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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

#121

Post by matallo »

dwd wrote: post #90
lunaru wrote: post #64

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 platf…

Liquid is awesome and documentation first rate. I was pretty much able to dive straight into Shopify templating and leverage the docs as I went without even having a background in Rails or Ruby.

I can't agree more with this comment, for anybody using Jekyll, it's worth noting it is the templating language it uses, and my experience pretty much resembles this.

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

#122

Post by mabbo »

sah2ed wrote: post #115
mabbo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

To avoid any NDA troubles, I'll keep it pretty generic: a facility designed and built in 2009 is going to be very hard to modify such that it's operating any differently than it did it 2009. Physical things are harder to upgrade than software. Built a new robotic system? That's great for new facilities, but what happens to the ones that predate it? Amazon has hundreds of facilities.

And on a software front, those older facilities are using different physical processes which need different software than the new tech. How do you architect the whole thing such that the increasing complexity of this ecosystem doesn't create exponential work as it needs to all integrate together and be maintained?

Shopify, by contrast, isn't carrying that legacy on their back. They're potentially on the same exponential curve, but they are much farther on the left and maybe they can find a way to make it a smaller exponent. Maybe. We'll see how it goes.

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

#123

Post by Faark »

jonatron wrote: post #3
neonate wrote: post #2

http://archive.is/TyStn

Or click "web" and go via Google to not be paywalled

The facebook referral works on a sadly continuously shrinking list of higher tier sites, but still including FT. So for those preferring to pay with their data try https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.co...

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

#124

Post by subpixel »

bduerst wrote: post #86
sdnguyen90 wrote: post #82

I've been working with Shopify for close to 10 years as an owner of multiple profitable stores and as a full stack developer. If you work on the custom development side you'll see a lot more successful businesses run on Shopify. I don't see the churn rate as a big problem for Shopify. Their revenue is pretty tied into the customer's revenue and expenses, not the amount of unique subscriptions. On top of subscription…

What if Shopify created a centralized e-commerce platform for every merchant to make their inventory available through?

They did that early on and I'm pretty sure the takeaway was: let Amazon do that, we're minting money with seller tools.

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

#125

Post by cardy31 »

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…

Sure but churn is a poor stat to look at. Shopify could minimize churn by only taking on big pre-established brands. But that probably wouldn’t be best for the company. So high churn it is, which hasn’t hurt them yet.

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

#126

Post by scarab »

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…

Great points.

Re: "Keep in mind there's a review process though" - My experience of this is that Shopify wouldn't approve my App because there were existing Apps in their store which they thought were too similar.

So make sure it's sufficiently differentiable to existing Apps (no, I don't know what that means either!)

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

#128

Post by IAmGraydon »

TylerE wrote: post #110
zawaideh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With all due respect, if you are foolish enough to believe you can buy name brand sneakers and AirPods at 90% off from anywhere, you had it coming. There are many ways a scammer can set up a quick site, hook up a payment processor and start taking money. This is not a Shopify problem. It’s an internet-wide problem.

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

#129

Post by tehlike »

peach wrote: post #118
martco wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Credit card chargeback would bring everything back.
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