Ok hot on the heals of Instagram looking to cut Shopify out of the loop with direct ecommerce functionality…
Discussed here:
https://discussion.fool.com/shopify-vs-instagram-34010760.aspx?s…
… comes a similar move from SNAP this time with Amazon:-
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3392475-snap-jumps-visual-shop…
https://www.benzinga.com/tech/18/09/12397884/shop-on-sight-s…
…and yes whilst I did see the Recode interview with Toby denying the possibility of native ecommerce within social media operating without Shopify, I’m not so sure. Firstly half his response to the question wasn’t exactly that question but another point around being the merchant partner - not the social platform partner. Secondly Amazon was signalled as a frenemy with ambitions of its own and not the partner you would believe and thirdly this news has now come out since that interview. He made it very clear Shopify was at odds with Amazon’s Got To Market strategy and value proposition of (total data ownership, business fulfilment control and finally supply chain integration and eventual business absorption or elimination).
Whilst I thought Shopify had a massive future advantage in social commerce (as opposed to ecommerce) - I see plenty of more powerful alliances between the social media and closed loop ecommerce giants (Instagram and Facebook and SNAP with Amazon) eroding that lead and actually supplanting Shopify. Toby better have some good answers for this at the next earnings call. His response in the interview talked about independent small businesses with online to offline and omni channel integration which actually sounded like head on competition with Square/Weebly etc.
Ant
8 Likes
The SNAP thing in particular has no implications to SHOP at all.
Specifically Amazon has this video search feature native to their app. I’ve used it several times and it works great. It will be beneficial to Amazon to have another channel driving this feature. If anything, it furthers the narrative for feature rich ecommerce as a whole, to which Amazon and SHOP serve. How would non-Amazon merchants add this type of feature without a technology company like SHOP? It would at least be difficult and expensive. Not sure if SHOP does have a video search feature or not but they have quite a few tricks. Don’t forget either that SHOP has an Amazon app where with basically the push of a button(and some bucks) the SHOP merchant can start cross selling on Amazon. So SNAP video search results could push the sale to an Amazon merchant that is a SHOP merchant.
The Instagram thing I also see as a benefit to SHOP for much the same reason. SHOP has the same Instagram app partnership. Remember what SHOP does. SaaS and merchant solutions ecommerce platform. The best there is. They involve a whole lot more than listed a few items on FB marketplace.
No, enhancing features for ecommerce on social media is a boost to ecommerce itself. And what companies get a boost from that the most? Social media companies sure want to get some monetization by enabling purchases through their apps. I get that, but their primary goal is to drive user engagement with their platform. That’s how they get ad revenue, which will be a far larger business than a minuscule cut of a transaction.
Darth
9 Likes
Anecdote of one: my friend who started a line of clothing a few years ago is switching over to the IG/SHOP functionality from their previous vendor.
From what I can see, SHOP is still very much in the loop.
2 Likes