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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

#101

Post by kevindong »

askafriend wrote: post #33
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.

Tesla sells every car they make through their website powered by Shopify. It's not just small boutique stores using Shopify.

Tesla runs off of Salesforce, not Shopify. You can pretty easily validate this but viewing the website resources and Ctrl-F-ing for "shopify" and "salesforce".

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

#102

Post by alaskamiller »

eBay started out as a tool to connect you between a seller and a buyer, evolved to empower merchants, because of competition they became a landlord mall operator. Their DNA has always been to drive traffic for growth.

Amazon started out as a store to sell you a book, grew selling you other that can be stocked and packed like a book, evolved to ask others to sell too, because of competition they became a landlord mall operator. Their DNA has always been to drive traffic for growth.

Shopify gives you a dumbed down version of a selling tool. It was easy enough, paired up with Alibaba's rise, a subculture of dropshipping dropsurfing gurus selling you on how easy it is, they've now convinced most people to give it a try.

But their DNA has never been to drive traffic for growth. There's been no indication that's their strategy as they've only unveiled more tooling for owner operators.

Eventually they'll peak, run out of people wanting to give it a try and the whole thing collapses.

Shopify is more like Rovio having a hit with Angry Birds, growing rapidly, then watching sales drop 40% shortly thereafter.

Also, having down Shopify dev back in 2014-2016, their app ecosystem is a mess, more akin to a medium sized POS company's third party ecosystem.

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

#103

Post by martco »

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 explains how I got scammed on Shopify last summer. I’m not talking about a missing product label or receiving a counterfeit item. I paid $1200 for a Shopify product (drone) and received a box with a poster tube inside of it that said “the world is yours”. Nothing else. The merchant was gone that day. The real scammers live on Shopify.

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

#104

Post by gavinballard »

askafriend wrote: post #83
grandmczeb wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A more provocative example is Tesla. Literally their whole car buying experience is powered by Shopify. They did ~$21B in sales last year.

I don't think this is true - I believe it's only their merchandise store that's on Shopify. Car purchases are done through their own, custom platform.

That said, there are definitely plenty of huge merchants running on Shopify turning over hundreds of millions of dollars through the platform - we work with quite a few of them.

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

#105

Post by megaremote »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #52
blawson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopify grew revenue by 50% in Q2, eBay by 2%.

Yeah. 50% of a small number vs 2% of a much MUCH bigger number. It's a classic mistake that the statically-blind make.

Ebay grew by $200m, shopify by $500m.

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

#106

Post by CameronNemo »

dragonsh wrote: post #88
Axsuul wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a Shopify app developer here[1]. My software targets established online sellers and my churn is considered low. [1] https://www.trunkinventory.com

You are right the churn is very high because one thing shopify can't do is get traffic for those online stores. So non tech savvy goes to Shopify open a store, because it's easier than running $5 VM to manage many similar e-commerce platform. But then that person needs to work himself for traffic acquisition on his own site which is expensive and after a while stops it. Launching a store is easiest thing to do with p…

there is a lot to unpack here.

. you operate under the assumption that amazon is driving traffic fairly. in reality, there are at least 17 pieces of flair on each search page. remember that most scrubs do not use ublockorigin!

. "getting traffic" is also called networking. making connections with diverse groups. it is part of building a brand, reputation, and yes a client base. trying to avoid that step often makes your business trivially replaceable. for commodities that is actually fine, but many shop owners are not selling commodities.

. you are spot on about shopify having many alternatives. perhaps the competition will benefit shop owners as a whole. i can hope.

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

#107

Post by newguy1234 »

martco wrote: post #103
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 explains how I got scammed on Shopify last summer. I’m not talking about a missing product label or receiving a counterfeit item. I paid $1200 for a Shopify product (drone) and received a box with a poster tube inside of it that said “the world is yours”. Nothing else. The merchant was gone that day. The real scammers live on Shopify.

Now you know why people call it scamify :)

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

#110

Post by TylerE »

zawaideh wrote: post #54
scabbycakes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose as a user you could definitely look at it that way. As an investor I'd be worried about losing their churned-out merchants to other platforms like Etsy and Woocommerce and Weebly and about ten other platforms hacking away at their knees. To be fair to Shopify though, I think they know they've already lost the battle for the little merchants and have fixated on other things.

I'm assuming The shops are startups that failed after s while. They are enabling them to be started quickly.

There are tons of scammers using Shopify. They’ll put up dozens of storefronts selling name brand sneakers or AirPods at “90%” off and stuff like that.

Of course, they never ship product (because they don’t have any) or if you’re lucky you get some super low quality alibaba knockoff.

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