Shopify to expand in Waterloo, no fear of Amazon, VP says

Shopify is expanding into a second building in Waterloo and plans to add between 300 and 500 jobs in the next two to three years, the company says.

Shopify announced the expansion Thursday morning. The new jobs will be in the Shopify Plus section of the company, which focuses on larger companies, and will include engineers, sales and merchant services.

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"We're expanding in [Waterloo] region and the corridor because it is an amazing talent pool," Shopify Plus vice-president and general manager Loren Padelford told CBC K-W's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris, referencing the unofficial tech corridor between Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto.

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"This is a great community for tech talent and for sales talent and for account management talent and basically all the talent," he said.

"We are global, we could have chosen to expand anywhere, but we really felt like this region was great and we wanted to continue our support and development of Kitchener-Waterloo and the corridor."

No fear of Amazon

Local officials have partnered with Toronto to court online retail giant Amazon, which is currently scouting locations for itssecond headquarters.

Padelford said he has no problem with the potential arrival of Amazon in the region from an employer standpoint.

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"I kind of welcome Amazon coming into Canada because in some sense it validates the Canadian tech market a little bit more," he said.

"I'm also really excited to take all of their employees from them. There's an aspect of, if they show up, they'll bring people that will be talented and I'd love to recruit all of them."

But he added a big player like Amazon moving into Canada won't add new jobs, but will insteadredistribute existing jobs.

"I don't think it's quite the net positive people are making it out to be," he said.

City gushes talent

The expansion which will see Shopify take over 85 Willis Way isgood news for the city, Waterloo Mayor Dave Jaworsky said.

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"It's my music to my ears," Jaworsky said, adding it's proof the city's uptown urban employment strategy is working.

The strategy is to have peopleto live, work and play in the city's core, keeping businesses in the area vibrant.

"As Canada's education city, we're gushing 10,000 new graduates, top talent, each and every year and Shopify initially came to Waterloo region for our business school talent and then ended up realizing there's so much tech talent here, that they started their amazing growth."