*By Carlo Versano*
Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce and point-of-sale software company that built a small empire helping small businesses go online, is now expanding in downtown Los Angeles with its first brick-and-mortar space.
The space is less "store" and more "community space for entrepreneurs," said Shopify ($SHOP) product boss Satish Kanwar.
"Our goal is to make entrepreneurship more accessible," he said Thursday in an interview on Cheddar.
The space will be open seven days a week and feature workshops and classes with Shopify experts; host lessons on merchandising, marketing, and photography; and facilitate one-on-one appointments that merchants can book, à la Apple's ($AAPL) Genius Bar.
Downtown L.A. was the obvious location for planting the first brick-and-mortar flag in the ground, Kanwar said ー given how many Shopify merchants are from the Los Angeles area (10,000, by his count, and over 600,000 worldwide).
But the concept can be tailored to any area with a healthy population of small business and start-ups.
"Entrepreneurship can be difficult and hard at times," Kanwar said.
Shopify wants to provide a service for existing customers and attract a pool of new ones ー some of whom may not even know the service exists but may see the space and think about that business they've always wanted to start.
Of course, it's also indicative of a move into physical retail "experiences" for brands that were once synonymous with e-commerce operations. Sure enough, Kanwar used the "experience" buzzword to describe how he sees people interacting with the Shopify space. By having a retail footprint that isn't purely transactional, people can "learn about what you stand for," he said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/a-look-at-the-future-of-retail-with-shopifys-satish-kanwar).
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