[HN Gopher] Shopify to Acquire Delivrr for $2.1B
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Shopify to Acquire Delivrr for $2.1B
        
       Author : agd
       Score  : 303 points
       Date   : 2022-05-05 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (news.shopify.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (news.shopify.com)
        
       | blobbers wrote:
       | SHOP stock has been absolutely slaughtered in the last 6 months.
       | 
       | They're either super geniuses with long term vision the markets
       | can't see, or people have completely lost faith with them for
       | exactly these kinds of moves.
        
         | blobbers wrote:
         | (which are they?)
        
         | JonathanBeuys wrote:
         | The market values them at $53B. That's not a small sum.
        
           | blobbers wrote:
           | Indeed. But it also devalued them by $150B in the span of 6
           | months.
        
       | bdefore wrote:
       | I'm probably thinking about this backwards, but I'm
       | embarrassingly well trained to search for anything I need on
       | Amazon. if I want to support Shopify at Amazon's expense, is
       | there a straightforward way of breaking out of this training and
       | find what I need among Shopify-powered merchants? Without getting
       | lost in SEO-spam or influencer peddling?
        
       | FunnyLookinHat wrote:
       | This is a classic example of "The best acquisitions start as
       | partnerships." I'm not privy to any internal details of either,
       | but reading the writing on the wall from Deliverr's website and
       | posts around the web, Shopify was a huge integration for them
       | (likely a majority of their business). I am willing to get
       | they've worked together at a C-Suite level to make sure that's a
       | good relationship for a while now, and that has a tendency to
       | produce excellent terms for acquisition (for both parties)!
        
       | awillen wrote:
       | I own an ecommerce business, and I recently moved away from my
       | previous 3PL (third party logistics company, like Deliverr). In
       | doing so, I evaluated a number of 3PLs, including Deliverr.
       | 
       | For those who aren't familiar, Amazon Multi Channel Fulfillment,
       | which allows you to fulfill orders not placed on Amazon from
       | their warehouses, is much cheaper than all alternatives for a lot
       | of smaller packages. As an example, I have one item that's 2.5
       | pounds, and about 8.5"x4"x4". To ship it via USPS would cost me
       | $10-12, depending on where it's going. Amazon charges me $6.77.
       | 
       | Deliverr, at least when I evaluated them about six months ago,
       | matched Amazon's pricing exactly. That was pretty shocking to me,
       | since Amazon's clearly only able to maintain those prices because
       | they have their own fulfillment network and lots of revenue from
       | elsewhere to subsidize the actual cost of delivery.
       | 
       | I am currently using Amazon MCF as my 3PL, and one of the reasons
       | I went with them over Deliverr was a genuine concern that
       | Deliverr had a money-losing business model that would only work
       | at Amazon scale, which is obviously a nigh-impossible thing to
       | achieve.
       | 
       | I'm glad to see they got acquired by Shopify, as I think the
       | competition for Amazon is a good thing in the marketplace. That
       | said, I'm definitely curious to see if Shopify will be able to
       | maintain price parity with Amazon.
        
         | shmatt wrote:
         | Seeing that they raised $500M in 5 rounds, they were probably
         | just paying the difference themselves, there never was real
         | parity
         | 
         | The fact they were bought for the same value as their series E
         | valuation 6 months ago also doesn't say good things about their
         | cash flow. Imagine every new employee these past 6 months just
         | got $0 profit from their options/RSUs (assuming there was some
         | double trigger)
        
         | hef19898 wrote:
         | Not sure about the US, but for my, failed, start-up that went
         | in a similar direction like Deliverr I did some price
         | calculations. And for Europe it was, before Covid, very
         | realistic to achieve price parity with FBA. I'd have too look
         | the numbers up again, but the volumes were easily within reach
         | for a single, not too big FBA merchant. Not enough to make a
         | whole _business_ based on that profitable, with all the
         | overhead and such, but profitable on a transaction basis.
        
           | awillen wrote:
           | Here it definitely depends on the types of packages, and my
           | experience is very much in the 1-5 pound range - as you get
           | larger, it's clearly more profitable. Still, however I ran
           | the numbers, I just couldn't see Deliverr taking on my
           | company as a client and not losing money on shipping alone
           | (before factoring in all the overhead). Obviously it'd depend
           | on their mix of business, but overall I just think being a
           | 3PL, unless you have some specialty that allows you to charge
           | a premium, is just a brutal, low-margin, race-to-the-bottom
           | kind of business. I'm glad that Shopify made the acquisition,
           | as having both Deliverr and Amazon MCF run as part of broader
           | ecommerce platforms, as opposed to standalone 3PLs, will be
           | good for ecommerce merchants and customers.
        
             | hef19898 wrote:
             | Being a 3PL is a brutal business, that's true. Logistics
             | is, for what it's worth, regardless of industry. Not sure
             | if it is actually a race to the bottom, because costs are
             | the same for every player, more or less, in the same
             | region. And the region is defined by infrastructure,
             | customer requirements and so on. Which leaves salaries, and
             | there it is sometimes a race to the bottom. Amazon, funny
             | enough, is paying their own warehouse workers above average
             | so (at least in Germany last time I checked).
             | 
             | Amazon does have an advantage on small item (sortable in
             | Amazon parlance). For larger items 3PL operations are
             | actually pretty straight forward. Edit: or rather items you
             | don't mind to ship as singles, one item per package.
        
         | revel wrote:
         | I work at an international logistics unicorn and I used to work
         | at Amazon in some of these groups.
         | 
         | Amazon has a glass jaw. They are good at being an aggressor but
         | I don't know how they will cope with some of the changes taking
         | place in the logistics industry.
        
           | awillen wrote:
           | I don't really understand what you mean - it's not like
           | others can just decide to aggressively come after them when
           | it comes to fulfillment. It takes enormous scale to be able
           | to do that. In every part of logistics, Amazon's scale acts
           | as a moat.
        
             | relueeuler wrote:
             | It's capital intensive! They have a huge moat that has been
             | developed for two decades. People are really understating
             | the problem.
        
       | g-unit33 wrote:
       | Anyone know how many warehouses deliverr works with ?
        
       | mahidol wrote:
       | Shopify seems to be moving from an asset-light to asset-heavy
       | mode, but also significantly dialing down their investor
       | communication: this is just so unlike them, considering how
       | things have always been.
        
       | bradly wrote:
       | For those of us unfamilir with Delivrr:
       | 
       |  _Our Mission:
       | 
       | Large online marketplaces like Amazon have trained consumers to
       | expect products delivered to their doorsteps within 1-2 days at
       | no extra cost. As a result, millions of merchants on other
       | marketplaces are falling behind, unable to cost-effectively
       | deliver products to their customers within 1-2 days. Our mission
       | is to enable any merchant, regardless of size, to delight their
       | customers with fast and cost-effective fulfillment._
        
         | Avalaxy wrote:
         | Sounds just like a normal postal service then? At least in my
         | country it's the default that the national post service
         | delivers your packages in 1 day.
        
           | KoftaBob wrote:
           | I assume based on your bio, that your country is the
           | Netherlands? The US is 236x the size of the Netherlands, so
           | you can imagine getting something to a customer in 1-2 days
           | requires a more complex and extensive logistics system.
        
           | jeffreyrogers wrote:
           | It takes several days to drive across the US. You need a
           | logistics network with warehouses spread across the country
           | to service a meaningful portion of the country in 1-2 days.
        
           | rabidonrails wrote:
           | But to be fair, in your country (looks like NL) the square
           | mileage is 16,040. The US has a sq mileage of the US is
           | 3,797,000.
        
           | colinmhayes wrote:
           | Small merchants probably don't want to be going to the post
           | office multiple times a day. Even if they were large enough
           | for that to make sense the US is too big for cost effective
           | next day delivery to the entire country, you need to have
           | distribution centers all over.
        
         | hef19898 wrote:
         | That sounds like a very good summary of what I tried a couple
         | of years ago. good to see the idea succeed!
        
           | vdfs wrote:
           | Shopify is actually doing that too, they have a fulfillment
           | service/network https://www.shopify.com/fulfillment
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | firstSpeaker wrote:
       | Aiming at Amazon by setting deeper and deeper vertical
        
       | brianwawok wrote:
       | Congratulations! We have been a partner with Deliverr since they
       | were quite small, and has been fun to watch their growth. They
       | help a lot of my clients ship packages fast.
        
       | airstrike wrote:
       | This was rumored about a couple weeks ago
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31102655
        
       | axg11 wrote:
       | Great acquisition in the short-medium term for Shopify. I do
       | wonder how Shopify will differentiate itself in the long term.
       | From the outside it looks like Shopify's plan to compete with
       | Amazon is to handle more of the logistics, create an ad network,
       | and ultimately drive discovery across Shopify stores (via unified
       | search?).
       | 
       | That plan will result in the same issues that Amazon has today.
       | There is nothing inherently higher quality about products sold
       | through Shopify today. Shopify attracts brand-focused sellers
       | that correlates with higher quality. In order to grow they will
       | have to attract high-volume (lower quality) less brand focused
       | sellers, ending up with the same issue.
        
         | calvinmorrison wrote:
         | > From the outside it looks like Shopify's plan to compete with
         | Amazon
         | 
         | A lot of customers (retailers) sell on both a DTC platfor like
         | Shopify, Magento, Hybris, Woocommerce, whatever AND Amazon.
         | 
         | Of course running a woocommerce site is more expensive, but the
         | margins are better than amazon.
         | 
         | The question is after shopify adds all this stuff, will the
         | margins still be better than an amazon store?
        
           | ineedasername wrote:
           | Yes, retailers can purchase software (well, usually rent via
           | SaaS) where they can manage their catalog of inventory,
           | fulfillment, product imagery, etc., all from a single
           | interface.
        
       | toddmorey wrote:
       | Anyone else worry that we don't really need _everything_ "port to
       | porch" in two days? It's impressive logistics, but I worry about
       | the environmental impact when we so strongly stress urgency over
       | efficiency.
       | 
       | Or are there ways to make rapid home deliveries efficient in ways
       | I don't comprehend?
        
         | ineedasername wrote:
         | I look at it this way, and see two counterpoints (though I
         | could be wrong):
         | 
         | 1) the product has to get to you anyway. Whether they do that
         | in two days or a week, it doesn't seem like the T+NUM_DAYS
         | variable would impact the environment differently.
         | 
         | 2) if not for rapid shipping, a lot more people would go out
         | shopping at stores a lot more. A single truck making a lot of
         | deliveries-- even though it's running for 8-13+ hours, may
         | still be more efficient than all of those people making
         | multiple trips to different stores to get what they need.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | Once you put the infrastructure (airplanes capacity, delivery
         | cars, processing centers, etc) to do next-day deliveries in
         | place, in a lot of places you don't have enough scale to
         | saturate it, so it's more efficient to run everything over it
         | than to use something else.
         | 
         | This is a very normal thing in logistics. I imagine on the
         | places where there is enough scale, they do offer discounts for
         | slower options.
        
           | hammock wrote:
           | Reminds me of conventional vs organic milk. Organic milk was
           | far more expensive and in short supply for so long, related
           | to conversion costs for conventional dairy farms. However
           | once McDonalds switched to organic milk, it became cost
           | effective for most dairies to switch over to organic.
        
         | GordonS wrote:
         | Something I like about Amazon is the ability to nominate an
         | "Amazon Day" (e.g. Friday). When checking out, you have the
         | option of next day delivery as usual, but so have the option to
         | choose your Amazon Day.
         | 
         | As you say, a lot of the time you don't _need_ things the next
         | day, so this is a nice way to group all your orders into a
         | single delivery, while being more climate friendly.
        
           | tibyat wrote:
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | cjrp wrote:
         | I know what you mean, my assumption is that quicker (on-demand)
         | delivery requires more vehicle miles than a slower, batched
         | delivery.
        
           | missedthecue wrote:
           | then again, if deliveries took 5-7 days instead of 1-2, more
           | people would probably just drive out and buy what they want,
           | which is worse for the environment than one truck making 200
           | deliveries per day.
        
         | BaseballPhysics wrote:
         | TBH, while I'm worried about that, I'm far more concerned with
         | the poor state of reverse logistics. The sheer amount of
         | returned product that ends up in a landfill is shocking and,
         | assuming direct-to-consumer online purchasing continues to
         | thrive--and I think that's inevitable--we desperately need a
         | solution that allows products to be rapidly inspected,
         | recovered, and returned to supply chains in a way that's
         | efficient and sustainable.
        
         | neither_color wrote:
         | If you mean vehicle emissions that's a consequence of our
         | country's car-centric design. I lived in a large Asian city for
         | a while and nearly everything that could be carried by a single
         | person was delivered delivered via electric bikes/scooters,
         | both online retail and food delivery.
        
         | tjbiddle wrote:
         | I wouldn't expect Deliverr to add much, if any, environmental
         | impact.
         | 
         | The way they work is by partnering with hundreds/thousands of
         | warehouses throughout the US. The merchant sends units in to a
         | few of these, and now the units are closer to the end customer,
         | so it can get there faster.
         | 
         | Whether it's all stored in one central warehouse, and then
         | distributed, or done via Deliverr (& Amazon FBA & Walmart's)
         | way, it still needs to get from A to B. Just now it's closer.
         | There might be a little extra shuffling.
         | 
         | What I love about Deliverr is they have very predictable
         | pricing. I used them for some small units I experimented with
         | adding to my catalog.
        
           | calvinmorrison wrote:
           | reverse logistics actually can be environmentally positive.
           | Instead of mailing a return back to the headquarters, you
           | drop it off at kohls or cvs and then it gets batched and sent
           | as a palette rather than as loose mail. Pretty cool stuff
        
           | easton wrote:
           | Cloudflare (or your favorite CDN company) for physical goods.
           | That's neat!
        
         | purephase wrote:
         | As others have said, I'm not sure the environment impact is
         | different between 1-2 days vs. a week. In terms of fuel costs
         | etc. Maybe travelling by ship instead of air, or on long haul
         | might affect this though.
         | 
         | I'm more concerned about the human toll on the rapid delivery
         | tbh. As someone joked, I created a prime order that sets off a
         | rube goldbert level of dystopian suffering for a number of
         | humans, just so I get a product at my door that I could have
         | picked up from a local retailer in under an hour.
         | 
         | That's my bigger concern.
        
         | subpixel wrote:
         | We already live in this broken future. Deliverr powers Walmart
         | warehousing and a recent order for 12 units of dental floss
         | resulted in 5 packages arriving over several days.
        
         | giarc wrote:
         | I live in Canada but have family in the US. When I was there
         | many years ago I ordered some stuff on Amazon and got the
         | option to delay delivery to a more efficient time, and in
         | return was offered some coupons for either future orders or the
         | Amazon app store (can't quite remember).
         | 
         | I order from Amazon somewhat frequently and would be happy to
         | have 'weekly' delivery rather than next day. 99% of the time I
         | don't need it right away.
        
           | mcintyre1994 wrote:
           | I'm in the UK and Amazon has offered this for a while now -
           | they call it Amazon Day. I don't order regularly enough for
           | it to be worth it, but I think the idea is that you order
           | whatever through the week and it's all delivered together on
           | one day each week.
        
             | giarc wrote:
             | Interesting, I wish they would bring that to Canada. I hate
             | seeing my recycling bin full of one time use cardboard
             | boxes. There's a small chain of hardware stores in North
             | America called Lee Valley (think specialty hardware and
             | tools, not HomeDepot). The owner was so annoyed at all the
             | boxes he offered to pay anyone $0.25 for any box they
             | brought it. He even used not so subtle language like "Those
             | boxes with a smile." It was during the pandemic so I
             | suspect it was a little self serving (ex. their supply of
             | boxes was hard to come by or their cost was greater than
             | $0.25 for regular boxes), but the message came off as very
             | genuine.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | banana_giraffe wrote:
               | Perhaps they've improved this, but when I tried using
               | "Amazon Day", it just meant fewer deliveries, but those
               | deliveries still resulted in the same number of boxes.
               | 
               | It also, hilariously, sometimes didn't even result in
               | fewer deliveries, just all of those deliveries occurring
               | on one day.
        
               | ISL wrote:
               | Even if it only occasionally results in fewer deliveries,
               | Amazon Day is still an efficiency win.
        
               | valarauko wrote:
               | I almost always choose "Amazon Day". Most of the time the
               | orders get consolidated into fewer boxes (not always,
               | though).
        
             | valenaut wrote:
             | I have Amazon Day in NYC as well. Wasn't aware that it
             | doesn't exist everywhere.
        
         | DaltonCoffee wrote:
         | Absolutely agree. Jimmy jet set is getting his vibrolux pen set
         | delivered biweekly in record time, meanwhile some of the world
         | waits exorbodently for deliveries of life saving medicine and
         | food, or are otherwise greatly dissserviced by supply and
         | delivery operations.
        
         | pbhjpbhj wrote:
         | I mean, most of the stuff we don't even need, never mind
         | needing it in two days.
        
       | kareemm wrote:
       | I love this move by Shopify. As a merchant (in Canada, where
       | typical shipping prices are extortionate) I'd love to give
       | Shopify more money (but presumably less than we pay 3rd party
       | shippers) for better overall delivery service for my customers.
       | 
       | As a buyer, I'd love to spend more with not-Amazon and get
       | comparable service.
       | 
       | I'm increasingly disappointed with Amazon. It's full of knockoff
       | crappy products with unrelated 5 star reviews. That eroding trust
       | in Amazon is pushing me to smaller brands who have a face and
       | stand behind their product for key purchases. This move by
       | Shopify will just accelerate that transition away from Amazon.
       | 
       | Just waiting for the search bar to shop every Shopify store so I
       | have a viable alternative to Amazon to buy whatever I need.
        
         | cameronpm wrote:
         | Shop app (made by shopify) has had cross shopify search for a
         | few months in beta. I recommend trying it out! I worked on the
         | infrastructure for this.
        
           | kareemm wrote:
           | Super sweet. I love Shop app. Tracking shipments is a nice
           | way to get app installs... and you can backdoor a shopping
           | experience as you roll out new versions. Well played!
        
           | m3kw9 wrote:
           | How is this not Amazon minus each storefront page is custom
           | designed?
        
             | cschmidt wrote:
             | One main distinction is that Shopify shops have a direct to
             | consumer relationship. They can send you emails, and build
             | up a brand. Amazon keeps the customer relationship, and if
             | you succeed, they'll try to commoditize you. So it isn't
             | that much different for the user (with a unified checkout
             | out cart), but is much better for the store owner.
             | 
             | Edit: you might find this article about the differences
             | between the Shopify and Amazon ecosystems interesting
             | 
             | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/magazine/shopify.html
        
           | thedangler wrote:
           | It's funny, I sent them an email long long long time ago
           | asking if there was some way to source all products on
           | Shopify so I could build just this. Maybe they noted it and
           | turned it into a product.
        
             | lancesells wrote:
             | I think an even better solution would be a curated search.
             | Like Amazon there are plenty of dropshipping low quality
             | stores / products on Shopify. I would like someone to build
             | out a search of the best 500 stores.
        
               | cameronpm wrote:
               | Shop app has a bunch of curated search areas in it, I
               | would check it out!
        
             | justusthane wrote:
             | No offense intended, but I doubt it. It is a good idea, but
             | it's also an obvious idea.
        
               | jhenkens wrote:
               | This reminds me of my number one response when "friends"
               | come to me with startup ideas.
               | 
               | Your company is another company's feature. As in, you are
               | trying to build a business, on something that is an
               | afterthought, tiny feature for an existing company to
               | add.
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | What company isn't? My problem with this is that I can't
               | think of a company that started as anything other than a
               | missing feature.
        
               | ipaddr wrote:
               | Start with a bigger idea. Shopify isn't a missing
               | feature. Why not take them on?
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | Showing the store is certainly a trivially missing
               | feature of Amazon's.
        
               | burke wrote:
               | Shopify has been around for a while--since before Amazon
               | became the everything-retailer that they are now. It
               | started out of frustration at the myriad annoyances in
               | trying to get set up using osCommerce and other tools of
               | that generation.
               | 
               | (Disclaimer: employee)
        
               | mooreds wrote:
               | This comment reminds me of this post with discusses the
               | feature -> product -> company evolution:
               | https://medium.com/@sethlevine/the-feature-product-
               | company-c...
        
               | thedangler wrote:
               | None taken.
        
           | mishra wrote:
           | Love the Shop app. But one major compliant is that there is
           | no email verification. So I get notified of every order that
           | accidentally used my email address (common Indian name @
           | gmail.com). Wish I could only be notified of orders that I
           | placed.
        
             | pkaler wrote:
             | >> So I get notified of every order that accidentally used
             | my email address (common Indian name @ gmail.com).
             | 
             | Someone needs to solve the (common Indian name @ gmail.com)
             | problem. Preferably, Google/Gmail would solve this. But my
             | email gets signed up on a daily basis to new services.
        
               | thenipper wrote:
               | I've got that problem too with my username minus the
               | "the" at gmail. It's so annoying.
        
             | mkr-hn wrote:
             | Stopgap solution until they fix it: change it to
             | name+shopify @ gmail
             | 
             | You might need to make it more unique if someone else had
             | that idea.
        
             | jeromegv wrote:
             | Does that mean you also get the email receipt for every
             | transactions?
        
         | thaumasiotes wrote:
         | > As a buyer, I'd love to spend more with not-Amazon and get
         | comparable service.
         | 
         | Comparable service? My experience buying from Amazon is a
         | nearly 100% rate of telling me my item will be delivered on a
         | certain date, and then, the day after, saying "We're so sorry
         | that unforeseeable circumstances (really?) have resulted in the
         | late delivery of your item. We hope the date wasn't important!
         | No, we do not offer any compensation for late deliveries.
         | Please suck it."
        
         | didibus wrote:
         | Search bar would bring the same problem to Shopify. Knockoff
         | will always sell for cheaper, and will try to game the search
         | so they'll end up at the top and quickly become the most
         | purchased.
         | 
         | It's the lack of search that differentiates Shopify. You get to
         | hear about the shop itself, instead of wanting a product and
         | searching for the cheapest/best. This latter behavior means
         | you'll always end up finding drop shippers or asian sellers.
         | While in the former you find a merchant that you like, trust,
         | feel has a good reputation, and you don't mind purchasing from
         | them even if they don't have the best price (mostly because you
         | can't easily compare the price).
        
           | zackees wrote:
           | As a seller on Amazon I whole heartedly disagree.
           | 
           | You have to experience trying to sell on Amazon to understand
           | that their policies forbid quality markers like stating
           | patents. The entire system is rigged so that people who
           | design and make products can't even differentiate from the
           | knock offs.
           | 
           | Amazon needs the competition so there is someplace on the
           | internet where domestic manufacturers can have a leg up.
        
             | function_seven wrote:
             | > _You have to experience trying to sell on Amazon to
             | understand that their policies forbid quality markers like
             | stating patents._
             | 
             | Can you expand on this? Do they have rules that stop you
             | from saying things like, "Patented Blozzle Technology
             | prevents the widget from snagging on gadgets" or listing a
             | patent number in the description?
        
               | zackees wrote:
               | Yes, absolutely. If you say covered by patent X your
               | product page won't go through. It's explicitly states in
               | their guidelines that mentioning patents are disallowed.
        
               | speed_spread wrote:
               | What if you name your product like "Patented Toaster
               | #54386549"? And you trademark that. Surely they can't
               | prevent you from using the registered product's name to
               | describe it?
        
         | noboostforyou wrote:
         | > I'm increasingly disappointed with Amazon. It's full of
         | knockoff crappy products with unrelated 5 star reviews. That
         | eroding trust in Amazon
         | 
         | Anyone remember eBay?
        
           | detritus wrote:
           | Me. I use eBay a few times a month, but never, ever touch
           | Amazon.
           | 
           | *shrug
        
         | itsoktocry wrote:
         | > _I 'd love to give Shopify more money (but presumably less
         | than we pay 3rd party shippers) for better overall delivery
         | service for my customers._
         | 
         | Better quality for a lower price? Don't we all want that! I
         | wish them luck on actually pulling it off.
        
           | kareemm wrote:
           | They already did that with Canada post shipping. If you buy
           | directly from CP you pay $x. If you buy a CP label from
           | Shopify it costs less than $x because they're a massive CP
           | customer.
        
         | nautilus12 wrote:
         | I can't stand Amazon. In my mind they are equivalent to a
         | cancer that society needs to collectively purge. I don't say
         | this hyperbolically, I say this after much experience. I only
         | do work on GCP now
        
         | Melatonic wrote:
         | The big problem I have with Amazon is that the damn search is
         | just so terrible - even if you try to search for an exact item
         | (which you know exists and is legit and sold on Amazon) half
         | the time it gives you a bunch of unrelated aliexpress garbage.
         | Especially for more niche queries.
        
         | AnonMO wrote:
         | Shopify is mostly crappy drop shippers buying of Alibaba and
         | selling for x more. If you add a search bar the problem will
         | just come to the surface. Just say you don't like amazon.
        
           | hef19898 wrote:
           | Isn't shopify also a lot of non-Shopify branded web shops? I
           | don't think crappy dropshipping stuff from Asia will ever go
           | away, that's why middlemen are important, those can filter
           | out the bad crap products. At which point those middlemen
           | also become a brand, it doesn't work without reputation.
           | Funny little commerce actually changed from the first time
           | someone sold a stone knife for a handful of berries.
        
             | karmakaze wrote:
             | [disclaimer: I work at Shopify]
             | 
             | My experience is that all the shops are non-Shopify
             | 'branded'. Some are on shopify.com subdomains if they
             | haven't set up a custom domain.
        
             | AnonMO wrote:
             | yes it is. Alot of apparel and sneaker sites use shopify.
             | I've interacted with them when i used to make bots,but
             | Filtering products won't work when buyers are looking for
             | the cheapest product at least in my opinion. Also imo
             | shopify is the reason bots are/were able to become so
             | dominant.
        
           | kareemm wrote:
           | I buy lots of stuff from Shopify merchants who make / source
           | unique products: clothing, bike gear, skincare, electronics.
           | I'm sure there are a lot of crappy drop shippers too but I'd
           | hope to not see them in a search experience. Guess that would
           | be up to Shopify to sort out. But I'm hopeful. Anything who's
           | been paying attention realizes that trust in Amazon is
           | eroding fast. It's an opp for Shopify.
        
             | dominotw wrote:
             | i am looking for some unique products. Wondering what
             | people's favorites are.
        
             | robryan wrote:
             | Shopify basically has the data for this. They could just
             | exclude from the search sites that don't already get a
             | decent amount of direct sales. There are other metrics as
             | well like refunds/ chargebacks and return customers.
        
           | ecshafer wrote:
           | disclaimer I work for Shopify, opinions are my own.
           | 
           | I do not think this is true. I don't know the % of shops that
           | are drop shippers, but I do not think it's the majority. Most
           | Shopify merchants are selling things. A lot of stores are
           | Shopify stores that are on custom domains and unless you look
           | at the source, nothing tells you that they are a Shopify
           | merchant. I know of RPG and Board Game publishers and
           | designers with Shopify stores, a local coffee shop and coffee
           | roaster is a Shopify merchant, food companies, etc. There are
           | companies that that have IPOd that started as Shopify stores
           | selling their own things; Which is really cool.
        
             | thesimon wrote:
             | > and unless you look at the source, nothing tells you that
             | they are a Shopify merchant
             | 
             | Unless they are doing a headless integration, the Shopify
             | UI is very easy to spot. For me this has started to become
             | a signal of shops to take great caution and best to avoid.
             | 
             | If not during shopping, then once you add the product to
             | the cart, it is very obvious.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | Spivak wrote:
           | Amazon is mostly drop shippers too, and Etsy for that matter,
           | what's being sold by "shops" on Shopify or "merchants" on
           | Amazon isn't really the issue. It should not at all be
           | surprising that "low effort" shops are more numerous. There's
           | quality stuff on all those platforms, and Shopify (for now)
           | is better to the merchants.
           | 
           | Amazon's total dominance of online shopping is because of
           | their logistics network and having more than one company
           | providing fast inexpensive shipping is good, it means people
           | have somewhere else to go if Amazon gives them a raw deal.
        
         | cschmidt wrote:
         | > Just waiting for the search bar to shop every Shopify store.
         | 
         | That's exactly what my startup [1] is making. We have 395,000
         | shops at the moment. Love to hear any feedback.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.delomore.com/
        
           | kareemm wrote:
           | Awesome. How do you source your merchants? I ran two searches
           | for specific merchants I buy from and didn't find them.
        
             | cschmidt wrote:
             | I've listed all of the (English language) shops I can find
             | through Common crawl etc. That gives me 56 million products
             | from 395k shops. Shopify quotes 1.75 million shops in all
             | languages. So I've got a fraction of the total, but enough
             | to be interesting, I hope.
        
               | blairbeckwith wrote:
               | Check out https://storeleads.app - should have close to
               | 100% of public Shopify stores, plus other platforms if
               | those are interesting.
        
               | cschmidt wrote:
               | Thanks that looks like a fantastic resource.
        
           | jdpedrie wrote:
           | Have you considered offering the service as an API?
        
             | cschmidt wrote:
             | Would you like to use it as an API? What would the use case
             | be?
        
         | throwawayboise wrote:
         | I've pretty much given up on any kind of shopping aggregator.
         | 
         | I go to the brand/manufacturer website directly and buy online
         | there if possible. I feel that's the best way to get what I am
         | intending to buy, even if it's not the lowest possible price.
        
           | hbn wrote:
           | A lot of the time that's gonna be more expensive in Canada,
           | if not only cause a lot of manufacturers only have warehouses
           | in the US. You'll likely pay more for shipping (which could
           | be significant, like $15 shipping on a $20 item), potentially
           | get a letter a few weeks later from the courier saying you
           | owe them money for import fees, and will likely wait longer
           | than if you just got it through the free Prime subscription
           | you're already paying for.
        
       | e-clinton wrote:
       | I like the tracking features of Shop app, hate the recommendation
       | of products. Just be a tracker and don't try and sell my more
       | crap.
        
       | colesantiago wrote:
       | This is HUGE. A direct hit to Amazon, nice move Shopify!
        
         | relueeuler wrote:
         | It isn't. $AMZN accelerated capex in the last two years to meet
         | the demand brought on by Covid. They even over built, but have
         | also launched Buy With Prime to open up their logistical
         | infrastructure as a service. It takes a long time to get where
         | $AMZN is at.
        
       | vishnugupta wrote:
       | Amazon's catalog quality and customer service is going downhill
       | very fast. Shopify has a real opportunity to fill that void.
       | 
       | Amazon was known for maintaining high quality of their catalogue.
       | But since opening up their store front for third party sellers
       | it's resembling flee market by the day. For example they had a
       | very strict policy of one product one page I.e Single Detail Page
       | (SDP), indexed by ASIN. But now exact same product has multiple
       | ASINs. You don't know if it's a fake or genuine.
        
         | alangibson wrote:
         | It's kind of funny how Amazon got totally owned by sellers on
         | their SDP policy. Why compete for the buy button when you can
         | take the same item and sell it under your own trademarked
         | brand, thus making it no longer the same.
         | 
         | I hate the flea market Amazon has turned into, but I have to
         | admit it's a brilliant end run.
        
           | jollybean wrote:
           | It's a brilliant end run for less powerful entities. For
           | others ... the issue may come home to roost.
        
         | hef19898 wrote:
         | Quite a while ago I was asked what a potential Amazon killer
         | could be. My answer was someone who could scale drop shipping
         | to every brick-and-mortar store in a seamless suite covering
         | last-mile delivery all the way down to in shop inventories and
         | POS solutions. Because that would be a limitless catalogue,
         | from local shops and businesses as well as big name brands and
         | everything in between, without any significant inventories.
         | 
         | It seems that Shopify is kind of going in that direction.
        
           | desiarnezjr wrote:
           | This would be way harder than most could imagine. Each of
           | these pieces in aggregate would be interesting but
           | aggregating, expanding, managing each part of the experience
           | would be close to impossible. Kind of like asking what a
           | killer car might be and throwing every feature you can think
           | of into the BOM (like the Simpson's Homer car).
           | 
           | Supply chain, logistics, retail and back office applications
           | of each are very messy. Businesses are messy.
        
         | stefan_ wrote:
         | Not to mention that it is somehow possible to hijack totally
         | unrelated product pages so you get the reviews. Or straight up
         | offering to pay for a good review and not be instantly and
         | permanently banned.
        
         | greatpostman wrote:
         | Not sure if I'm allowed to post this, but I worked that exact
         | technical problem in the Amazon catalog. It's extremely
         | difficult to keep high data integrity of the Amazon catalog
         | when all these 3rd parties are contributing information. It
         | gets abused in every possible way.
         | 
         | Basically third party sellers add info about Asins, which in
         | real time gets merged with existing Asin information. It's all
         | automated
        
           | notatoad wrote:
           | This is one of those big tech company problems that makes me
           | wonder what I'm missing.
           | 
           | Amazon has money. If they cared about the integrity of their
           | catalog, they'd pay people to maintain it instead of giving
           | control over it to the people who most benefit from it being
           | wrong.
        
             | AnssiH wrote:
             | They probably simply estimate that hiring a team to
             | manually maintain (or moderate) their catalog of hundreds
             | of millions of products would cost more than it would
             | improve sales.
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | The machines are just doing what they are told. Im no growth
           | hacker, but if I were in this situation, I would be doing the
           | math to see if the cost of slowing down and having a human in
           | the process provides more money in the long run by increased
           | customer satisfaction and return business rather than the
           | current strategy which could be non filtered for all we know,
           | judging by what we see.
           | 
           | There was a sweet spot, in my recent memory, with Amazon
           | years back where I just got the things I ordered, and it took
           | 2 days at most. This was right before the Amazon button
           | things theyd send with your fabric softener where you'd just
           | press the button and more Snuggle would appear.
           | 
           | The first thing, in my case, was being sent the same items
           | twice, one time it was an entire mattress, which was great,
           | but it was a sign. Next came counterfeit items from known
           | reputable sellers, a side effect of product being binned
           | together, as someone explained to me. Buying from the correct
           | amazon store was a crapshoot, because the counterfeits were
           | in the same bin, allegedly. Essentially someone buying the
           | knockoff could have received the genuine item I paid for.
           | 
           | The final straw was in the same week: receiving a completely
           | different order of items than what I ordered, dog food and
           | womens products when I ordered a keyboard, the price of prime
           | going up, and the fact that everything in the catalog was
           | obvious eastern origin products, misspellings, run-on
           | sentence item titles and other hallmarks that Im about to be
           | alibaba'd when the gear arrives.
           | 
           | The headache just wasn't worth it anymore. I never ordered
           | from amazon again. I absolutely have more cost in finding
           | certain items in town, but I feel better knowing there is a
           | person whos face has pointed in the direction of mine while
           | an item was being exchanged for money, hand to hand. There is
           | a trust in that which Amazon is hopeless to ever capture. I
           | hope this catches on.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | jollybean wrote:
           | Or just 'vet' sellers, for gosh sakes that's how the whole
           | world operates.
           | 
           | They have to put some effort into deciding who they want to
           | carry and not, it's a very regular part of doing business.
        
             | pbhjpbhj wrote:
             | Which costs time and money, when you can just go what
             | Amazon do now and not very them but instead take a
             | percentage on most of their scam sales. It's not like
             | Amazon don't know any of this is happening; they've
             | crunched the numbers for sure. They make more profit being
             | evil.
        
           | pluc wrote:
           | A solution is often just getting rid of the problem. No third
           | party = no problem. The real problem that surfaces then is
           | probably that it's too profitable to throw out and so it
           | becomes something Amazon just chooses to live with as long as
           | it can.
        
             | rdtwo wrote:
             | It's probably too expensive to divorce the two parts now
        
               | ctvo wrote:
               | It's not too expensive, it's just not in Amazon's
               | interest.
               | 
               | Amazon made the decision to pivot to third party sellers
               | because they realized how poorly being an actual online
               | merchant scaled. Why get into that game when you can be
               | the platform and vertically integrate everything from the
               | listing to last mile delivery charging a fee every step
               | of the way?
        
             | clomond wrote:
             | Hypothetically this is not a binary option, they could
             | significantly ramp up the strictness of 3rd party sellers
             | increasing the costs of making multiple, temporary fake
             | seller accounts more challenging.
             | 
             | That said though - this would clearly impact profits
             | proportional to the level of strictness/barriers.
        
             | colinmhayes wrote:
             | Amazon retail's entire profit is from selling ads now.
             | They'd really have to pivot their strategy if they got rid
             | of third party sellers.
        
               | antoniuschan99 wrote:
               | It's true they are double dipping but a seller in some
               | random video said they liked to have their listing show
               | up twice to increase engagement. This is for an Etsy
               | seller though so yea Etsy also does ads too
        
               | treis wrote:
               | I think I'd pay for a prime^2 membership for an Amazon
               | without all of the bullshit.
        
             | kranke155 wrote:
             | You could just have an Amazon option where third party was
             | not included. Just split the brand.
             | 
             | The problem is they built it into the main UI with no care
             | for distinction or customer appraisal of what is going on.
             | And now they have this mess.
        
               | antoniuschan99 wrote:
               | Isn't Amazon all third party now though?
        
               | didibus wrote:
               | No, they sell a lot of their own stuff. Look for Sold by
               | Amazon: https://www.howtogeek.com/695506/how-to-search-
               | for-products-...
               | 
               | They also have a bunch of their own brands:
               | https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17728530011
        
             | Spivak wrote:
             | no third party = shopify eats their lunch
             | 
             | Amazon's whole business is being the fulfillment for 3rd
             | party sellers, you take away that you take away the whole
             | reason people use it. If Amazon was just online 1st party
             | Walmart they would sell almost nothing.
        
               | Kerrick wrote:
               | Even Walmart's website invited third party sellers.
        
           | jessriedel wrote:
           | Honest question: why not swiftly ban 3rd party merchants who
           | do anything that is clearly unethical (e.g., changing product
           | listed while keeping reviews from old product, or buying
           | reviewers off to change their review). If it's an issue of
           | whack-a-mole, ask new 3rd party sellers to post a modest
           | bond. The bond earns interest, and gets returned after N
           | months of good behavior, but gets forfeited if there is a
           | clear ethics violation. Bond amount is proportional to number
           | of items listed, and is set as small as possible to make bad
           | behavior unprofitable.
           | 
           | Also, Amazon customer service continues to be amazing for me.
           | Refund basically anytime for any reason, instantly and fast.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | brianwawok wrote:
             | Bonds are an interesting idea. I think there is a similar
             | idea for email (it cost 1 cent per email to send, refunded
             | if the email isn't spam). I think it would keep a lot of
             | small sellers off the platform, and the math must say it's
             | better to play the wack-a-mole game.
        
           | mbesto wrote:
           | > It's extremely difficult to keep high data integrity of the
           | Amazon catalog when all these 3rd parties are contributing
           | information. It gets abused in every possible way.
           | 
           | So you're saying this isn't a technical problem that can be
           | solved by a technical solution?
           | 
           | > It's all automated
           | 
           | Well I think you found the problem then.
           | 
           | Sears never had this issue because they have humans who do
           | this. They also never had the scale that Amazon has achieved
           | _because_ of those humans.
           | 
           | This is Amazon's blindspot. I'm super bullish on $SHOP
           | because of this.
        
             | relueeuler wrote:
             | At the end of the day, satisfying the customer is what
             | matters. And customers are satisfied when their packages
             | arrive quickly. $SHOP can't compete with that because it
             | has taken $AMZN two decades to build out the logistical
             | infrastructure to support fast delivery times. And now with
             | Buy With Prime program, sellers can use $AMZN logistics as
             | a service.
        
               | redmen wrote:
               | Shopify can partner with Walmart and others while it
               | builds out its own. Amazon took that long because they
               | were cutting through new territory. Now others can
               | emulate them and shopify can buy those companies.
        
         | pluc wrote:
         | As long as there's a near-monopoly masquerading as market
         | domination we will have those problems. Company excels enough
         | to beat bloated dominant competitor until it becomes bloated
         | itself and gets eaten by the next trendy disruptor. Shopify is
         | already really close to it. It's the circle of life!
        
         | ahmed_ds wrote:
         | I think the future of Shopify would be aggregating selected
         | best sellers themselves and trying to beat Amazon on a category
         | per category basis from a single or multiple sites.
        
         | seydor wrote:
         | How is spotify going to avoid becoming another amazin?
        
           | vishnugupta wrote:
           | I guess it can't avoid that trap but time will tell. Funnily
           | a big selling point of Amazon over EBay was SDP. Where as
           | EBay would throw up hundreds of pages for a product Amazon
           | would have just one. Ironically Amazon is now where EBay was
           | 25 years ago. As someone commented above, it's all circle of
           | life.
        
           | redmen wrote:
           | Because they have Joe Rogan.
        
         | didibus wrote:
         | I'd recommend you checkout Amazon's transparency service:
         | 
         | https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency
         | 
         | It lets manufacturers print a unique secret code on their
         | products, and Amazon validates it when it enters and leaves
         | their fulfillment centers. As a user, you can also validate it
         | yourself using the Transparency app you can download from
         | Google Play or the AppStore.
         | 
         | That way you know you're not getting counterfeit.
         | 
         | I think it's relatively new, so not a lot of manufacturers use
         | it yet. And I don't think you can filter on transparency
         | enabled products in the search yet either.
        
           | zucked wrote:
           | The consumer shouldn't have to parse whether or not their
           | goods are genuine... that's squarely in the wheelhouse of the
           | merchant. This is Amazon's problem to fix, don't you even for
           | a second suggest foisting this onto the consumer.
        
           | pkulak wrote:
           | That sounds like a wonderful way to shift work to the
           | customer. Holy smokes, does this mean that Amazon has totally
           | given up on actually solving the problem? I'll order direct
           | from the manufacturer long before I start cryptographically
           | verifying all my deliveries.
        
             | petra wrote:
             | " Amazon scans each individual Transparency-enabled code to
             | ensure that only authentic products are shipped."
        
             | didibus wrote:
             | It says they verify the codes when it enter and leaves
             | their fulfillment centers as well, but if the seller was
             | shipping direct to you, not using Amazon fulfillment,
             | there's not much Amazon can do, so they let you check it
             | yourself.
        
           | sytelus wrote:
           | This is not scalable. You are literally asking thousands of
           | manufacturers to alter their manufacturing process. A much
           | better way is to establish trust certificate. For example, if
           | I want to sell something at Amazon and want to have
           | "Verified" mark, I should submit my identification documents
           | plus documents that establishes my relationship with
           | manufacturers (ex "authorized dealers"). This is already done
           | by many in real world and the question is just to bring it
           | online.
        
             | didibus wrote:
             | They do something similar, see:
             | https://www.amazonsellers.attorney/blog/what-invoices-
             | amazon...
             | 
             | Basically verifying your supply chain.
        
             | nickff wrote:
             | This sounds good, but is not a robust and reliable
             | methodology. There are many problems including:
             | 
             | - Some authorized resellers mix in counterfeits with real
             | goods.
             | 
             | - Other authorized resellers are only authorized to
             | distribute certain items, but get others through 'shady'
             | channels.
             | 
             | - Some resellers will sell returned or repaired items.
             | 
             | - Most resellers don't actually have time-limited deals.
             | 
             | - Agreements lapse, and figuring out who is permitted to
             | distribute what is complicated.
             | 
             | - None of these measures are actually verifiable by the
             | concerned consumer.
        
           | thaumasiotes wrote:
           | > I'd recommend you checkout Amazon's transparency service:
           | 
           | > https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency
           | 
           | Huh! This is pretty interesting, and it directly addresses
           | the problem of inventory commingling that we've heard so much
           | about.
           | 
           | The program doesn't seem to be in a very functional state
           | yet, though, and I see a fundamental issue with it.
           | 
           | Products sold on Amazon do not indicate whether they are
           | protected by the transparency program. (I checked for this by
           | searching for the word "transparency" on the Cards Against
           | Humanity product page - Cards Against Humanity is listed on
           | the transparency program page as one of the brands enrolled
           | in the program.[1]) This makes the program nearly useless to
           | the customer. It could still be useful to the manufacturer,
           | though, by preventing customers from receiving counterfeit
           | products.
           | 
           | The fundamental problem is that the counterfeits-on-Amazon
           | problem arose in the first place due to Amazon's method of
           | not caring which individual item came from which vendor.
           | Their system enabled them to not keep track of the provenance
           | of an item. And this new system seems to require them to
           | track genuine items. If they're going to do that, they can
           | already do it entirely on their own end of things.
           | 
           | However, it does look like Amazon sees the transparency
           | program as something to be implemented by _manufacturers_ and
           | not by vendors. On that model, they 'd continue commingling
           | everything like usual, and a vendor sending in a counterfeit
           | item wouldn't be able to sell the item at all, as opposed to,
           | say, selling it at a suspiciously low price and having their
           | suspicious item reliably go to the same person who bought at
           | the suspicious price. Amazon already tracks the identity of
           | the item, so validity stamping by the manufacturer would fit
           | into their system fairly seamlessly.
           | 
           | [1] This is itself entirely useless to the customer. No one
           | will ever care if they get a "counterfeit" version of a card
           | game, as long as the content of the cards is the same.
        
       | ale42 wrote:
       | ... and Shopify stock goes down by 17% today... (not sure whether
       | it's related or not)
        
         | sleepyhead wrote:
         | no, due to slow growth in Q1 and generic tech meltdown.
        
       | no_wizard wrote:
       | I been itching to work at Shopify for a little while now. This
       | makes me even more excited for them! This should be interesting
       | in how they are positioning themselves against the backdrop of
       | Amazon and Walmart. Its strange to think that Shopify is almost
       | the upstart against a giant like Walmart or Amazon in terms of
       | capturing the retail end / customer experience side of things.
       | 
       | I suppose its a strategy to diverse their commerce portfolio.
        
         | mabbo wrote:
         | We _are_ hiring. Full remote from almost anywhere worldwide.
        
           | no_wizard wrote:
           | Lets get in touch, if possible? If that is something you'd be
           | open to doing anyways. email is in profile.
        
           | ForTheWin98 wrote:
           | Good luck getting through the process. Shopify HR is very
           | slow. It was not pleasant dealing with them. I heard one
           | reason for the slowness is that many HR employees have quit.
        
             | d4mi3n wrote:
             | I recently accepted an offer from Shopify and they did a
             | reasonable job. 3 or 4 calls over 2 weeks, with an offer
             | less than 3 days after my last call. Rates were very
             | competitive for my roll and skillset.
             | 
             | That said, they do seem to be going through--or have
             | recently gone through--a fair amount of attrition due to
             | declining stock prices. Not surprising given the stock
             | situation and all, but definitely something to factor in if
             | you're considering working there.
             | 
             | EDIT: I'd also like to mention that it was a very humane
             | interview process. I felt well treated, and they definitely
             | seem to be screening more for successful employees than
             | they are to filter out as many applicants as they can. Take
             | that as you will, but I respect an org that treats it's
             | employees well.
        
       | JonathanBeuys wrote:
       | marketplaces like Amazon have trained consumers         to expect
       | products delivered to their doorsteps         within 1-2 days
       | 
       | I am always surprised that delivery takes so long. Why does it
       | have to take days?
       | 
       | If I have a fleet of cars and/or bikes that constantly swarm out
       | from my distribution center, why can't a delivery be done in
       | hours or even minutes?
        
         | SteveNuts wrote:
         | Proximity to where the products are housed.
         | 
         | Most companies, especially small ones don't do the volume
         | required to make stockpiling enough products close to the
         | consumer to make it worthwhile.
        
           | JonathanBeuys wrote:
           | But they are talking about _Amazon_. That is not a small
           | company.
        
             | Spivak wrote:
             | Rephrased, individual merchants on Amazon don't move enough
             | volume to have their products stocked at every warehouse on
             | the planet. And the ones that do Amazon has started
             | offering "tonight" delivery.
        
         | tommoor wrote:
         | This video is a good explainer:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qanMpnYsjk
        
         | tyrfing wrote:
         | Cost. I'll list some reasons why hours is often not possible.
         | 
         | - Products can't always be fulfilled by the closest location.
         | Especially for products that you can't assume infinite stock
         | of, this is a big deal, but in general there is an incredibly
         | long tail of things sold. Look around the sites of Target,
         | Walmart, Home Depot, and similar, look at what's in stock
         | where. It's not universal coverage, and Amazon has much lower
         | density of locations as well as higher SKU counts. If an order
         | is split across multiple locations, it would be cheaper but
         | take longer to first combine them at one rather than deliver
         | the parts separately.
         | 
         | - Last-mile efficiency. Stops are clustered and dispatched
         | together, which reduces labor time and mileage. The total cost
         | of 10 spread out stops could easily be the same as 40 more
         | tightly packed ones, and the second won't be an option if
         | they're out for delivery within hours.
         | 
         | - Labor efficiency. There are a lot of humans involved still,
         | despite the best efforts of these companies, and a bit of
         | latency allows for consistent utilization despite hour-to-hour
         | and day-to-day changes.
         | 
         | Lastly, delivery within hours _is_ offered. Walmart calls it
         | Express Delivery, Amazon has Same-Day Delivery (as well as some
         | 2 hour delivery), Target has Same Day Delivery. These are just
         | premium services with limited selection because it 's expensive
         | to do, and modern Free Shipping is an illusion of shipping
         | being too cheap to price when it really isn't. It's cost
         | optimizations all the way down and still not enough.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kadomony wrote:
       | So is this why Shopify pays peanuts to their employees? For the
       | big acquisitions?
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | This is a tiny acquisition as a % of their market cap...
        
         | boringg wrote:
         | I haven't heard that Shopify underpays their employees .. What
         | are you talking about?
         | 
         | I know Amazon underpays their delivery people/warehouse.
        
           | kadomony wrote:
           | Shopify absolutely underpays its tech employees. It's often
           | below market average, but they think the prestige of Shopify
           | is akin to Google, so people will settle for less.
        
             | boringg wrote:
             | Can you define underpays its tech employees more
             | specifically - salary or total comp?
             | 
             | I mean they don't have the same capital as a company like
             | Amazon/Google/Facebook so obviously can't go toe to toe if
             | that's who you are comparing against. However Shopify's
             | equity compensation aligns with Tesla (underpay but
             | employees earn on equity) probably more than made up and
             | then some compared to all those companies if you have
             | worked there for more than one year. If you just joined
             | then yeah your equity packages just tanked - as did all the
             | major tech companies.
        
               | dvdhnt wrote:
               | Not OP but current employee.
               | 
               | They "underpay" compared to Google, etc and compared to
               | the Bay. But Shopify is a Canadian company first (I'm in
               | the US) and they pay me a salary well over the average
               | for my area (double), not much less than what I was
               | offered by other remote companies (within ~$10k) but
               | pushed north of $200k/yr by adding stock.
               | 
               | We also recently received info on a new pay structure
               | that basically lets us choose how much of our TC is $$$
               | and how much is stock. We're excited and people will be
               | given raises. There are news articles you can read
               | online.
               | 
               | Shopify also aims to be a "100 year" company. It means
               | not paying in the top 10, but also not overworking
               | employees or firing the bottom 10% every year.
               | 
               | As someone who isn't in the Bay... they pay just fine for
               | new hires and for tenured employees once they finish
               | raises.
        
               | shmatt wrote:
               | As someone in the U.S market, they recruit for US/Canada
               | agnostic but they pay the Canadian TC. So for people in
               | the U.S who can pass an average big company/FAANGMULA
               | interview loop, they always end up dead last in the offer
               | TC
               | 
               | I really can't speak for Canadians, but U.S engineers
               | definitely need to take a potential pay cut to join the
               | cul...erm company
        
       | mherdeg wrote:
       | Holey moley, we're down to $400/share - the time machine to 2020
       | is complete. Is this a bargain yet? Can I buy it yet?
       | 
       | I have really enjoyed the Shopify checkout experience as a
       | customer.
        
         | blantonl wrote:
         | Take it from someone who was assigned 300 shares of SHOP @
         | 1100/share, this hurts. It hurts bad.
        
           | jfb wrote:
        
           | upupandup wrote:
           | that's $330,000 is now $150,000. What percentage of your
           | portfolio was it? I never really understood what shopify was,
           | it seemed like most of it were drop shippers and people
           | thinking they can make $100 t-shirts.
           | 
           | Especially after Citron Research came out with a damning
           | report on inflation of metrics.
           | 
           | I really don't get all the people cheering on Shopify in the
           | comments for this acquisition when they are missing earnings
           | by a huge margin and faces existential crisis...it's ngmi
        
             | throwaway34957 wrote:
             | Andrew Left's research methods were flawed to say the
             | least, if they were even worthy of the word 'research'. A
             | bit of Googling and then concluding the company is lying
             | since he can't find all the Shopify stores. The FTC
             | investigation he was so sure of never materialized and he
             | deleted the video from https://citronresearch.com/citron-
             | exposes-the-dark-side-of-s...
             | 
             | Also, he promised to donate $200k if Shopify traded over
             | $200 12 months later, which it did. Did he keep that
             | promise after he pulled out?
             | https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/shopify-shop-stock-
             | price-s...
        
             | jeromegv wrote:
             | If you were working in e-commerce you'd know why millions
             | of merchant use them, it's a good and easy software to use.
             | They have tons of problems, like any company, but people
             | are migrating TOWARDS shopify, not the other way around, in
             | huge majority.
             | 
             | Etsy, amazon, eBay, all missed earnings due to lower ecom
             | growth after covid. People are cheering the product, not
             | the stock price. Clearly those 2 are not always correlated
             | (even if clearly they could do better)
        
               | ineedasername wrote:
               | I don't know about the others but Amazon missed things
               | because of a $7B+ loss on Rivian investments. Otherwise
               | their growth had slowed, but the actual core business is
               | still growing.
               | 
               | The Rivian investment is a bit of a head scratcher
               | though. I get that electricity costs could bring down
               | shipping costs vs. ICE vehicles, but they could order
               | their 100,000 trucks without buying 20% of a business
               | that's somewhat orthogonal to their core competency,
               | which is definitively _not_ vehicle manufacturing. Sure
               | they 're more of a logistics business than retailer at
               | this point but owning a manufacturer... do they have big
               | stakes in the established traditional manufacturers?
        
             | blantonl wrote:
             | It's about 10% now of my trading portfolio right now. I've
             | been selling options on SHOP for the past few years since
             | the premiums are high, but admittedly I got caught flat
             | footed on this one. My cost basis in SHOP is much lower
             | given the huge premiums I've collected over the past 2
             | years.
             | 
             | Never forget though, the premiums are/were high for a
             | reason.
        
           | mabbo wrote:
           | I joined and got granted at 1560/share with Staff Dev share
           | counts.
           | 
           | If the comp changes don't really do a lot, I'm out roughly a
           | 6-figure number per year (CAD).
        
         | ShivShankaran wrote:
         | With a valuation of around $12B, each Shopify share is a
         | bargain at around $80 give or take few dollars
        
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