Live data from Hacker News

Now Bigger Than eBay, Shopify Sets Its Sights on Amazon

ft.com

111–120 of 144 posts

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

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big factor in their churn rate is the fact that a significant chunk of their growth has come from make money online gurus. Search YouTube for “Shopify dropshipping” or similar and you’ll see what I mean. It became viral among the scam artists, who all came up with different systems to sell, with one thing in common among them: Step 1 is to go open a Shopify account. When the systems that most of these gurus sell fa…

Nothing you say is backed by data. Their revenue keeps growing with Shopify payments (they take a share of every transaction), which is an entirely different metric than the number of stores. If those were all empty store with no sales that would show. But that’s not the case. Also huge growth with their enterprise solutions shopify plus. Read their financials, it’s all there and easy to understand.

Nothing you say is backed by data.

And none of the data you pointed to disproves anything I said. Additionally, there is some data to back up my position: while it’s true that it would be impossible for anyone to have data on how many accounts have been opened due to the guru effect, a quick search of YouTube should help you understand the gigantic scale of this issue.

Here’s why you have not disproved a single thing I said. Most of these gurus are preaching facebook ads + Shopify + dropshipping. As long as these students keep putting money into FB ads, and the gurus keep recruiting people, Shopify payments sales volume will continue to grow - whether or not the guru students are actually making a net profit after expenses. But of course that won’t continue forever, as people don’t have infinite sums of money to lose, and most will lose money.

Right now, there is still enough momentum to keep it growing. I would imagine that within a year though, you’ll start seeing it level off or start to decline, as the gurus move onto the next fad. Once that starts happening, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

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

#112
post #41

I might be drinking the amazon koolaid but Shopify’s online service and physical product distribution can’t even come close to what amazon has developed. They’re not a real threat. Amazon is really at least 15 years ahead in distribution and operations. We’re using robotics to automate a ton of processes. Jeff Wilke revolutionized the fulfillment centers. Shopify’s platform mainly sells niche things at low throughput…

Except Amazon are terrible to deal with for even a merchant doing a few million with them. Both through the market place and direct.

They damage your stock (or maybe the robots do), then return it.

They claim money from you after random audits, which after wasting time you find you don't owe.

They randomly deactivate your products and you can't speak to anyone to get it fixed.

They charge very high fees. Even direct to Amazon you have all the kick backs to pay.

The lure of Amazon is not fulfillment (there are loads of logistics houses it there). It is the giant customer base. I look after some Shopify stores, and they just can't do the volumes that Amazon do

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

#113

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.

I can give Squarespace $10 a month and get a beautiful page with modern templates, https, hosting, CDN, and a CMS that even my graphic designers can use.

Or I could get Wordpress, pay for hosting, pay a developer, buy an ssl certificate, leave wp admin on a default url and get hacked...

Now I know how to fix those things with cheap hosting, Lets Encrypt, etc... but my graphic designers don't. $10 a month is very very cheap for a business.

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

#114
"Bigger" as in higher market cap.

How big are Amazon and eBay these days in terms of dollar value sold via their market places?

If eBay is anywhere near Amazon and Shopify stores outsell eBay, that would be pretty spectacularely.

Shopify stores live on their own domains, right? No reviews, no central discoverability, no nothing, correct?

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

#115
post #85
post #41

I might be drinking the amazon koolaid but Shopify’s online service and physical product distribution can’t even come close to what amazon has developed. They’re not a real threat. Amazon is really at least 15 years ahead in distribution and operations. We’re using robotics to automate a ton of processes. Jeff Wilke revolutionized the fulfillment centers. Shopify’s platform mainly sells niche things at low throughput…

> Jeff Wilke revolutionized the fulfillment centers After 7 years in Amazon Fulfillment, I'll say this: we're doing a mediocre job- fortunately no one else is doing much better. But still, we've got 25 years of legacy software and processes to carry with us wherever we go. There's a lot of potential for a new entrant to radically and rapidly innovate and compete inside the warehouse. Shopify's business model is diffe…

> After 7 years in Amazon Fulfillment, I'll say this: we're doing a mediocre job- fortunately no one else is doing much better. But still, we've got 25 years of legacy software and processes to carry with us wherever we go.

Mind expanding more on the specific kinds of baggage holding back fulfillment at Amazon?

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

#116
This title is very misleading. Shopify has surpassed eBay in market cap, but is in a very different business. Same wrt amazon. Conflating market cap with market ownership is just confusing.

However, I really hope Shopify can figure out a way to make it easy to find quality sellers and replace Amazon’s dumpster fire of a third party marketplace. Trying to buy electronics or household products on amazon is a complete crapshoot these days.

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

#117
post #103

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.

I know this won't add to the conversation, but your comment made my day. I got a good laugh out of this. Thanks!

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

#118
post #103

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.

Da fuq? Did you manage to get anything back?

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

#119
post #69

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…

70% fail within 10 years, which is not much longer than Shopify has even existed.

The GP seems to be saying 80% of shopify businesses fail within a year.

Totally different statistics, the page you linked to says only 20% fail within their first year.

I wouldn't be surprised if setting up a shopify merchant page is a 'pre-business' action, before you're completely serious about the business.

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

#120
post #103

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.

Imagine the surprise of a dude who ordered the poster "the world is yours" and got a drone.
Post reply on HN