Amazon acquires Shopify competitor Selz

Amazon has bought Selz, a company that makes tools to help companies launch their own online stores.

Amazon quietly acquired the e-commerce platform on Jan. 15, but did not disclose the acquisition. Selz announced the deal in a post on the company’s blog.

“We’ve signed an agreement to be acquired by Amazon and we’re looking forward to working with them as we continue to build easy-to-use tools for entrepreneurs,” Martin Rushe, CEO and founder of Selz, said in the blog post.

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the acquisition. The spokeswoman declined to disclose the terms of the deal. Selz representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In recent months, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has launched Shopify, an e-commerce facilitator that has seen its business soar during the pandemic, as a competitor, as consumers have turned to retailers in line of both essential and non-essential goods during the pandemic. .

Previously, Amazon had a service similar to Shopify, called Amazon Webstore, which allowed small businesses to run online stores based on Amazon technology. However, the company closed Amazon Webstore in 2015.

The acquisition of Selz comes as Amazon’s third-party market, made up of more than 2.5 million sellers, continues to thrive. The segment now accounts for more than half of Amazon’s ecommerce sales and has helped Amazon make record revenue.

Providing more tools for small and medium-sized businesses to move their online operations quickly could give Amazon a competitive edge over Shopify and e-commerce software company BigCommerce.

Founded in 2013, Selz is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, and offers small and medium-sized businesses a platform to launch their own online stores and add online payment options to existing websites, among other tools. The company employs less than 50 people, according to LinkedIn.

In the blog post, Rushe said “nothing is changing” for Selz customers as a result of Amazon’s acquisition.