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Comment by ryaniscool | Hacker News Reader

Yes and no. Essentially this is already happening, except they are drop-shipping you the product for next to nothing direct from China. In fact, there is a small industry that revolves around this business model. The barrier of entry has just risen dramatically with this news.

https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping

There are thousands of small drop-shipping businesses based in North America that depend on cheap postal service from China. Excuse me while I go short Shopify stock.

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I see this as a positive for Shopify. We work very closely with the platform, and over the years I have only seen a handful of direct-from-Chinese dropshipping sites that actually produce any revenue. Sure there are a lot of accounts that are opening with the hopes of a get-rich-quick scheme with low cost and risk.

I am certain that it is the legitimate businesses that are behind Shopify's success, and this will help with their reputation and give them a chance to focus their marketing on the right customers.

Check out Shopify's marketplace for selling online businesses [0]. I limited the search to dropshipping. Dozen's of businesses with five figure monthly revenue and a few with more than that. Revenue data comes directly from Shopify and can't be edited by the seller. These are just the businesses for sale. I would call this more than a handful.

Look, Shopify is a great product and long-term I only see it growing. That being said, I would think the loss of Chinese dropshipping would hurt it's short term outlook.

[0]https://exchangemarketplace.com/shops?businessTypes=21&page=...

Not sure what's changed but that link shows me only one business with 5-figure monthly revenues.

you aren't scrolling past the featured listings...

As a side note, Shopify acquired an app to help with this whole process of importing AliExpress products for drop shipping a few years ago for about $10-15 mil. Oberlo, it is called [1].

I would guess based on the acquisition price that there’s likely a significant enough number of accounts that depend on this whole drop shipping at minimal shipping expense model.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/shopify-acquires-ober...

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