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Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

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Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#61

Post by jammygit »

scabbycakes wrote: post #27
fourseventy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm about to dev a Shopify app myself. How hard is it to stand out on the shopify app store and get some traction?

REALLY hard. What you might be seeing a lot of these days is that app dev companies go around buying up other well-established apps and/or their development companies just because they can't find an app to make or get traction with apps they make at this point in the game. Even with great teams and money coming out their ears, they're having a hard time getting established with new apps. There are 20 apps all doing t…

I suppose this is a commoditize your compliment situation?

Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#62

Post by grandmczeb »

markdown wrote: post #51
blairanderson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is accurate, but they also power some massive eCommerce businesses and growing number of enterprise shops. Their biggest investments are for their subscribers that ACTUALLY sell stuff. Dropship-dreamers are super scared of actually subscribing but they are the vocal majority because of guru's and such. Its all about growing GMV / PLUS / CAPITAL / FULFILLMENT and those are all hitting +50% YOY

> but they also power some massive eCommerce businesses and growing number of enterprise shops. This makes no sense. Why would any company that starts making serious money continue to give SquareSpace money for a template. There's nothing you can do in SquareSpace that you can't do better in a custom app running on one of the many free software CMS's out there. I don't get this.

For lots of brands, the core competency is marketing and every other aspect of the company is outsourced. E.g. Kylie Cosmetics which has 360M+/yr in revenue and uses Shopify.

Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#64

Post by lunaru »

I just want to make a note that Tobi (Shopify's CEO) has made great contributions to Rails open source ecosystem with projects like Liquid and ActiveMerchant, which he started:

- https://github.com/Shopify/liquid/commits?author=tobi

- https://github.com/activemerchant/active_merchant/commits?au...

We leverage these projects daily, so it's awesome to see his company doing so well. In addition, we're on Shopify's platform as a app developer, so his company has added a lot of value, both commercially and non-commercially to developers, not just e-commerce merchants.

Kudos to them.

Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#65

Post by brianwawok »

bluk wrote: post #58
ceejayoz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm asking if buying something on eBay technically means paying eBay (revenue) that they then pay out to the seller in a way that it wouldn't with Shopify's Stripe integration. OP didn't say anything about profit.

eBay's marketplace (eBay.com) revenue should be the amount that's their listing fees and percentage of the final price that they take. The amount that the sold goods are worth should be the gross merchandise volume. See https://investors.ebayinc.com/fast-facts/default.aspx for their current numbers. Looking at their fees: https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/sell... , it seems to be 10% to 12% for…

A big chunk of that 3% Shopify fee is eaten by the CC exchanges. But they make money from the App Store, and monthly Shopify fees.

Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#66

Post by lrem »

mikeryan wrote: post #31
scabbycakes wrote: post #19

As someone who worked developing Shopify apps (NOT a Shopifyt employee to be clear), I can attest to the incredibly high percentage of shops that evaporate from the platform on a nonstop basis. Something like 80% of the people that would install our apps in their shops would be gone or in limbo after a couple months. (Not an app uninstall, their shops actually no longer existed.) The charts we see from Shopify like t…

This seems like a "feature"? Not to discount the churn numbers - but being able to quickly and at low cost set up a high quality commerce site where folks don't have to be heavily invested seems like they're providing the service as intended. I enjoy the Shopify experience from the Vendors that use it and do stick around.

As a consumer, at least in Europe, I have a bunch of rights executed via the retailer. If I have a serious doubt the retailer will be around in 2 years, I'll choose a different one. This should limit Shopify's prospects of international growth.

Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#68

Post by mkorfmann »

lrem wrote: post #66
mikeryan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a "feature"? Not to discount the churn numbers - but being able to quickly and at low cost set up a high quality commerce site where folks don't have to be heavily invested seems like they're providing the service as intended. I enjoy the Shopify experience from the Vendors that use it and do stick around.

As a consumer, at least in Europe, I have a bunch of rights executed via the retailer. If I have a serious doubt the retailer will be around in 2 years, I'll choose a different one. This should limit Shopify's prospects of international growth.

It doesn't.

Seeing this point remembered here will help some, but overall you A. either won't know you're shopping at a shopify.com store or B. you'll not care because the company is too big to fail (Tesla).

Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#69

Post by lunaru »

scabbycakes wrote: post #19

As someone who worked developing Shopify apps (NOT a Shopifyt employee to be clear), I can attest to the incredibly high percentage of shops that evaporate from the platform on a nonstop basis. Something like 80% of the people that would install our apps in their shops would be gone or in limbo after a couple months. (Not an app uninstall, their shops actually no longer existed.) The charts we see from Shopify like t…

A huge part of Shopify's revenue comes from Shopify Plus. We're also fellow app developers[1], and we've noticed that if you offer value to their higher end businesses, you'll be running at churn rates that are much lower than what you'd think you'd get with the "average Shopify merchant".

Something like 70% of small businesses fail[2], so it's not surprising you'll see a large amount of churn if your audience is the broad set of all merchants, including those that are probably just kicking around the idea of spinning up a drop shipping business on the side. That doesn't mean there aren't great businesses in the Shopify ecosystem.

[1] - https://apps.shopify.com/reamaze [2] - https://www.fundera.com/blog/what-percentage-of-small-busine...

Re: Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

#70

Post by mkorfmann »

chrischen wrote: post #25
DavidAdams wrote: post #9

I know that a lot of activity on Shopify is from ambitious but deluded people setting up dropshipping businesses. Shopify is just selling picks and shovels to a lot of prospectors in a particularly unfruitful gold rush. I'm wondering whether they'll see a contraction as the enthusiasm wears off.

I run a non-Shopify online store and maybe like 80% of my competitors are running a Shopify-powered drop-shipping operation. There's always new ones of these Shopify stores popping and and disappearing every few months.

I place 50 virtual chips on your shop going out of business in the next 2 years.
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