E-commerce is a hot industry to invest in these days, and few stocks have garnered the attention in this sphere that Shopify (SHOP 5.54%) has. In this Backstage Pass segment, recorded on Sept. 20, 2021, Fool contributor Rachel Warren shares with fellow Fool contributor Brian Withers why she chose to include this unstoppable stock in her basket of buys as a first-time investor.
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Rachel Warren: I have to say Shopify was probably one of the easiest choices of all the stocks I picked for my first investment. E-commerce is an industry I write about a lot. I think it's one I'm really interested in. It's one I like, and it's one that I think has a really impressive long-term growth trajectory, which again, I think is a fun thing to remember for maybe members that are newer investors like myself.
Buy companies that you like and that you want to read about and that you want to research because you are going to need to want to keep up to date with everything that's happening with these companies. It's frankly more fun when it's a company you're interested in.
Shopify, I like the e-commerce business in general. I don't personally think brick-and-mortar retail's going totally away, but I do think more and more in the coming years we're going to be seeing it more and more replaced with these online shops. I love that Shopify is the platform that provides the back end and the interface that entrepreneurs use to build their store and connect with consumers.
It's like you've got so many of these established brands that are launching an online presence as well as new like smaller boutiques. Many of them wouldn't be able to do that without Shopify. I think you've got this company providing this invaluable service that's only going to grow. In the U.S. alone, the e-commerce market is supposed to hit a valuation of, I think just a little under $1 trillion this year, and that's just the U.S. market.
So when you consider that Shopify is one of the top platforms that's providing the tools that these companies are using to build their brands and it's available in all these different markets, you're buying into a company that's going to continue sustaining just really considerable growth. I mean, just in the most recent quarter, its overall revenue up 57 percent in 2020, revenue jumped 86 percent. These are incredible numbers, and I think it's got a long way to run.
Brian Withers: Awesome. I love how you pick companies and a mixture of companies that you're comfortable with, that you would be one, interested in following, and two, just comfortable holding through the ups and downs of the market over the next couple of years. That's fantastic. I absolutely love Shopify, too.
