"‘Chinese Singles’ Day in the US’ crashes, American e-commerce giant Shopify’s stock plunges"

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On one of the most important online shopping days of the year, American e-commerce SaaS giant Shopify experienced a technical outage, causing transaction interruptions for some merchants and a sharp drop in its stock price, highlighting the vulnerability of e-commerce infrastructure during key moments in the retail industry.

On "Cyber Monday," Shopify experienced a service outage, with some merchants unable to log in to their point-of-sale (POS) systems and other platforms. The company acknowledged the issue on social platform X and stated its team was actively investigating and resolving the problem.

Affected by this news, Shopify's stock price plunged more than 6% during Monday trading, a far worse performance than the S&P 500 index, which fell only 0.5% over the same period. The outage coincided with the peak of the U.S. holiday shopping season. According to Adobe, U.S. online spending that day was expected to reach a record $14.2 billion.

This outage left merchants relying on the Shopify platform for online sales in difficulty. They were unable to properly monitor sales, track inventory, or provide customer service during peak traffic periods, directly affecting performance on this critical sales day.

System Outage Hits Critical Sales Day, Merchants in Trouble

Shopify's system status page showed the company was aware of issues affecting some stores, with merchants possibly experiencing difficulties logging into the Shopify admin, point-of-sale system, and mobile platforms. The company also stated its support channels were affected.

According to Downdetector, which tracks web service outages, around 11 a.m. ET, about 4,000 users reported problems with Shopify. By early afternoon, the number dropped to several hundred. Shopify updated Monday afternoon, saying it had identified and fixed an authentication issue and that admin and POS login problems were "showing signs of recovery." On platform X, many users claiming to be Shopify merchants posted screenshots of login error messages.

“We’re completely in trouble, especially on a day like today with such huge website traffic,” said Myriam Belzile-Maguire, co-founder of the Montreal shoe brand Maguire Shoes.

According to her, Shopify’s service went down around 9 a.m. and wasn’t restored until about 2:30 p.m. During this time, while customers could still place orders, her company couldn’t monitor sales, track inventory, or respond to customer inquiries about shipping.

Rising Dependence on E-Commerce Highlighted

This incident once again highlights the retail industry's heavy reliance on stable e-commerce infrastructure. As consumer shopping habits shift from offline to online, any technical failure can result in significant business losses.

According to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2024 online sales accounted for 16.1% of total U.S. retail sales, up from 15.3% in 2023. This proportion is much higher in popular gift categories such as consumer electronics and toys.

Sensormatic Solutions, which tracks consumer behavior, noted that compared to the same period last year, Black Friday in-store foot traffic declined by 2.1%.

Meanwhile, according to Adobe, online spending on the day after Thanksgiving rose 9.1% year-on-year to $11.8 billion. Just as technical problems at Amazon earlier this year caused network outages for millions of U.S. users, the increasing dependence on the internet means any outage could trigger a chain reaction.

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