A Pat Lefrida O's, New York City Icon

It's easy to talk about retail doom and gloom, given a nearly year-long shutdown for brick-and-mortar stores and bankruptcy filings by many big name retailers. But Shopify president Harley Finkelstein is bullish on the sector's resilience and potential -- especially in e-commerce, which has grown by double digits in 2020 (even retail sales generally were up 6.6% in the January to November period this year, if you exclude gas, car and food services).

"In many ways Shopify is a proxy for independent retail," Finkelstein said on the Modern Retail Podcast, adding that the four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday this year generated $5 billion in sales on the platform. "And so what that tells me is consumers have completely shifted their buying preferences towards buying more from independent retailers and buying things from brands whose values reflect their own," he said.

Shopify allows users to set up their own e-commerce websites. Last year, according to the Canadian company, it surpassed eBay as the second-biggest online retailer in the United States (behind Amazon, obviously).

"Our philosophy is to create more value for the partners we capture for ourselves that keeps growing," Finkelstein said.