This past week Shopify invested an undisclosed amount in Faire, a B2B marketplace.
Our Shopify partnership kicks off today with the launch of our official Faire buyer and seller apps in the Shopify App Store. These new apps build upon our existing order-syncing and inventory tools while adding new features that save time and reduce tedious, manual updates between systems. Faire
Shopify has a terrible record with acquisitions. They spent billions on Deliverr only to give it to Flexport in exchange for a larger stake in the company. Remember when they acquired Handshake to help their merchants find new products via wholesale? Not a lot of success to show after spending billions to hopefully add more revenue opportunities.
Over the last 18 months, it seems that Shopify has started taking a different approach to acquisitions. They acquire stakes in companies and help these companies grow via offering them access to the Shopify ecosystem. Shopify invested an undisclosed amount in Nigerian fintech business, Nomba.
Shopify is being opportunistic as many of the companies they are investing in are in need of capital as they are either overvalued or not able to raise capital at the desired valuation from venture capital firms. The investment in Faire is both strategic as Shopify can offer it to their customer base but also likely generate a return on the late stage investment. It also noteworthy that most of their partnerships/investments now also contain apps that Shopify customers can add to their stores.