Shopify and the Hard Thing About Easy Things

However, there’s another side to this. The pickup and delivery apps (Instacart and the like) are likely to outperform as they capture the high-margin consumer brand marketing dollars, but without the physical retail infrastructure. Building your own distribution via DTC marketing and relationships also gets more important, with Facebook and Shopify... See more

That gets to the real problem with the Shop app: it is not simply that it will likely fail, but more importantly it is a distraction from very real problems that Shopify is uniquely positioned to solve. Instead of competing with its own merchants to see who can do a better job of acquiring customers, Shopify should be pushing even more aggressively... See more

Highly venture-backed DTCs largely have two pathways to longevity and success. They can sell to an incumbent, much in the same way that Bonobos and Jet.com have sold to Walmart, or they can try their luck and go public. The incumbents are willing to overlook the less than ideal DTC economics because what they’re buying isn’t a business model, it’s ... See more