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Comment by acwan93 | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I wonder if Shopify’s long-term plan is to do something like this.

It's probably the leading direct-to-consumer platform out there right now, it’s touted sometimes as the anti-Amazon. The leading D2C brands I’ve seen are on there (Allbirds, Atoms, Untuckit) as well as random drop shippers. Shopify is also expanding into a fulfillment network too: https://www.shopify.com/fulfillment

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Maybe. But I think the first step is that Shopify creates a means of unified discovery across its many merchants. Maybe not quite a unified store front like Amazon, but maybe a unified search listing, like Google Shopping. Probably also get into recommendations across stores as well. There is a lot of related opportunities here once Shopify starts to link data and search and recommendations (and eventually ads) across their various stores.

I think they want to do something like this. The problem is that Shopify has zero traction with consumers. Until they solve the problem of getting consumers to search for products on their platform, they'll have no success. That's a tall mountain to climb.

Yeah I mean, the brands themselves have generated a lot of buzz. But the average consumer still doesn’t know what Shopify is.

Whatever their plan is, this type of behavior is good for Shopify carving out their growing niche serving up strongly branded products.

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