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.