Shopify and the Power of Platforms
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Shopify and the Power of Platforms
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Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#2> Shopify is giving merchants an opportunity to differentiate themselves while bearing no risk if they fail.
In addition to this being a great position for Shopify, this is an amazing thing for merchants compared to Amazon's offering; it's the critical difference between "We'll sell your stuff" and "We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies.
Semi-related: For a really insightful conversation about Shopify, personal interactions, and running a good company, I highly recommended The Knowledge Project's interview with the company's CEO, Tobi Lütke: https://fs.blog/tobi-lutke/
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#3As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own.
This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet).
Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other Shopify merchants (not Amazon).
How do you differentiate, when the Shopify platform makes the same set of selling advantages available to everyone?
You leave Shopify ...
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#4Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento. WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify.
In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps" listed in their app store: https://apps.shopify.com/browse/all?pricing=all&requirements...
WooCommerce has 285 plugins, and WordPress has 54,000+ plugins. Magento has ~5000 plugins.
It would be cool if Stratechery took a look at free/open source on the platform/aggregator spectrum.
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#5It's easy to think platforms are difficult to build. With some of the "platform infrastructure" mentioned, it's very possible to assemble a large majority of a new platform out of large chunks rather than building from scratch. One of the infrastructure components of Shopify missed in the article is Stripe. Stripe makes it possible for them to scale to serve clients in many countries and offer an e-commerce capability. Then there is AWS. I think the article misses some of the depth of platform building capabilities that are out there and available for use.
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#6It's an interesting article, but the most interesting part to me was the Bill Gates Line article the author also wrote. [0]
The distinction between a platform and an aggregator was not one that I ever considered. I'm convinced by this article that it's a useful one.
Does anyone know why it is that Shopify's stock has risen by 100% over the last year? I looked it over and couldn't figure out why -- is it the 3PL Fulfillment Network this article mentions?
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#7Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento. WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify. In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps"…
I don't think "number of plugins" is a good comparison metric here.
The Shopify app store is regulated + tested by Shopify before getting the approval to go live.
WordPress plugins are the wild west, many of them incompatible with each other.
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#8Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento. WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify. In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps"…
WordPress (Automattic) acquired WooCommerce a few years ago.
Marketshare: https://trends.builtwith.com/shop
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#9As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own. This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet). Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other Shopify merchants (not Amazon). How do you differe…
This assumes a trend toward product commoditization. However, I believe the opposite trend is actually taking place: toward product brands. https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to-re...
Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms
#10As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own. This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet). Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other Shopify merchants (not Amazon). How do you differe…
You can buy bed bug supplies on Amazon. Yet, https://www.domyown.com/ probably does $10m-$50m/yr revenue.