*By Carlo Versano* Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify is ready to reap some of the rewards of Canada's nascent legal pot industry, which came online Wednesday morning. Shopify ($SHOP) is powering many of the online stores that are sprouting up across the country to capture the new business. Loren Padelford, the company's vice president and general manager, spent Wednesday morning monitoring the cannabis transactions taking place on Canadian Shopify-powered sites and told Cheddar the demand was outpacing even his company's most bullish forecasts. Padelford said there had been 1 million visitors to Shopify sites in the first 12 hours of legalization, and 100,000 orders were placed by midday. He said the traffic and sales volumes are approaching a level Shopify usually sees on Black Friday. "We knew it would be big, but it's coming in a little hotter than even we expected." Still, in many ways, Shopify was well-suited for a day like Wednesday. The Ontario-based company was familiar with the laws and regulations that vary province to province. And it made its bones hosting and processing some of the biggest e-commerce "drops" in history, including Kylie Jenner's "lip kit" releases that built the celeb's cosmetics venture into an $800 million online juggernaut. "Our job is to support retailers of all sizes," said Padelford, though small businesses are "our bread and butter." He called the cannabis market a natural extension of Shopify's core business: helping entrepreneurs connect and engage with their customer base. Shopify will change along with developments in the newborn industry, Padelford said. More stores will come online in the weeks and months ahead and provincial laws will surely evolve, too. "Legalization is a day, but it's also a process," Padelford said. "It's only going to get bigger from here." For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/shopify-says-day-1-demand-for-cannabis-in-canada-outpacing-estimates).

Share:
More In Business
Is U.S. Restaurants’ Breakfast Boom Contributing to High Egg Prices?
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
Trump Administration Shutters Consumer Protection Agency
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Load More