Ottawa-based Shopify Inc. says it has terminated a ‘very small, single-digit number of salespeople’ over misleading sales figures.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Shopify SHOP-T said it fired a number of employees who had inflated sales figures, an internal scandal which coincided with certain leadership departures.
The e-commerce company said in a statement that last summer, a “very small, single-digit number of salespeople misrepresented the scope of products they had sold.”
“We immediately investigated, fired them, and strengthened our systems. This had no impact on our financials and the issue is closed,” said Shopify spokesperson Ben McConaghy in a statement.
The Logic reported on the sales fraud Monday, saying it lasted more than a year and sparked an internal investigation.
The fraud took hold amid new, aggressive sales targets for Shopify’s employees and an internal commission-tracking system that allowed employees to inflate expected account revenue without proper oversight, the Logic reported.
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Shopify did not respond to a question about whether the fraud stemmed from aggressive sales expectations and culture.
The company saw some high-level departures in the last few months.
In early October, chief revenue officer Bobby Morrison announced his departure on LinkedIn. According to the Logic, Mr. Morrison was responsible for the sales team and for changes to the company’s commission structure.
Mr. Morrison’s departure followed chief operating officer Kaz Nejatian’s exit in mid-September. The company appointed general counsel Jess Hertz to fill the COO role.
