Live data from Hacker News

Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

axios.com

31–40 of 92 posts

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#31
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Shop app popular? Just heard of this now.

Very popular. It used to be a popular app called Arrive for automatically tracking packages by parsing tracking numbers from connected email accounts. Arrive was also the branding for shipping updates by check in Shopify Checkout on all Shopify based eCommerce sites. A few months ago Shopify: 1. Rebranded the app as "Shop" 2. Rebranded every Shopify site's checkout to "Shop Pay." 3. Began forcing users on Shopify bas…

Thanks. I just downloaded it without going through a previous Shopify checkout workflow and it asks you to add a 'store' with no prompting or list of 'popular stores'. Just a search box.

It badly needs a prominent browse feature if it wants to take on Amazon. Or maybe I just missed something in my brief tour.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online? Those are all great retailers in-store. But online? That’s their online revenue? I doubt it. Home Depot advertises 2 day shipping but then waits a week before actually starting the clock on their shipping. At least here in Canada. Walmart is the same. Let me tell you about ordering from Canadian tire online. I did this once. I chose in-store pickup. When I got to the service desk (which actually had an “onlin…

Yes, that was their online sales revenue in 2019, unless you think giants like Wal Mart (with nearly 400 supercenter stores in Canada) and Costco are doing only 1 billion in brick and mortar sales. These numbers are readily available in their financial statements (Wal Mart doesn't separate out Wal Mart Canada's numbers - I happen to be in the industry. Your Canadian Tire anecdote sounds unbelievable unless it was man…

I tried to use Canadian tire for I store pickup and it was the most awful thing - “ready next day” and after 5 days I had to go into a store to cancel my order, then order it on amazon for 5% more and it arrived the next day < 24 hours later. I will never attempt it again.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#33
Wow, Hacker News now used for stock pumping. nice.

Now that the longs had their say, here is the short side.

Shopify has an API. Someone wrote a plugin to allow a shop keeper to publish inventory into the Walmart API. When sellers sell on Walmart's platform, Shopify sees zero transactional revenue.

That's the actual technical story.

The linked "article" which actually included a quote from the COO includes a page of bullet points about how Shopify is really knocking it out of the park. Including the "Facebook deal".

Actually the Facebook deal is FB pulling the cart & payments features into their FB & Instagram apps. So, effectively killing Shopify web store use. Apparently FB is doing something special for Shopify so that Shopify can charge 2% on top of FB's 5% fee. But sellers can also just make their shops directly on FB and skip the 2% Shopify surcharge.

I would have expected fellow programmers to understand a bit of math & show some constraint with bubble valuation stocks!

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you live, but in Ontario Amazon delivery trucks outnumber all other delivery trucks combined. Seemingly 50% of every package sitting on anyone's doorstep has the familiar Amazon branded packing tape surrounding it as well. They're definitely dominant.

Amazon.ca and Amazon.com accounted for about 10% of all e-commerce sales in Canada for 2019. I wish i had some stats for the raw # of total packages/shipments, because that's where I think Amazon's marketshare would match the picture of "50% of every package"

Can you provide a link for your stat?

Link I found for 2018 e-commerce net sales in Canada [0] has amazon and amazon.ca combined for 4.7b, costco at 1b, walmart 0.9, apple 0.79, the bay 0.47 etc.

So amazon eclipses the other other 7 competitors all on its own.

[0] https://www.statista.com/forecasts/871090/canada-top-online-...

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#35
post #8

I hope shopify understands the extremely long history of how walmart has dealt with their corporate partners in the past. Walmart typically extends a friendly hug and then slowly squeezes their corporate partners to death. They had better be ready to unravel the relationship at any sign of trouble and be working on a parallel plan to replace walmart. It seems like an unnecessary shorcut that may backfire.

Shopify* has three non-merchant-driven discovery channels now: Walmart, Facebook, and their own Shop app. I think Shopify is in a much better bargaining position than Walmart.

I don't think Shopify really needs discovery or awareness among customers/buyers.

Shopify's customers are merchants, businesses and manufacturers, each advertising their very own store and sales channels. For them it's hard not to consider Shopify as their ecommerce platform of choice. Meanwhile I'd argue that end customers couldn't care less about which ecommerce platform their store of choice is using. Therefore I think the Shop app isn't all that important actually. Or do people really seek out Shopify stores in particular? That seems ridiculous to me.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#36

Wow, Hacker News now used for stock pumping. nice. Now that the longs had their say, here is the short side. Shopify has an API. Someone wrote a plugin to allow a shop keeper to publish inventory into the Walmart API. When sellers sell on Walmart's platform, Shopify sees zero transactional revenue. That's the actual technical story. The linked "article" which actually included a quote from the COO includes a page of…

I think healthy skepticism is in order, but for now the markets have spoken. We'll have to wait for future earning reports to see what effect this has.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#37
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopify* has three non-merchant-driven discovery channels now: Walmart, Facebook, and their own Shop app. I think Shopify is in a much better bargaining position than Walmart.

I don't think Shopify really needs discovery or awareness among customers/buyers. Shopify's customers are merchants, businesses and manufacturers, each advertising their very own store and sales channels. For them it's hard not to consider Shopify as their ecommerce platform of choice. Meanwhile I'd argue that end customers couldn't care less about which ecommerce platform their store of choice is using. Therefore I…

As a fun fact, a former Directo of ine from Amazon, ops side, joined Shopify a while ago. A couple of years ago, I started to wonder what an ideal Amazon-"killer" would look like. And came to the conclusion it would something with aPOS-system, a rudimentary inventory management for bric and mortar shops, a webshop solution, the possibility to interface with fulfillment software and other marketplaces. That would transform every single brick-and-mortar shop using that POS software into a fulfillment center. It would create abasically global dropshipping network. Withou any real fix costs, while Amazon is building fulfillment centers by the dozens.

Amazon could have done so, but they didn't. Shopify can do so building upon there Webshop and POS environment. And they seem to do.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#38
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why people think Amazon is such a dominate force on the commerce front, especially with respects to Walarmt. It isn't even close between the two. I am more worried about the cloud technology space being down to basically two choices now.

Not sure where you live, but in Ontario Amazon delivery trucks outnumber all other delivery trucks combined. Seemingly 50% of every package sitting on anyone's doorstep has the familiar Amazon branded packing tape surrounding it as well. They're definitely dominant.

That doesn't say much about the volume.

Most of my packages from Amazon will have just one item in it but when I go to a store, like walmart, I will more often than not have a cart of multiple items I am buying.

I am not saying I represent everyone, but rather, it is hard to compare the two without knowing more data.

IIRC, Amazon's total revenue is less than 300 billion while Walmarts is over 500 billion.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#39
post #7

Amazon is likely grateful for the “competition” amid greater scrutiny from regulators around the world.

I am not sure why people think Amazon is such a dominate force on the commerce front, especially with respects to Walarmt. It isn't even close between the two. I am more worried about the cloud technology space being down to basically two choices now.

Which third cloud provider aren't you considering, and why? Is it azure?

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#40
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopify* has three non-merchant-driven discovery channels now: Walmart, Facebook, and their own Shop app. I think Shopify is in a much better bargaining position than Walmart.

I don't think Shopify really needs discovery or awareness among customers/buyers. Shopify's customers are merchants, businesses and manufacturers, each advertising their very own store and sales channels. For them it's hard not to consider Shopify as their ecommerce platform of choice. Meanwhile I'd argue that end customers couldn't care less about which ecommerce platform their store of choice is using. Therefore I…

I seek out places where I'm not going to have to reenter my payment information and/or roll the dice on a new customer-service UI. At the moment that means Amazon, Ebay or Etsy. If Shopify are offering some equivalent experience then I'm certainly interested.
Post reply on HN