Estée Lauder Chooses Shopify: The Tech Gap Between Big and Small Brands Is Closing
It’s a universal truth of life. Nice things will cost you dearly. Everyone knows it and when you are working in fashion, beauty and the luxury industry in general, you will be reminded of it every day. Since the times of the Roman empire, luxury goods have emptied the coffers of those who love beautiful things and we still love all that is fashionable and beautiful. The technology used to sell these goods has become very affordable though.
Selling Luxury Is Less Expensive Now
When you read this article as an industry professional today, you are unlikely to steward a caravan of Chinese silk through the Taklamakan Desert along the silk road, but the deadly desert you have to cross is DTC ecommerce. In the same way that crossing a desert in ancient time was excruciating and expensive, ecommerce started out inaccessible and expensive for smaller brands. Only large companies could afford to pay IT specialists to build store software from scratch or customize proprietary software with licensing fees so high, you wish yourself back to the times when your spiritual ancestors risked their lives on the Silk Road.
Access to software has been democratized in the last decades. It has gotten cheaper and cheaper to run a professional DTC ecommerce experience. Shopify has played a huge role in it and chances are your brand relies on Shopify. Shopify and Shopify’s app ecosystem has become a force to be reckoned with and has evened the playing field for brands. Gone are the days when only large luxury brands had the budget to really offer a luxury ecommerce experience online.
Why Estée Lauder Chose Shopify
It might surprise you to hear that Estée Lauder has made a deal with Shopify to upgrade their ecommerce platforms and use Shopify starting in Q1 2026. So not only will you use the same ecommerce software as a $14B+ revenue conglomerate with billions in ecommerce sales, technically you are ahead of them, because you are already on Shopify. Jokes aside, of course, they have giant budgets and whole teams of specialists to take care of just single KPIs, but it is essentially true. You as a small brand use the same software and tools as large brands and Estée Lauder switching to Shopify is a new peak in this ongoing trend of platforms and tools becoming more accessible for emerging brands in fashion, beauty and luxury ecommerce in general. This deal between Shopify and Estée Lauder is a signal that the technology gap between big and small brands has never been smaller.
How Shopify's App Ecosystem Levels the Playing Field
Shopify’s history is fascinating. It started when its founder Tobias Lütke began this journey as an ecommerce entrepreneur selling snowboards online in 2004. He has two great loves in his life, programming and snowboarding. He soon discovered that access to off-the-shelf ecommerce platforms was extremely limited at the time, decided to focus on ecommerce software instead of selling snowboards online and then released Shopify in 2006. Shopify was built on the premise to make commerce better for everyone and was always built for entrepreneurs and growing brands. Today millions of merchants in 175 countries generate sales in the trillions of dollars on Shopify, but what makes Shopify especially successful is their app ecosystem built over the years.
Shopify’s app store is the real equalizer among brands. There are more than 8000 apps which you can use to customize your ecommerce store. It’s likely you already use apps such as a Klaviyo for your newsletter and email marketing, Recharge for subscriptions or Rebuy for upselling and cross selling. There are endless possibilities to customize your ecommerce DTC experience for your audience and optimize your marketing and conversion rate. What once cost millions of dollars in proprietary enterprise software licenses and IT consultancy fees is now accessible to small and emerging brands for hundreds of dollars a month. It’s understandable that you still feel these apps cost a lot of money and are a strain on your budget, but putting things in perspective, it’s an exceptionally good deal for you as a brand.
Small Beauty Brands Already Have an Advantage
I joked in this article that you as a small brand are ahead of Estée Lauder, because you are already on Shopify and they are only getting started with the platform. While they have a bigger budget, you as a small business and as a brand that is just starting out still have a few advantages. As someone who is just starting out, you don’t have expensive old legacy software to migrate. You are already in the Shopify ecosystem and this is the world you grew up in during your entrepreneurial journey. Today Estée Lauder competes with smaller more agile brands, big budgets are less important, because everyone has access to the same tools and the new competitive edge is creativity, storytelling and community. For example, a new indie skincare brand can launch with the same omnichannel, data-driven, AI-personalized experience as Estée Lauder. What was impossible before, is now doable for a fraction of the budget.
The New Competitive Advantage is Your Creativity
The new gap between small and large brands is not your budget or access to tools, but which tools and how to use the tools. Your strategy, execution and data literacy will decide your success as a brand. This gives small and up and coming brands a fighting chance.
Perhaps the most telling detail in the entire Estée Lauder Shopify adaptation story isn't the scale of the deal, but what the deal admits. One of the most powerful beauty conglomerates on the planet just signaled that world-class commerce infrastructure is no longer something you build behind closed doors and guard as a competitive secret. It's a shared foundation. And if the giants are finally moving onto the same platforms that indie brands have been building on for years, then the playing field has never been more level.
What To Do Next
The question now isn't about access, it's about intent. So if you're a brand founder, a marketer, or an entrepreneur in the luxury space, audit your tech stack and ask whether you're using all the tools in the Shopify ecosystem you need to get ahead. Chances are, you already have them at your fingertips or you're one app install away from being able to do what a big brand does. Luxury ecommerce is no longer about who can afford access to technology, but how to tell the best brand story and use the technology in the most creative way.
About The Author
Bastian Lauer is one of the founders of Mata Services. Mata is a company helping brands of all sizes build and maintain their ecommerce websites. We've worked with over 20 ecommerce brands, mostly in fashion, luxury, cosmetics, jewelry, and skincare. We helped our clients build and maintain websites which accumulate 10M visits, over $70M in total sales and half a million orders during a usual year.
