What: Shopify unleashed a slew of features and updates for its merchants, in a blitz of platform enhancements it is calling Shopify Editions.

Why it is important: Despite the whip-fast development cycle, the changes represent a significant expansion of the Shopify platform, with business-to-business services, NFT support, more integrations with major tech platforms and access to custom back-end code for tailored commerce experiences.

Connect-to-consumer, c-to-c, is next. It describes this new era of commerce as an evolution of direct-to-consumer, where merchants have full control to create personalized and meaningful experiences everywhere, whether online or in stores.

A crucial part of the effort is embedding b-to-b into the heart of the platform. The change allows merchants to sell wholesale to other businesses using the same system they use for retail sales, with no need to wrangle a distinct matrix of complex details across multiple spreadsheets or databases.

Outwardly, the online store experience is similar to the consumer version, but optimized for buyers buying in bulk. Shopify pointed to payment flexibility at checkout as an example. Merchants can set customer-specific prices at fixed rates or as a universal discount on retail prices.

A new era apparently calls for new technologies as well, so the company is also launching support for NFTs in the form of so-called “Tokengated Commerce.”

Tokengated Commerce allows merchants to give NFT owners exclusive access to products, benefits and experiences. Once customers connect their crypto wallets to a Shopify e-commerce store, their NFTs become their access passes to the perks — whether online via computers and phones or in physical stores, if equipped with a supporting POS system.

Other changes bring new integrations with major technology platforms, including a Twitter sales channel, an iPhone tap-to-pay feature and local inventory integration with Google.

Other changes span dozens of new or upgraded tools for marketing, cross-border commerce and more, including selling plans for features like try-before-you-buy and preorders.

Merchants have to contend with new forms of digital retail, in addition to the traditional challenges of the business. But if Shopify Editions and this c-to-c strategy must go into more complicated territory as a result…well, that’s prime territory for its annual Shopify Unite developer conference to explore.

Shopify unveils new features