Amazon acquires Shopify competitor Selz

Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com Inc., speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on Thursday, September 19, 2019.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon has bought Selz, a company that makes tools that businesses can use to open their own online stores.

Amazon tacitly acquired the e-commerce platform on January 15, but did not publish the acquisition. Selz announced the deal in a company blog post.

“We have signed an agreement to be acquired by Amazon and look forward to working with you as we continue to develop user-friendly tools for entrepreneurs,” said Martin Rushe, CEO and founder of Selz, in the blog post.

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the takeover. The spokeswoman declined to disclose the terms of the contract. Representatives from Selz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

For the past few months, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has focused on Shopify, an e-commerce enabler whose business has skyrocketed during the pandemic. As a competitor, consumers turned to online retailers for essential and non-essential goods during the pandemic.

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

The Selz acquisition comes as Amazon’s third-party marketplace, comprised of more than 2.5 million sellers, continues to thrive. The segment now accounts for more than half of Amazon’s e-commerce sales and has helped Amazon achieve record sales.

By providing small and medium-sized businesses with additional tools to quickly move their business online, Amazon could gain a competitive advantage over companies like Shopify and e-commerce software company BigCommerce.

Selz was founded in 2013 and is based in Sydney, Australia. The company offers small and medium-sized businesses a platform to open their own online shops and add online payment options to existing websites. The company has fewer than 50 employees, according to LinkedIn.

In the blog post, Rushe said that “nothing will change” for Selz customers as a result of the takeover of Amazon.