Substack through sponsored posts. Just last week, Walmart sponsored a post on Emily Sundberg’s popular “Feed Me” newsletter. That likely makes the retail giant the largest consumer brand — if not the largest company ever — to advertise on the platform. Other brands that have sponsored Substack posts include Hinge, Free People and Cava.

“This long-form, in-depth storytelling that Substack enables is a huge differentiator. It’s where brands can delve deeper into unpacking their values and provide audiences with something beyond the curated surface of social media,” Christina Loff, Substack’s head of lifestyle, told Modern Retail in an email statement. “Strategic brands recognize Substack not as a promotional tool, but as a platform to cultivate trust and genuine relationships through authenticity.”

As more brands join Substack, even large companies like Shopify will need to figure out how to stand out from the crowd. That could prove to be challenging, according to Lia Haberman, author of the “ICYMI” marketing newsletter.

Shopify “would have been better served launching a LinkedIn newsletter where they could have appealed to a B2B crowd with their case studies and founder stories,” Haberman said. In contrast, the Substack audience “typically looks for a more intimate relationship with the writers they allow in their inboxes.”

Maintaining a regular posting cadence will be key to attracting and retaining subscribers. Substack’s own data team recommends publishing one post a week, according to On Substack, a publication from the newsletter company that shares tips and resources for writers on the platform. Substack’s Loff flagged Rare Beauty, Madewell and Design School as “excellent examples” of brands “that maintain a consistent posting schedule.”

For Shopify, “In Stock” is “a bit of a playground” for experimentation,” Winter said. “There’s no real model of what success looks like for brands of our size in this space.”