I see the below announcement as a huge deal. Remember, it wasn’t too long ago that Shopify integrated with Facebook Shops. This created a whole new distribution channel for Shopify customers, where they could seamlessly expose their Shopify store catalogs on their Facebook merchant pages. Their customers could then buy directly from the Facebook page.
The same thing is now happening with the Walmart deal. The Shopify catalogs would be exposed on Walmart.com, and people who visit that site can buy goods and services from those catalogs. Essentially, Shopify is expanding their reach by quickly integrating their customers’ store catalogs with the most popular shopping sites on the planet. Cool stuff.
"Shopify shares spiked higher on Monday after the company announced a partnership with Walmart to help merchants on Shopify’s e-commerce platform sell their wares on Walmart.com.
“Starting today, Shopify merchants across the U.S. will be able to apply to sell through Walmart.com,” Shopify said. “If approved, they’ll be able to connect their Shopify store to their Walmart Seller Account, enabling them to quickly and easily sync their product catalog and create product listings on Walmart.com. By the end of this year, 1,200 Shopify merchants are expected to be able to sell through the Walmart marketplace.”
Shares of Shopify were up 6.6%, to $791.77, on Monday, while Walmart (WMT) was off 0.1%, at $117.59.
Under the agreement, Shopify will automatically keep merchants’ products synced with Walmart.com, “making it easy to track products, or add and manage product information in bulk, saving “time and effort when listing many different products and product variants.” The service will have no monthly fee; merchants will pay referral fees when they make sales."
It caps off an amazing few weeks for Shopify, just as observers were challenging the valuation they have signed off on 3 significant market place access deals:
Pinterest
Facebook
Walmart
Shopify is becoming the de facto partner for any market place wanting to compete with Amazon.
Whilst the 6.6% lift (practically a double spiffy pop for my oldest tranche), helped my Shopify holding (the largest in my portfolio) at over 20%, it doesn’t make me feel great having been top (or what I thought was top) slicing at 275, 350 and 690. Still if I hadn’t it would have left me with 50% of my portfolio in one stock which wasn’t really a sane allocation. My top slicing funded a 100% gain in TTD - which I can live with, a 50% rise in MDB - not great but ok and most recently a 50% increase in Zoom which is in the money.
Over the weekend I was considering pulling out a larger amount from my Shopify holding but deals like this explain why Shopify is valued at such a stretched premium and also point to how Shopify can grow into its valuation without compression.
Shopify is becoming one of those once in a generation life changing opportunities that you hear about on a par with Berkshire Hathaway, Walmart, Racal/Vodafone, Microsoft and Amazon. It has now surpassed my investment in ARM Holdings as the highest % gainer of my investing lifetime.
It caps off an amazing few weeks for Shopify, just as observers were challenging the valuation they have signed off on 3 significant market place access deals: - Pinterest - Facebook - Walmart
You can add Instagram to that list as well. Both Facebook Pages Shop feature and “Shoppable” Instagram posts have been available to Shopify stores for some time. It is very easy to setup from the Shopify Admin Panel. I’ve done it for someone. It took minutes and all SKUs synced, including metadata like quantities, price, variations, etc. It sounds like the Stores thing is just a new iteration of FB/IG integrated e-commerce.
https://betakit.com/shopify-partners-with-facebook-to-launch… "Shopify has partnered with Facebook since 2015 on its multi-channel e-commerce solution. Shopify is one of several commerce partners on the Facebook Shops initiative. Other partners include BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and ChannelAdvisor. … Facebook Shops will become available for all businesses across Facebook and Instagram over the coming months."
Also, do not forget about the Shopify App Store! Long before Shopify put these new sales channels directly in the Admin Panel for store owners to click on, they were already available via integration apps. Here is one for Amazon and eBay, just as one example: https://apps.shopify.com/codisto-linq?utm_medium=adwords&…