WATERLOO — One of the country's hottest technology companies — Shopify Inc. — is set to lease space in the former Seagram Museum in Waterloo with plans to hire up to 300 employees.

"Shopify chose to expand its offices in Waterloo because of the amazing talent pool that is available in the region," the Ottawa-based company said in a statement released in advance of Thursday's announcement of the expansion plans.

The company said the space has room for 300 employees, but it said it can't provide a time frame when it comes to hiring.

Shopify provides an online sales platform for small and medium-sized companies and currently employs 780 people, mainly in Ottawa.

It employs about 30 people in an office in the Tannery building in downtown Kitchener. They will move into the new offices at Erb and Caroline streets in Waterloo when that space is ready next April.

The local Shopify workers are focused on Shopify Plus, the company's online sales platform for large retailers.

"That office is experiencing rapid growth, which is why the company is looking to expand in the region," the company said.

"We'll be hiring people who specialize in the fields of sales, engineering, design, account management, training/operations, sales engineering, human resources and culture," it said.

Shopify chief executive officer Tobias Lütke is visiting Waterloo on Thursday, with speaking engagements at the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and at an event to officially announce Shopify's expansion into the former Seagram Museum.

Shopify was founded in 2006, after Lutke set out to sell snowboards online and discovered that the software needed to set up an online store was complicated and expensive.

The company developed its own e-commerce platform. It says more than 175,000 businesses now use its platform; their online stores collectively have sales that total $10 billion, it says.

Shopify went public in May, raising $131 million in an offering of shares on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges. It sold 7.7 million shares at $17 each. The shares closed at $46.66 in Toronto on Wednesday. The company currently is valued at more than $2.7 billion.

The City of Waterloo sold the former Seagram Museum to the Centre for International Governance Innovation in 2002. The think tank, founded by former BlackBerry co-chief executive Jim Balsillie, moved into a new building next door in 2014. It has been searching for a tenant for the museum space since then.

The 40,000-square-foot former Seagram Museum is a stunning architectural testament to the city's industrial past. It contains a room with a 40-foot ceiling and a former warehouse where racks of heavy timbers once supported barrels of aging whisky.

The museum opened in 1984 in a renovated warehouse on the site of the original Joseph E. Seagram and Sons distillery founded in 1857. It closed in 1997.

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