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Pixel Union
Shopify themes and apps, built since 2009.
Based in Victoria, BC.
Key facts
- Joined Tiny
- 2019held 7 years
- Founded by
- Andrew Wilkinson
- Based in
- Victoria, BC
- Website
- pixelunion.net
About Pixel Union
Pixel Union began in 2009 as a side project inside Metalab, Andrew Wilkinson's design studio in Victoria, British Columbia, and quickly spun out into its own Shopify-focused studio building themes and, later, apps for the platform. It has been a fixture of the Shopify ecosystem for so long that, in Shopify years, it's effectively ancient — Pixel Union themes were among the templates merchants reached for when Shopify itself was still a scrappy startup.
Hundreds of thousands of merchants have chosen Pixel Union themes over the years, drawn by the studio's focus on conversion-oriented design rather than decorative flourish. The team figured out early that e-commerce design is about getting people to the checkout, not about winning awards.
Andrew sold Pixel Union in 2014. Watching new owners change what had made it work became one of the formative lessons behind Tiny's buy-and-hold philosophy — so in 2019 he bought the company back for nearly four times the sale price and made it the founding business of the WeCommerce operating group. Pixel Union continues to ship themes and apps from Victoria.
Why Pixel Union fits Tiny
Pixel Union is the original WeCommerce business — the re-acquisition that anchored Tiny's bet on consolidating high-quality Shopify-ecosystem companies under one operating group. The model has held up: stable customer base, recurring revenue, and a deep moat built from being one of the longest-running studios in the ecosystem.
Tiny's role is long-term ownership and operational support. The team in Victoria continues to do what it has been doing since 2009 — building themes and apps that Shopify merchants actually use.