Articles · Platform & Pricing
The 20 biggest brands on Shopify
Published
Most lists like this run to fifty or sixty names and nobody reads past the first screen. This one stops at twenty, and every entry says what that brand actually demonstrates about the platform rather than just asserting it is large.
How this list works
Two rules. Every brand here is publicly associated with Shopify, compiled in August 2026 from published reporting and the brands' own storefronts. And no entry carries a revenue or valuation figure, because those are the part of a list like this that goes stale first, and a number quoted from a competitor's article a year after it was written is somebody else's mistake reprinted as ours.
The split is deliberate: nine American brands, nine British, and two European, because the UK and the US are equally our markets and because the two behave differently enough to be worth comparing. Plenty of lists of the top stores on shopify are US-only, which is not much use if you are benchmarking against UK shopify stores, so this one covers both properly.
The twenty
01 Gymshark
The reference case for scaling from a bedroom operation to a global brand without leaving the platform it started on. Proof that the ceiling people assume exists is higher than they think.
02 Huel
Subscription at genuine scale across multiple markets. The interesting part is not the product, it is that recurring billing and international selling run on the same store rather than a separate system.
03 SKIMS
Drop mechanics under extreme load. Launches that would flatten a self-hosted stack are a scheduling decision here rather than an infrastructure project.
04 Fashion Nova
Catalogue velocity. Very high SKU turnover with constant merchandising changes, which is a different kind of hard from a single big launch.
05 Allbirds
A direct-to-consumer brand that went public while still selling on the same platform, which quietly answers the question of whether Shopify survives investor scrutiny.
06 Kylie Cosmetics
Traffic spikes driven by an audience rather than a campaign calendar. The store has to absorb attention it did not schedule.
07 Represent
Limited drops with international demand, run from Manchester. A reminder that the UK streetwear scene mostly runs on this platform.
08 Oh Polly
Social-led selling where the storefront is the endpoint of a content operation rather than a destination people browse.
09 Chilly's
A single-product-line brand that grew into a range. The catalogue architecture problem here is different from fashion and easy to get wrong early.
10 Astrid & Miyu
Online and physical retail on one system, including in-store services. The closest thing on this list to the problem a growing UK brand with shops actually faces.
11 Crocs
A legacy brand that moved to Shopify rather than starting on it, which is the harder direction and the one most established businesses are actually considering.
12 Sephora
Regional storefronts run separately rather than one global site, a pattern worth understanding before committing to a single multi-market build.
13 Heinz
A manufacturer selling direct for the first time, which is a category problem rather than a technical one: existing retail relationships have to survive it.
14 Penguin Books
Deep catalogue, low average order value, and a customer who arrives knowing exactly what they want. Search and navigation do most of the work.
15 Red Bull
Merchandise as a brand channel rather than a revenue line. The store exists to serve an audience the marketing already built.
16 Mattel
Multiple sub-brands under one corporate parent, each needing its own identity. A structural question most large groups eventually hit.
17 Hasbro Pulse
Pre-orders and limited runs, which are genuinely awkward commerce mechanics and a good test of what a platform will let you build.
18 Emma Bridgewater
A heritage British brand where the photography carries the sale. The build has to get out of the way of the product.
19 Schuh
A multi-brand retailer rather than an own-brand, so the catalogue is somebody else’s and the differentiation has to come from the experience.
20 Bombas
A one-for-one giving model built into the buying flow, showing that commercial mechanics unusual to the platform are still workable on it.
What the list actually tells you
Three patterns, and they are more useful than the names. First, almost every brand here runs Shopify Plus rather than a standard plan, because checkout customisation, higher API limits and multi-market selling are where the ceiling actually sits. If you are weighing that step, the Shopify vs Shopify Plus comparison is the honest version of that decision.
Second, the hard problems are not the same problem. Drop load (SKIMS, Represent) is an infrastructure question. Catalogue velocity (Fashion Nova) is a merchandising and data question. Selling in many markets at once (Huel, Sephora) is an internationalisation question about pricing, tax and domain structure. A platform that handles one well does not automatically handle the others, and neither does an agency.
Third, several of these arrived by migration rather than starting here. Crocs and Heinz are the interesting entries for that reason: moving an established business onto Shopify is a different project from growing on it, and the risk sits almost entirely in the search and redirect work rather than in the build.
The US and the UK, which behave differently
The American entries skew toward scale and spectacle: SKIMS, Fashion Nova and Kylie Cosmetics are all, in different ways, brands whose store has to absorb demand created somewhere else, by a launch, an audience or a campaign. The platform question there is load and checkout control, which is why they sit on Shopify Plus almost without exception. Crocs, Heinz and Mattel are the other American pattern: established businesses that migrated onto Shopify rather than growing up on it.
The British entries are mostly a single generation. Reporting puts the UK ahead of any other European market for Shopify Plus brands, and the reason is timing rather than technology: the direct-to-consumer wave from around 2012 built businesses that were online-first, had no legacy retail systems to migrate away from, and never left the platform they launched on as they outgrew it. Gymshark is the obvious case, with Huel, Represent, Oh Polly and Astrid & Miyu the same story in different categories. It is why the largest shopify shops uk buyers will actually recognise are mostly younger brands than their American equivalents.
That difference shows up in what each market's stores are good at, and it is why both skew toward activewear, food and drink and subscription models rather than the general retail you might expect. We work across the US and the UK for exactly this reason: the two markets ask the same platform for different things.
What it does not tell you
Whether Shopify is right for you. A brand this size proves the platform can carry the volume, which was a real question a decade ago and is not one now. It says nothing about whether it fits your catalogue, your integrations, or the team who has to run it after launch.
It also does not tell you how well any of these stores are actually built. Being large and being well-executed are different things, and several of the sites behind these names would not pass the performance standard we hold our own work to.
Where we sit, honestly
This is a list of the platform's largest names, not a client list. What we do is the same class of work at a smaller scale: we run our own two brands on the platform alongside client stores, which means the platform decisions we recommend have already been made with our own money first. If you want to see what we have actually shipped rather than who else uses Shopify, that is the more useful page.
Common questions
- Who uses Shopify, realistically?
- Far more large brands than the "small business platform" reputation suggests. The shops on shopify today run from fitness apparel and beauty to toy manufacturers, publishers and drinks companies, and include household names selling in dozens of markets. What they share is not size or sector, it is that they wanted to control the storefront and the checkout without also maintaining the infrastructure underneath.
- Are the biggest Shopify stores on Plus or standard Shopify?
- Almost all of the names below run Shopify Plus, which is where checkout customisation, higher API limits, native B2B and multi-market selling live. That is the honest answer, but it is not an argument for buying Plus early: the plan earns its cost at a scale most stores have not reached, and moving up before then buys features you will not use.
- How do you know which brands are on Shopify?
- Platform association is usually visible in a storefront’s markup and is widely reported, which is how every list like this is compiled, including ours. What none of these lists can tell you reliably is current revenue, and brands do replatform. Treat this as a snapshot from August 2026 rather than a permanent record.
- Do American and British Shopify brands differ?
- In shape, yes. The American names here skew toward absorbing demand created elsewhere, by a launch, an audience or a campaign, so the platform question is load and checkout control. The British ones are mostly one direct-to-consumer generation that started online around 2012, never had legacy retail systems to migrate away from, and outgrew enterprise scale without leaving the platform. Reporting does put the UK ahead of any other European market for Shopify Plus concentration, but the US has both the larger brands and more of the migrations.
- Does a big brand using Shopify mean it is right for us?
- Not on its own, and it is the weakest reason to choose a platform. Gymshark being on Shopify tells you the platform can carry that volume; it tells you nothing about whether it fits your catalogue, your integrations or your team. The useful version of this list is the patterns underneath it, which is what the section after the list is for.
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