Shopify Collab is a web based platform developed for the existing Shopify experience connecting first time merchants with creative entrepreneurs to help Shopify's ecosystem reach new demographics & sectors. This 24-hour Hackathon project entailed creating a solution through collaboration between UX design, Data Science and Web Development, with process involving research, ideation and development of a web based platform.

One of the main obstacles that prevent people from becoming an entrepreneur is that they don't have a standout idea or product they want to sell.

We've found in our research that "you can't build a business if you don't have a promising idea."

Running a business alone is difficult because employees are required for the efficiency of a business.

1. Lack of understanding on how to properly price your products.

2. Lack of knowledge on how to effectively market your product.

3. Unable to find standout ideas to sell.

Many creative entrepreneurs believe that if they just do a great job, work harder, and rely on word of mouth, they will be able to grow a profitable business. Nothing is further from the truth. Many creative entrepreneurs have been affected due to the pandemic and the transition from physical spaces to digital ones has been hard.

On the other hand, independent businesses owners who don’t necessarily know what to sell but know how to sell, don’t have a reliable platform to find the right clientele.

Typically a persona a fictitious character developed to represent the user we are building our product for. But in this case, we needed not 1 but 2 personas. Two sides of the same coin.

On one side, we have Angela, she is business professional with strong background in entrepreneurship but she isn't quite sure what her niche is. She wants to become a business partner but doesn't know what to sell. Although she has an interest in the arts, she finds it difficult to provide her services to the right creative businesses.

On the other side, we have Ashley, she is a creative entrepreneur who loves creating art but often finds it hard to to sell her work. She feels that her shy and introverted personality, makes her not so great at marketing her work. She wants to grow her business, reach new customers and make a living from selling her art but doesn't want to be involved the process of marketing, promoting and shipping her work.

We decided to focus on connecting new entrepreneurs to merchants familiar with business to establish a partnership so it's easier to bridge the gap of professionals that know how to sell but have no product vs new merchants with a viable product that don't know how to sell.

Shopify Collab is a digital web-based solution to partner professionals in business with new merchants.

With our solution we aim to provide a space where professionals in business without a product can work together with new merchants with a viable product to create a business partnership.

Our team built not only the Partnerships Landing Dashboard, but also the Business Venture and the Features Section for first time merchants and creative entrepreneurs to use. Though the teams were separate for UX and development, the work was done in a very collaborate manner. This created the entire ecosystem and by understanding the workflow between merchants and entrepreneurs, we were able to better inform our designs and its potential to Shopify.