What Does Amazon Intend To Do With Selz?
Amazon officially (re-)entered Shopify's market with the acquisition of Selz.
The simple fact is there are millions of Amazon sellers without a viable multi-channel storefront. This is a big opportunity for sellers.
The fact that Selz is no longer accepting new signups could mean anything, but here are the possibilities:
These new storefronts will exist ONLY on Amazon.
Amazon plans to formally compete head to head with Shopify in the multi-channel storefront market, but also offer the best connection to Amazon out there.
Time will tell which is the case.
If they are going to enter this market, it's a good strategic move to buy for a few reasons rather than build:
e-commerce stores are a wide and deep space, even for Amazon to invest in, so time to market is better.
Amazon will likely give the team flexibility to keep executing - even if it's for Amazon-only - as a single-threaded unit (it's internal teams are setup this way and part of the reason for their success)
The company only raised about $11M, so the price is low. what they need is distribution. Amazon provides this.
So many people use AWS anyway so it's not like there are tech differences
Some interesting points were raised in the comments section. I’m sharing a few here:
Rajiv Krishna reminds us that “Amazon Webstore shut down in '15 & now they're back in the game with Selz. Wonder what lessons they've learnt? Is that why they took the acquisition route instead of developing another product indigenously?” It’s a great question. I am also curious to see how they apply their learnings in this new iteration.
Rick Kenney says “Seems to be shaping up as a (multiple) choice for merchants: do you want to focus on customer relationships (Shopify) or distributing/selling product (via Amazon).”
David Sandusky had a really interesting point here - “I think this is more about the popularity of the digital download business on Etsy. The number of designers with no equipment/space launching businesses is 🚀” I wish more industry chatter involved rocket ship emojis, personally. The idea of a digital design store with no equipment/space is almost like the ghost kitchens taking over my Seamless/GrubHub/UberEats/Caviar. Is that the corollary in 2021? Space is irrelevant if you can still get people's attention? I digress.
Back on topic is Timothy Peterson, saying “Interesting, partly because I don't know anyone using Selz. Yup, I've been aware, but I have never reco'ed it over other options, either. I look forward to hearing more, more, more about the acquisition by Amazon.” We all do. I’ll be writing more about this soon, I suspect.
