Shopify vs. Amazon
There aren't many credible threats to Amazon's reign as the king of e-commerce. Shopify, however, is a very legitimate one — and last year they doubled their revenue again, taking in almost $3bn from merchants across the world. eMarketer now estimates that Shopify stores processed a little under 9% of all retail e-commerce in the US last year, second only to Amazon that had 39% market share.
Interestingly, Amazon is taking Shopify pretty seriously. Last month they quietly acquired Selz, an Australian tech company that helps customers "sell digital products, physical products and services all from one simple platform"... which sounds a lot like Shopify.
Everything-as-a-service
Shopify has added features at a phenomenal rate, hoping to do a lot of the "boring" and "complicated" parts of selling online for its customers — for a fee of course. That can include taking payments, marketing, analytics, shipping, inventory and more. The more features they add, the more they make up for the fact that each individual website doesn't have the built-in traffic that selling on Amazon comes with.
Investors recognise the potential of Shopify, and its latest share price gives it a market cap. of about $165bn, which is around 55x its revenue last year. That's a pretty punchy multiple even in this market.
