Wow i forgot all about Shopify. If i am not mistaken Shopify is essentially a site that allows Ma and Pa to set up a small business store fronts,with managed check outs, without any knowledge of coding. What surprises me, however, is that the stock price has soared from $26 in 2015 to over $350 today. I can't help but wonder if there is a market ceiling for them on small businesses who would want to use that service instead of preferring to be closer to potential customers via say a social network site like Facebook (set up a business page there) or simply opening up a storefront on Amazon themselves. I was reading an interesting article on Canadian Profiteer the other day regarding a small online specialty store dealing in light bulbs saying something to the effect that there is nothing worse than having a storefront that no one visits whereby they spent thousands of dollars on development but when it went live it was a lot of hoping/waiting/depending that customers somehow would find their new url among the sea of other specialty stores like them. Being on a big site, like Amazon, that has massive visitors just roaming for anything, including light bulbs, to me would be more confident because there would be a greater chance of being found. Just my opinion.
Being a programmer, i also know that Shopify is not much more than the equivalent of a skinned template, a WordPress account, and WooComerce plugin. With just those three i can have my own shopify client up and running in about 30 mins. The longest part would be to populate each product in my store. What i am getting at is, I wonder if Shopify isn't as walled off from a potential market collapse over night when there are other debatably more appealing services for small businesses. |
