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Shopify isn't a homogeneous marketplace that is comparable to Amazon.com. It's a SaaS ecommerce platform. I've seen these comparisons made lately and I don't un

Shopify isn't a homogeneous marketplace that is comparable to Amazon.com. It's a SaaS ecommerce platform. I've seen these comparisons made lately and I don't understand it. What am I missing?

gkoberger 7y ago
Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it from the perspective of "I want to sell something... where do I go?", they're competition. They do discovery, checkout, inventory, fulfillment, etc. It just happens to have a slightly different approach than the others.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  Not really the same thing though, Amazon/eBay/Etsy you can browse multiple "stores". Shopify is just a platform so it really isn't that fair. It'd be like including every single Magento powered site to say Magento is the X largest platform.
  - tjchear 7y ago
    Yeah but that's from the perspective of buyers, so OP's point still stands.
  - mtgx 7y ago
    You can look at it as a "decentralized platform". Adding search across stores = centralized.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  They do discovery? At Amazon and eBay most purchases come via Amazon's and eBay's search engines. Shopify doesn't have a search engine other than the ones inside individual stores. It's a very different business.
- meerita 7y ago
  Not really, type shopify.com and let me know if you can buy a pair of shoes. You can't. You go to eBay and you can. Shopify is just the platform and the entire ecosystem supports the amount of transactions.
- wil421 7y ago
  One of those is not like the others. I just went to Shopify.com and I can’t find anything for sale. Shopify is a SaaS platform not a marketplace.
tpurves 7y ago
The seller side is the perspective that matters in this comparison. If you have wares to sell and want to start selling through the internet though a managed platform, amazon, ebay, etsy and shopify are competing options for you. A main difference is shoppify you do still need to bring your own consumer traffic to your site, others have a captive audience of shoppers already, but will likely cost you more out of each sale because of that.
wmeredith 7y ago
What you’re missing is that comparing a company people have never heard of to a FAANG company generates clicks.
Axsuul 7y ago
For everyone that's trying to compare Shopify to marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, you really can't. They are apples to oranges. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that gives you your own website where you’re required to do your own marketing, SEO, and develop your own customer base. Selling on eBay and Amazon on the other hand gives you the advantage of putting your products in front of millions of customers who are actively window shopping. The former gives you ownership of the customer while the latter doesn’t. Both types of sales channels have their own value props and are complimentary to each other. Furthermore, even each marketplace attracts their own customer archetypes so they can also be complimentary to each other. This isn’t a binary strategy where you choose to sell on one or the other! I’m the founder of Trunk[1] which helps online e-commerce stores sync their inventory in real-time across their sales channels. Most of my customers on average sell on least 3 places (e.g. Shopify, eBay, and Amazon). Congrats to Tobias and his team. He’s come a long way from being a Rails core team member back in the day! 1. https://trunkinventory.com https://trunkinventory.com
- polyvisual 7y ago
  Trunk looks useful... my side business is handmade leather goods (https://coastleather.com https://coastleather.com) and cross posting between my own website, ebay, etsy and amazon is a pain, so I just don't bother. This has meant that channels other than my website became stale and I shut down the stores. Do you have plans to include syncing for woocommerce stores?
  - Axsuul 7y ago
    Congrats on the success of your store :) Yea, we do! WooCommerce is one of our most requested integrations and I’ll be getting to it soon. Trunk doesn’t yet support cross-posting however but this will be a Q4 intiative. Would inventory syncing be enough for you to get value from Trunk at the moment? I’d love to get in touch: james@trunkinventory.com
- jaziek 7y ago
  This looks incredibly useful. Real-time inventory sync is a big headache for some of our customers. (We provide a native mobile sales channel for retailers with only a traditional web presence. Think Tapcart (https://tapcart.co/ https://tapcart.co/), but not just for Shopify). I'd like to know what your plans are for which platforms to support next, and if you've got ideas for opening up an API at some point as well?

Shopify isn't a homogeneous marketplace that is comparable to Amazon.com. It's a SaaS ecommerce platform. I've seen these comparisons made lately and I don't understand it. What am I missing?

gkoberger 7y ago

Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it from the perspective of "I want to sell something... where do I go?", they're competition. They do discovery, checkout, inventory, fulfillment, etc. It just happens to have a slightly different approach than the others.

dawnerd 7y ago
Not really the same thing though, Amazon/eBay/Etsy you can browse multiple "stores". Shopify is just a platform so it really isn't that fair. It'd be like including every single Magento powered site to say Magento is the X largest platform.
- tjchear 7y ago
  Yeah but that's from the perspective of buyers, so OP's point still stands.
- mtgx 7y ago
  You can look at it as a "decentralized platform". Adding search across stores = centralized.
greglindahl 7y ago
They do discovery? At Amazon and eBay most purchases come via Amazon's and eBay's search engines. Shopify doesn't have a search engine other than the ones inside individual stores. It's a very different business.
meerita 7y ago
Not really, type shopify.com and let me know if you can buy a pair of shoes. You can't. You go to eBay and you can. Shopify is just the platform and the entire ecosystem supports the amount of transactions.
wil421 7y ago
One of those is not like the others. I just went to Shopify.com and I can’t find anything for sale. Shopify is a SaaS platform not a marketplace.

tpurves 7y ago

The seller side is the perspective that matters in this comparison. If you have wares to sell and want to start selling through the internet though a managed platform, amazon, ebay, etsy and shopify are competing options for you. A main difference is shoppify you do still need to bring your own consumer traffic to your site, others have a captive audience of shoppers already, but will likely cost you more out of each sale because of that.

wmeredith 7y ago

What you’re missing is that comparing a company people have never heard of to a FAANG company generates clicks.

Axsuul 7y ago

For everyone that's trying to compare Shopify to marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, you really can't. They are apples to oranges. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that gives you your own website where you’re required to do your own marketing, SEO, and develop your own customer base. Selling on eBay and Amazon on the other hand gives you the advantage of putting your products in front of millions of customers who are actively window shopping. The former gives you ownership of the customer while the latter doesn’t. Both types of sales channels have their own value props and are complimentary to each other. Furthermore, even each marketplace attracts their own customer archetypes so they can also be complimentary to each other. This isn’t a binary strategy where you choose to sell on one or the other! I’m the founder of Trunk[1] which helps online e-commerce stores sync their inventory in real-time across their sales channels. Most of my customers on average sell on least 3 places (e.g. Shopify, eBay, and Amazon). Congrats to Tobias and his team. He’s come a long way from being a Rails core team member back in the day! 1. https://trunkinventory.com https://trunkinventory.com

polyvisual 7y ago
Trunk looks useful... my side business is handmade leather goods (https://coastleather.com https://coastleather.com) and cross posting between my own website, ebay, etsy and amazon is a pain, so I just don't bother. This has meant that channels other than my website became stale and I shut down the stores. Do you have plans to include syncing for woocommerce stores?
- Axsuul 7y ago
  Congrats on the success of your store :) Yea, we do! WooCommerce is one of our most requested integrations and I’ll be getting to it soon. Trunk doesn’t yet support cross-posting however but this will be a Q4 intiative. Would inventory syncing be enough for you to get value from Trunk at the moment? I’d love to get in touch: james@trunkinventory.com
jaziek 7y ago
This looks incredibly useful. Real-time inventory sync is a big headache for some of our customers. (We provide a native mobile sales channel for retailers with only a traditional web presence. Think Tapcart (https://tapcart.co/ https://tapcart.co/), but not just for Shopify). I'd like to know what your plans are for which platforms to support next, and if you've got ideas for opening up an API at some point as well?