标签亚马逊

这与其说是一个关于 Shopify 的故事，不如说是一个关于供应链中断和公司风险承受能力评估的故事。现在，物流和履约是需要公司全神贯注、严加管教的领域之一。亚马逊可以做到，而 Shopify 却做不到。

Shopify 的履约网络及其在履约游戏中与亚马逊竞争的雄心遭遇挫折。Shopify 正在将其仓库和履约合作伙伴网络缩减一半左右。上周，在一位现有的合作伙伴向 2PM 通报了即将发生的变化之后，我们得知了这一缩减战略的计划。他指出"任何使用定制包装、做批发或配套的商家都不会得到新产品的服务"。Insider 最近的一篇报道正式宣布了这一消息。

此举表明，Shopify 认为自己在更大的零售业格局中处于有利地位。长期以来，Shopify 的目标一直是建立一支 "反叛军"，与亚马逊的大型机器相抗衡。作为一场零售运动，Shopify 在过去一年中取得了不俗的成绩。品牌利用它来启动和建立自己的业务，该公司已成为直接面向消费者的零售业的代名词。它将自己定位为 "反亚马逊"（anti-Amazon），这一市场定位对它很有帮助。但在某些领域，亚马逊的护城河提供了不可否认的优势。

在最好的时候，零售物流也是一项艰巨的任务。过去的一年是最糟糕的一年。供应链中断比 2020 年增加了 88%，其中 47% 的中断影响到 Shopify 的主要市场美国。我们提供了以下数据：

12 月 27 日，我们写道

虽然 Shopify 现在占据优势，但亚马逊的履约系统网络正迅速成为必不可少的。Shopify 的劲敌，最终可能会成为它最需要的合作伙伴。

即使拥有世界一流的软件，Shopify 也无法承受航运业日益增长的复杂性。为什么？因为这是一个需要人力和车辆的行业。软件可以优化人力，但不能取代人力。有一些规则和外部力量决定着运输、交付和退货的状态，即使是最好的软件也无法覆盖这些规则和力量。当混乱成为支配者时，就需要装备精良的机器。亚马逊就是这样的机器。它建立了一个业务和护城河，旨在即使在最糟糕的时期也能保持最佳性能。同样来自十二月：

通过多年的投资，亚马逊已经建立了自己的货运机队，并正在租赁飞机，同时在辛辛那提开设了一个航空枢纽，以避免在假日购物季的这个阶段开始困扰其他零售商的缺货问题。亚马逊以各种方式拓展业务，但其优势不再仅仅是产品和数字驱动。

根据 Insider 的报道和内部人士的报告，Shopify Fulfillment Network 已濒临破产。该公司正在关注第三方收购。它可能会重新调整，缩小仓储面积，并更加关注电子商务最大的痛点之一：退货。现在，对于 Shopify 来说，退货可能不再是一个庞大的履行网络的一部分，而是一个更精简、软件驱动型运营的卖点。

退货是零售业的现代难题之一，使用功能更强的软件可以大大改善这一问题。在 退货后市场我们认为，只要有足够的退货量，退货市场就能蓬勃发展。但首先，Shopify 或像 Loop 这样的 Shopify 合作伙伴需要成为退货管理的实际解决方案。以下是该报告的相关片段：

在分析了数十家仓储企业并采访了无数业主之后，有一点变得很清楚：在这个并不光彩的行业中，隐藏着一个优雅的市场机会。最近，在与一位顶级独立第三方物流公司首席执行官的讨论中，他说道

"除了我们最大的两个客户使用 Loop 外，其余的客户都使用我们的 WMS/OMS 系统来促进他们的退货。我们去年的销售额为 1.5 亿美元，只是杯水车薪。但现在，我们为之发货的客户都没有使用 Shopify 的内部系统来简化流程。

Shopify 在履约方面的挫折提醒我们，为什么亚马逊是罕见的全栈零售商：营销、搜索、购买、发货、退货。这一战略转变为 Shopify 提供了一个机会，使其能够更好地把握下一步行动，而不是作为亚马逊的替代者，而是其潜在的合作伙伴。在 12 月份彭博社关于 Tobi Lutke 领导风格的专题报道中，亚马逊的一位前高管引用了这句话："Shopify让我们看起来像个傻瓜"。这种反应是短视的。零售商一打一打地购买集装箱，他们正在新建 50 万平方英尺的履约设施，或者直接租用整艘集装箱船。物流现在是一个要么全有要么全无的命题，很少有人能比亚马逊更能体现这一新的现实，Shopify 在这一点上应该与亚马逊合作。最后，我们对彭博社的这篇报道提出了不同的看法：

虽然 Shopify 现在占据优势，但亚马逊的履约系统网络正迅速成为必不可少的。Shopify 的劲敌，最终可能会成为它最需要的合作伙伴。

每个人的生活中都需要一个敌人。

作者：Web Smith | 编辑：Hilary Milnes | 艺术：Christina Williams 

In a new feature detailing the trajectory of Shopify, Bloomberg unpacked CEO Tobi Lütke’s distinct management style, the company’s history, and its pointed differences from Amazon. While Amazon’s obsession with its customer and “everything store” tag define it, Shopify is merchant-obsessed and now striving to be the “everywhere store”, underscored by its early-pandemic move to completely virtual work. After years spent building the backbones of small businesses’ online stores, Shopify went public in 2015 and has catapulted to greater heights since the pandemic’s onset as traditional retailers moved online.

Its trajectory is one that Amazon missed out on. A 2015 headline in Recode stated: “Amazon Will Shut Down Amazon Webstore, Its Competitor to Shopify and Bigcommerce.” The report by Jason Del Rey added:

The eCommerce software business focused on small and midsize businesses has become more competitive in recent years as young companies such as Shopify and Bigcommerce have raised gobs of venture capital to expand their tool sets and attract more customers.

Six years later, we’ve learned via Bloomberg that Amazon sold its merchant platform (Webstore) to Shopify for $1 million. In exchange for the more than 80,000 merchants who switched their business to Shopify, Amazon Pay was enabled on the Shopify platform. From Bloomberg:

Bezos and his colleagues believed that supporting small retailers and their online shops was never going to be a large, profitable business. They were wrong – small online retailers generated about $153 billion in sales in 2020, according to AMI Partners. “Shopify made us look like fools,” says [a] former Amazon executive.

Shopify’s success is not due to Amazon’s Webstore misstep, but it afforded the company an advantage in capitalizing on a piece of eCommerce that Amazon underestimated. Amazon didn’t take direct-to-consumer sales seriously enough to work that into its long-term business plan, and it went so far as to set up a competitor for success in that area of retail. It was focused elsewhere, including on its private-label brands. Amazon communicated to many that entrepreneurs aren’t its bread and butter, rather the end customer is.

By focusing on product retail, Amazon left the field open for Shopify to excel in the art of brand development, something that Amazon has notoriously minimized as it built its own retail empire with the Amazon brand at the forefront. With Shopify putting its merchant brands first, its scope expanded beyond small merchants by earning the trust of leading retailers as well. The validation from Amazon, granted when it turned over its Webstore merchants, also helped.

Now, Shopify is stretching its legs to emerge from behind the scenes, tapping creators and big names to appeal to young customers and brands on the rise. Last fall, it hired former Yeezy GM Jon Wexler to lead its creator and influencer program, a move that has already led to deals like BIGFACE Coffee, created by NBA star Jimmy Butler. In No. 759, we wrote on the Wexler era and Shopify’s foray into persona-led brands:

BIGFACE Coffee is the experiment’s first major output of Shopify’s creator program. It’s a project that combines demand, earned media, and a pulse with the technical prowess and support of Shopify Inc.  It uses what Shopify has been known for (physical products) and pairs it with built-in demand (creators) and tests newer forms of commerce and technology (Web3 products / new front end design concepts / etc). Yes, BIGFACE packages a selection of its products with NFTs.

With earned media and more flair, Shopify intends to work on its own brand next. The road ahead will not be easy, however. Shopify is still behind in the critical are of fulfillment management and third-party logistics. While it began investing in fulfillment in 2019, the “last mile” is largely left to merchants whereas Amazon has shouldered one of the heaviest burdens for its sellers.

In this way, Amazon has taken steps to regain its edge on Shopify. Over the summer, it inked a partnership with BigCommerce to provide fulfillment for its merchants, a move that gives a direct Shopify competitor an edge on the leading SaaS provider by extending the power of Amazon’s biggest advantage, full-stack fulfillment. The possibility of it creating a Shopify-killer isn’t ruled out. “Amazon is a worthy rival,” Lütke told Bloomberg. But if the numerous developments covered above are any indication, Shopify’s rival may become a fulfillment partner. In Amazon’s Moat, we explain:

Through years of investments, Amazon has created its own cargo shipping fleet and is leasing planes, along with the opening of an Air Hub in Cincinnati, to avoid out-of-stock problems that have begun plaguing other retailers at this stage in the holiday shopping season. Amazon has stretched its business in myriad ways, but its advantages are no longer just product and digital-driven. On October 5, a container ship ported in Houston, Texas with a ship filled entirely by Amazon.

Shopify’s product pipeline does not include a fleet of shipping vehicles or investments into a midwest air hub, or transnational shipping strategy that consolidates shipments for its vendors. Amazon has passed FedEx in shipping volume and is poised to capture UPS and USPS’s market share as well. Additionally, Amazon will spend $52 billion on warehousing and shipping. Amazon is now in command of nearly 175 million square feet of warehousing with the ability to process, pack, and deliver over 50% of the goods that it sells. [1]

Amazon is approaching a truly vertically integrated logistics network on par with the largest delivery companies in the world. [2]

虽然 Shopify 现在占据优势，但亚马逊的履约系统网络正迅速成为必不可少的。Shopify 的劲敌，最终可能会成为它最需要的合作伙伴。

Edited by Hilary Milnes with art by Alex Remy and Christina Williams 

Frenemies, Part I: Shopify vs. Meta