Amazon has acquired Selz, an Australia-based company launched in 2013 that helps small businesses build out their ecommerce capabilities. While Amazon has yet to speak publicly about the acquisition, Selz CEO and Founder Martin Rushe made a short statement on the company’s blog a month ago.
“We have signed an agreement to be acquired by Amazon and are looking forward to working with them as we continue to build easy-to-use tools for entrepreneurs,” read the statement. “Nothing is changing for our customers at this time, and we’ll be in touch with customers as and when we have further updates.”
The deal closed on Jan. 15, 2021, and an Amazon spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to CNBC but declined to disclose details of the sale.
Amazon has been looking for ways to take a bite out of Shopify’s explosive growth. Shopify outpaced Amazon in aggregated third-party sales over Black Friday 2020, bringing in $5.1 billion to Amazon’s $4.8 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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While Amazon Marketplace and Shopify aren’t exactly competitors, the white label nature and drastically smaller seller fees of Shopify are a draw for small- and medium-size businesses at a time when companies are increasingly turning to ecommerce. The acquisition of Selz will allow Amazon to scale a merchant-first ecommerce solution to compete head-to-head with the Shopify model.
Interestingly, at the time this article was published on Feb. 19, the Selz site said they were not taking currently taking new sign-ups.
