Guest post: The many promises of unified commerce and challenges that remain

When Shopify laid off 10% of its employees in July 2022, CEO Tobi Lutke emphasised the continued dominance of offline as a channel: “We bet that the channel mix—the share of dollars that travel through ecommerce rather than physical retail—would permanently leap ahead by five or even 10 years…It’s now clear that the bet didn’t pay off. What we see now is the mix reverting to roughly where pre-COVID data would have suggested it should be at this point.”