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 bought Selz, a company that produces tools to help companies launch their own online stores.
Amazon quietly purchased the e-commerce platform on January 15, but did not publish the purchase. Selz announced the deal in a post on the company’s blog.
“We have signed an agreement to be purchased by Amazon and look forward to working with them as we continue to build easy-to-use tools for entrepreneurs,” Martin Rushe, CEO and founder of Selz, said in a blog post.
An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the purchase. The spokesman refused to disclose the terms of the deal. Selz representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In recent months, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has zeroed in on Shopify, an e-commerce facilitator that has seen its business grow during the pandemic as a competitor as consumers turn to online retailers. for both essential and non-essential goods during the pandemic. .
Amazon previously operated a similar service to Shopify, called the Amazon Webstore, which allowed small businesses to run online stores built on Amazon technology. However, the company closed Amazon Webstore in 2015.
Selz’s acquisition comes as Amazon’s third-party market, which has 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 bring in record revenue.
Providing more tools for small and medium businesses to quickly move their online operations could give Amazon a competitive advantage over Shopify and eCommerce software company BigCommerce.
Founded in 2013, Selz is headquartered in Sydney, Australia and offers small and medium-sized businesses a platform to launch their own online stores and add online payment options to existing websites, among other tools. The company has less than 50 employees, according to LinkedIn.
In the blog post, Rushe said that “nothing changes” for Selz customers as a result of the Amazon acquisition.