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Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

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Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#81

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

thirdsun wrote: post #35
dannyw wrote: 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…

Most customers rightly don't care.

I do though. I tried to place an order on an online service providers website to get some work done that I couldn't do on my own with my work laptop. They used shopify to process all payments and my order got denied. Not by the provider, not by my bank. But by shopify. I got a hold of one of the companies cs staff who looked into it and told me I was sol. Shopify had flagged my transaction as fraudulent and there's nothing he could do. Calling my bank didn't help, they didn't see the transaction as suspicious and would have authorized the transfer. Ultimately I gave up and will have a vile taste in the back of my mouth whenever I hear of shopify. The company I tried to patronize lost a customer, and shopify gets free bad press from me.

So, while shopify doesn't need discovery or awareness among customers, shopify can't afford to get bad press without decent consumer ad spend else their actual customers may jump ship to avoid being tainted by their brand.

If shopify fubars this deal with walmart that could start a snowball.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#82

Post by anoraca »

12bits wrote: post #65

In all honesty who is buying from these third parties, if something on Amazon isn’t fulfilled via Amazon, I’m not buying. If I’m looking for something on Best Buy the first thing I’m doing is looking for the Best Buy only toggle. Is it strictly to make points on the vendors sales? To give a false appearance of massive inventory? Could a third party vendor list “Item A” on eBay, Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart and have a…

People that sell used books professionally usually have them listed on amazon and ebay and the inventory is synced periodically. There must be some kind of automated inventory management system that they use, because pricing gets updated periodically also, based on the other available prices seemingly.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#83

Post by CountSessine »

WrkInProgress wrote: post #30
CountSessine wrote: post #26

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…

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.

That’s kind of my whole point - Canada is different. I read all sorts of accounts from Americans about how e-commerce and online retail in the US has matured and you can reliably order goods from lots of big retailers online and expect to get your goods on a predictable date. And that just hasn’t happened in Canada yet. Online retail here is still comprehensively awful. Amazon is the only online option that delivers predictably and on time.

Just within the last two years I’ve ordered from both Walmart and Home Depot and both of them have sat on my order for 2 weeks before actually shipping it. I’ve had Home Depots delivery courier actually throw a box of light bulbs across my yard onto my concrete steps. And yes, that CDN tire incident was about 2 years ago. IKEA wants $20 shipping to send me a box of screws. The only bright spot in any of this is grocery delivery as you point out. But even then, Save-on’s payment processor has glitched my orders on two occasions.

The Canadian e-commerce experience is not some backwater that you proclaim it to be.

It’s still about 10 years behind the US. I still see too many retailers who are basically charging what their US equivalents are + the shipping cost difference to traverse the CBSA moat. The big retailers here can’t get it together and the small retailers are still just arbitraging Canada’s weird retail import tariffs. Super high shipping costs, bungled and lost orders, and unpredictable and late delivery is still the norm outside Amazon, or at least it was in 2019. Hard to say now with c19.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#84

Post by wenc »

12bits wrote: post #65

In all honesty who is buying from these third parties, if something on Amazon isn’t fulfilled via Amazon, I’m not buying. If I’m looking for something on Best Buy the first thing I’m doing is looking for the Best Buy only toggle. Is it strictly to make points on the vendors sales? To give a false appearance of massive inventory? Could a third party vendor list “Item A” on eBay, Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart and have a…

I'm buying a lot from third parties, even though I have Amazon Prime.

I don't mind buying books from Amazon, but there's so much counterfeit stuff on Amazon these days that I actually try to buy from either the original vendor or a third-party with a regular supply chain like Target.

I was looking for hand-soap a month ago (when the supply was scarce both online and in B&M stores). Amazon had some from 3rd party sellers but they were listed with very high markups and their authenticity was questionable. So on a whim, I visited the vendor's site (JR Watkins), added some to cart (and they were cheaper than on Amazon!), and the checkout process with Apple Pay (on what was a Shopify backend I believe) was seamless (less than 10s).

I didn't have to create an account (!) or enter my credit card number or address -- Apple Pay handled everything after I scanned my face.

I'm seeing more and more specialty vendors with Shopify store fronts these days, and the experience is so seamless that I'm much more open to buying from Shopify storefronts rather than Amazon, especially it's something of value that could end up being a counterfeit listing on Amazon.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#85

Post by workingname »

holidayacct wrote: post #5

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.

> typically extends a friendly hug and then slowly squeezes their [corporate] partners to death.

Walmart sounds just like Amazon.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#86

Post by hef19898 »

throwawaylalala wrote: post #74
hef19898 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tran…

Shopify is building fulfillment centers.

Thanks for that! Well, that changes things doesn't it? mens my plan H for a company is still valid then!

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#87

Post by mtnGoat »

drsim wrote: post #45
lmm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do: Shop Pay saves details across all Shopify stores https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/accelerated-chec...

i think only across all stores using Shopify Payments.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#88

Post by mtnGoat »

12bits wrote: post #65

In all honesty who is buying from these third parties, if something on Amazon isn’t fulfilled via Amazon, I’m not buying. If I’m looking for something on Best Buy the first thing I’m doing is looking for the Best Buy only toggle. Is it strictly to make points on the vendors sales? To give a false appearance of massive inventory? Could a third party vendor list “Item A” on eBay, Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart and have a…

there are a number of apps that can keep stock between multiple platforms, pull listings/ads as inventory decreases, etc.

i built one.

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#89

Post by mtnGoat »

byproxy wrote: post #77
donogh wrote: post #44

(Disclaimer: I work in the e-commerce space.) I have to say I'm concerned about Shopify's growing dominance in the e-commerce market. They're selling a 'David vs Goliath' story about taking on Amazon, while at the same time becoming a Goliath themselves. They are gradually building what seems to be an unassailable lead: preferential card processing rates with Stripe, hard-to-match discounts on shipping with the major…

Can you recommend some good alternatives to Shopify?

There are dozens, here are a few: BigCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento, OpenCart

what are your needs?

Re: Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal

#90

Post by mtnGoat »

I am not sure why this is getting much attention. Walmart is selective about which merchants they will take and Shopify is estimating only 1.200 will be onboarded by years end. Shopify claims to have 500,000 stores so this penetration is so minuscule its really not worth mentioning. In the same vein, this was all already possible using a couple of third-party Shopify Apps and merchants have already been doing this for years. All I see is PR being created to drive stock price?
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