Market America Worldwide announced it has completed a sale of the SHOP.COM domain name to Shopify. The company’s brands, products, technology and UnFranchise Business will now be consolidated under one reimagined MarketAmerica.com. The new site is built on Shopify and marks what it calls a “significant milestone in the company’s digital evolution and the beginning of a new chapter.”
“This is not the end of SHOP.COM,” said Loren Ridinger, Market America Worldwide Co-Founder and CEO. “It is the beginning of the next era of Market America. We built something extraordinary with SHOP.COM, and I am incredibly proud of what it became. But our greatest opportunity is ahead of us. Market America is our name. It is our legacy. It is the company we built more than three decades ago, and now we are bringing our products, our people, our technology and our entrepreneurial community together under that name.”
The company acquired SHOP.COM in 2011 and developed the domain to serve its customer base and UnFranchise Owners. The site became an important component of the company’s evolution into a brand that embraced social and digital commerce.
This new, reimagined MarketAmerica.com features a faster, modernized and mobile-first shopping experience that streamlines the checkout process and enhances its search and navigation capabilities. Atlas, the company’s AI-powered shopping assistant, is also built in to provide guidance for customers seeking to discover new products and navigate the company’s existing portfolio. With this new digital footprint, the company expects to create a clearer connection between products, customers and the entrepreneurial business behind the brand.
“For 34 years, we have been Market America,” said Marc Ashley, Market America Worldwide President. “SHOP.COM became an important part of our evolution, but Market America has always been the company behind our products, brands and UnFranchise Business. Today we are bringing those pieces together into one stronger ecosystem. One company. One identity. One destination. And a much stronger foundation for the future.”
Since its launch in 1992, Market America has continued to innovate, growing from a strictly relationship marketing company to a direct-to-consumer retail brand, before transforming to e-commerce, social shopping and now AI-enabled commerce. The company stated this latest progression will serve as the foundation for its next stage of growth.
“Thirty-four years ago, we started Market America with a belief that ordinary people, given the right products, system and opportunity, could create extraordinary lives,” Ridinger said. “Technology has changed. Shopping has changed. The world has changed. But that belief has never changed. Now we have the opportunity to combine what has always made Market America special — our people and our products — with technology that simply wasn’t possible when we started. That is what makes this moment so exciting.”
