Chasing Big Brother! In 2020, Shopify's market size has reached 40% of Amazon's

Shopify's full-year financial results, which were just released on February 17, showed that the website building platform's gross merchandise volume (GMV) last year was US$119.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 96%.

At the same time, Amazon's GMV in 2020 was US$300 billion, a year-on-year increase of 50%. From this, it can be calculated that Shopify's full-year GMV in 2020 is 40% of Amazon's full-year GMV.

According to the marketplacepulse website, in recent years, the ratio of Shopify's annual GMV to Amazon's GMV has also been increasing year by year: in 2018, the ratio was 25%, and in 2019 it rose to 30%, and in 2020 it accelerated to 40%. In other words, Amazon's market size was 3.9 times that of Shopify in 2018, but it shrank to 3.3 times in 2019, and only 2.5 times in 2020.

The rapid development of Shopify's independent station ecosystem is an impact and threat to Amazon's e-commerce ecosystem. According to reports, Amazon has set up an independent station business research team code-named " Project Santos ", led by Bezos himself, to build a "new online store model" to compete more directly with Shopify.

It is worth noting that "Amazon's focus on Shopify is not mainly related to Shopify as a tool, but the trend that Shopify represents." After all, the growth of Shopify's GMV cannot be compared with Amazon, because Shopify does not provide the same product classification as Amazon; sellers settled in Amazon have not migrated to Shopify on a large scale; and Shopify is not a market, and no consumers will shop directly on Shopify.

But it is undeniable that Shopify's growth signals the viability of direct-to-consumer retail. When Shopify was founded in 2006, Amazon was probably the most effective channel that small brands and retailers could use to reach consumers. But the development of online advertising and social networks in recent years has expanded the channels for e-commerce traffic, and with the help of Google, Facebook and Instagram, Shopify has been able to compete with Amazon.

Five years ago, Shopify was only 1/10 of eBay's size, and in the second quarter of 2020, it surpassed eBay. If Amazon's market size continues to grow by 25% in the next five years, and Shopify's market size further grows by 50%, then Shopify will also be able to surpass Amazon.

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