Amazon.com Webstore Platform Does Not Pass Muster For Small Business Owner

Central Point, Oregon:  Small business owner Rickey Williams of BrewersMark.com recently had to make a decision about growing his company, a choice that turned out to be a no-decision.

Looking for a way to enhance the branding of his company, Williams first looked at Amazon’s Marketplace service, which was designed to let online retailers create and manage their own web stores, with Amazon providing the necessary tools, platform and expertise.  This seemed like an ideal fit for the Brewers Mark brand, since the company was already selling its signature manual burr coffee grinder on Amazon.com's regular retail website. 

According to Williams, “the biggest appeal for us was that we would be able to sell our products on both the Amazon Webstore and on Amazon.com at the same time, maximizing the number of new customers that would be able to find us as well as building our brand.”

To the surprise of many ecommerce retailers however, Amazon announced this year that it was discontinuing the Amazon Webstore.  No new members are being accepted, and the service will be terminated July 1, 2016.  Instead, Amazon has named Shopify.com, with about 175,000 webstore customers, as its recommended migration partner. Now, ecommerce retailers using Shopify as their platform will be able to integrate seamlessly with Amazon.

For Williams, that means he can have a standalone internet store for his products, with his branding, not Amazon’s.  However, he can still sell the same products as an Amazon seller, and even use Amazon’s fulfillment center warehouses to hold his inventory and make deliveries to his customers.  As of this week, the Brewer’s MarK burr coffee grinder, already available on Amazon.com can also be purchased at brewersmark.com.

When asked specifically about how this move will grow his brand, Williams mentioned two important capabilities.   He cited “Shopify includes a built in mobile e-commerce shopping cart, which lets us reach the growing number of shoppers who use their cell phones to buy things. Also, Shopify provides ‘abandoned checkout cart’ recovery support, which gives us a second chance at would-be buyers who get interrupted in the middle of the checkout process.”