[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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-05 23:00 UTC)