Shopify is unapologetic about being designed for entrepreneurs. But for every creator who has brought their new products to market there are 20 who drop-ship the same ‘stuff’ from China through Ali-Express. It’s the same stuff that is all over Amazon. And if you don’t believe me – try typing “Hammock” into either Amazon or Ali-Express.
Shopify aggressively markets this borderline multi-level-marketing (MLM), get rich quick element of their business around the world – promising amazing results – but the realities for many would be retailers is very different.
So the products are the same, the user experience is the same, the price is pretty much the same. So how does Shopify keep its merchants happy when its customer’s consumers face unpredictable, opaque delivery options? Why buy a hammock from a Shopify seller when Amazon can guarantee delivery?
Shopify is a SaaS solution. So like Amazon, the company knows a lot about what products are working, where they are coming from, where the demand is and where the opportunities lie.
In December 2018, Shopify quietly bought a marketplace – it says “Shopify has the power to unite many small businesses and give them power of a single force” (Sound like a marketplace?)
At its recent partner get together, Shopify announced that it would offer its merchants fulfilment services (in the USA).
The Shopify website boasts a lot of things, including – they are the 3rd biggest retailer in the US? (This is an interesting definition of retailer. One imagines that if you added up the sales going through Magento it might be bigger than Shopify by value.)
Shopify Fulfilment is …
Currently built for businesses shipping 10 to 10,000 orders a day, soon merchants of any size can reclaim the end to end customer experience.
The offer to merchants on the platform includes the ability to:
- Manage Inventory Efficiently. “Intelligent machine learning analyses sales, sends restock alerts, and keeps inventory close to your customers to ensure fast, low cost delivery.” This is the advantage of a SaaS platform – knowing everything about every merchant’s business. This is the bit that Amazon has been criticised for recently – sourcing private label versions of top sellers in direct competition with sellers. Shopify is not big enough to do this yet, but there is nothing stopping them from doing so in the future – especially since they call themselves a retailer.
- Deliver great unboxing moments. “Control the entire customer experience from sale to delivery and keep your brand at every touch-point.” How do you stand out from the crowd and create a unique value proposition if your products arrive at your customers door in unbranded, cheap packaging?
What does this mean for your Shopify Ecommerce Business?
Nothing. Unless you are a Shopify customer in the US, this new feature will not be available to you and even then you will have to apply. If you are an entrepreneur in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, or Malaysia or Indonesia or even Australia. This is not really news – yet.