Dentsu Canada has helped establish a network-level certified partnership agreement with Shopify to stay ahead of a rapidly transforming ecommerce space.

The partnership is the latest effort Dentsu has made to become a leader in guiding clients through the changing ecommerce space. Last year, Dentsu announced the launch of a new offering focused on ecommerce, bringing it to Canada a few months later.

Through the new deal, which has been in the making for over year, roughly 25 to 30 staff will qualify as certified Shopify platform experts. It will also work more closely with the company, ensuring efforts are optimized along the entire development process.

Simren Deogun, SVP of solutions for Dentsu Americas, tells strategy the agency has had a more informal relationship with Shopify for the last three years or so, and the shift to DTC and nature of where the agency sees the market going made a formalized agreement make sense.

“That collaboration happens all the way from the beginning from account planning, through to design around creative, and UX and of course how we optimize delivery and performance of the store over time,” Deogun says. “We are more jointly connected at the hip with this partnership in place.”

Deogun says while there’s constant talk about the death and resurgence of the retail store, for Dentsu, it’s about connecting touchpoints for the consumer, and that there needs to be stronger connections between offline and online. Shopify is one way to do that – Deogun says the platform offers flexibility, speed to market and the ability to connect across offline and online channels like social media email marketing, applicable to both SMBs and larger entities looking to launch something not as “cumbersome”.

“In terms of size of client, I think Shopify has really made its name within DTC in small-to-medium enterprise, but the whole crux of its Shopify+ program is to better service and expand its offering from an enterprise brand perspective, and that’s where this partnership hits its sweet spot,” says Deugun.

The Shopify agreement adds to the shop’s longstanding enterprise partnerships with the likes of Salesforce, Adobe and Magenta.