Commerce Components by Shopify

NRF 2023, New York

I supported the PMM and program side of Shopify's enterprise GTM launch. This ran from September 2022 through the January 3, 2023 launch and NRF activation.

This was Shopify's biggest strategic bet in years: launching Commerce Components by Shopify (CCS), a composable, API-first commerce platform for enterprise-scale brands. Quick context: Shopify Plus is the premium tier for high-growth brands. CCS was the new enterprise tier for the very largest merchants. The whole thing needed to land perfectly at NRF (the National Retail Federation's annual conference), which is retail's biggest industry event.

What I did

The program covered 10+ workstreams across creative, content, pricing, enablement, growth, and launch events. It needed alignment from CEO Tobi Lutke all the way down, and the timeline was aggressive: months of work compressed into weeks.

Enterprise buyer personas: I reviewed call recordings with prospective enterprise merchants and turned what I learned into Enterprise Buyer Personas that became the foundation for positioning and messaging.

Positioning and messaging: I developed the Buyer Persona and Positioning & Messaging templates for both the Plus team and the CCS team, creating consistency across two product lines that needed to feel connected but distinct.

NRF event support: I managed internal communications across Marketing, PMM, Sales, Field Marketing, and Partnerships during the conference, making sure nothing fell through the cracks between field teams, exec teams, and workstream leads.

Retrospectives: I owned the NRF and CCS Launch retros. I pulled all the feedback together into forward-facing learnings that got folded into Shoptalk 2023 planning almost immediately.

Knowledge management: I created and maintained internal wiki pages and knowledge base articles so teams across the org could find what they needed without asking five people.

The scale

  • 10+ workstreams
  • 114 team members in the core channel
  • 500+ deliverables tracked
  • 265 line items in the launch sequence alone

Launch day ran minute-by-minute on January 3rd: CCS pages pushed to production at 7:00pm EST the night before, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein's lead LinkedIn post at 9:00am, Wall Street Journal placement, taxi tops, JFK billboards, and NRF booth activation.