Australia-Based E-Commerce Platform Selz Bought by Amazon

Sydney, Australia, 2021-Mar-25 — /EPR Network/ — Amazon, the multi-billion and popular e-commerce site, bought out Selz, an Australian e-commerce platform based in Sydney. Founded in 2013, Selz is an e-commerce site that assists small businesses by creating catchy sites. Selz is greatly similar to another e-commerce company Shopify, a site that helps new businesses in creating their websites.

Both Selz and Shopify are part of a wider ecosystem of tools that assist businesses in their online operations, customer relationship managers, courier quotes comparison platforms like this one, and a variety of other services that help make online sales cheaper and more convenient for the customer.

Martin Rushe, who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Selz, stated that Selz signed an agreement with Amazon that their business will be acquired by them and they will work with them.

What does Amazon plan on doing with Selz?

Despite being acquired by Amazon, Selz is going to be the same like it was. Amazon is interested in helping small businesses create their own sites.

Before acquiring Selz, Amazon had a service that was similar to Selz called Amazon Webstore. It allowed small businesses to run their online stores using tools provided by Amazon. However, Amazon Webstore was shut down in 2015.

In a move that is not uncommon for big tech companies, Amazon’s acquisition of Selz allows the company to hit the ground running in a field where they have stumbled in the past. The Selz acquisition also positions Amazon to compete with Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce platform that solves problems similar to those tackled by Selz.

The Selz acquisition allows Amazon to grow withing the e-commerce industry. According to Bloomberg, the acquisition will shift Amazon’s position within the e-commerce business. Amazon would be focusing more on white-label shopping with Selz, rather than having buyers getting their products straight from Amazon.com.

By integrating their online stores with Amazon, businesses can benefit from Amazon’s competitive order fulfillment system, while Amazon takes a cut from every sale. It gives the ecommerce giant the opportunity to profit off the marketing efforts and business models built by other stores, while also providing a valuable service for small and medium-sized businesses.

Amazon, Selz, and Shopify

Since Selz provides similar tools to what can be found on Shopify, this creates competition between the two e-commerce sites. This is important because, given that Shopify has its own order delivery systems, people buying from stores created by Shopify are evading Amazon’s

systems entirely. Meaning that while Shopify itself doesn’t sell anything, the collective mass of stores created using its system are making enough sales to become an relevant part of the online sales market.

Through white label agreements, Amazon can use Selz to get a cut of that pie. It’s just a matter of making it easy — if not mandatory — for webstores created using Selz to use Amazon as their order fulfillment service. As mentioned, that would allow Amazon to charge fees, but that’s not all of it.

Selz stores also allow Amazon to spread out its customer base and reach groups who normally wouldn’t choose them as their first option. A Selz store integrated with Amazon can market to and attract customers who prefer a more individual experience, and these stores will likely be immune to the variations in public perception suffered by the Amazon brand. Meaning that even if the main Amazon page becomes unpopular, Amazon will still have reliable sources of online sale revenue.