Shopify and the Power of Platforms • Hacker News Board

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#11

Post by _csoo » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies.

WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races.

And it's better than that, there's people with years and years of experience in modifying and creating plugins and themes so once you have enough $$$ from the basic setup, re-invest into the business and get better developer support for all the GPL'd plugins and themes you're using.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#12

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

> WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races.

My wife is starting a fashion business. This is a hill too high to climb for a non-technical user. She was up and running in 30 minutes with my credit card and Shopify earlier this week. We don't have time to maintain an instance, troubleshoot Wordpress theme and plugin incompatibilities, etc. That's time better spent on sales funnel optimizations, manufacturing product, and customer support.

Would we consider more advanced ecommerce systems? Sure, when she hits $1MM/year in annual revenue. Until then, Shopify earns their keep (and margin) by taking care of the mundane. Make dollars, don't pinch pennies.

See: "Dropbox is just ftp + git" [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#13

Post by omouse » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #7

_csoo wrote: post #4

Shopify 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.

Regulated meaning a tightly controlled and closed "market"?

Number of plugins isn't the greatest metric but it's a good leading indicator. It's kinda hard to estimate how many merchants and customers and volume of transactions have been processed when they aren't being tracked by a central entity ;)

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#14

Post by chiefalchemist » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

> "To that end, I would argue that for Shopify a high churn rate is just as much a positive signal as it is a negative one: the easier it is to start an e-commerce business on the platform, the more failures there will be. And, at the same time, the greater likelihood there will be of capturing and supporting successes."

Yes and no. The excessive lowering of the barrier to entry is self defeating. That is, more stores === more noise. Throwing still more at the wall isn't going to increase success. That friction will increase Failure.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#15

Post by delecti » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

"Just combine these 6 things and it's just as easy as a single tool that does it all for you."

Is this satire?

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#16

Post by omouse » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

CriticalCathed wrote: post #6

It'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 Fulfi…

They're beating earning expectations consistently: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHOP/

They're also growing and hiring more which always looks good in the books.

Unfortunately, while their revenue is growing their earnings are in the negatives: 1B revenue in 2018 up from 673M in 2017, however they're -64M in earnings and -40M in earnings previous to that.

Not to mention the hype stories like this: "Shopify's market share could triple within five years rivaling Amazon", https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shopify-apos-market-share-cou...

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#17

Post by SolaceQuantum » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

CriticalCathed wrote: post #6

It'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 Fulfi…

It's not uncommon for people to be selling artisian products on shopify, which a trend that's been increasing over time. There's a large boost towards 'natural/homemade' products towards daily consumeables, accessories, clothing, indie perfumes, beauty products, etc. At least this is my experience in several hobbyist circles I lurk in.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#18

Post by simonh » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

Which of those does the logistics and fulfilment part, which is really the heart of the article and the killer strategic step for Shopify?

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#19

Post by asdfokd8 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

It seems to me like Aggregators vs Platforms is related to Products as Commodities vs Products as Brands.

Aggregators win when products are anonymous commodities. Brands win when products are beloved.

It seems like the trend (for many reasons: over-marketing, dis-satisfaction, dis-trust, a race toward the barely-legal) is toward products as brands: brands which are authentic and relational and participants themselves in the experience (that "get it").

I think this trend will prove to be great for platforms, and bad for aggregators. https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to-re...

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#20

Post by ysavir » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

> WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races.

So all the average person needs to set up shop is design skills, software engineering skills, understanding of servers and PII, and the time to do complete all technical tasks while also building up their actual product catalogue.

That's a lot, and goes a long way in explaining why Shopify has a justified usecase.