[NEWS] Shopify quietly acquired Handshake, an e-commerce platform for B2B wholesale purchasing – Loganspace

E-commerce platformShopifyhas quietly made an acquisition to continue its growth of the companies and products that merchants can sell and defend close by means of its platform. It has gotHandshake, a Recent York startup presents a commerce platform for businesses that sell wholesale items.

Shopifyhas confirmed the deal in a short deliver:

“Handshakeis now a section of Shopify. Now we comprise in thoughts acquisitions within the unparalleled course of industry as we level of curiosity on making commerce better for everyone.” It hasn’t disclosed the value but a source tells us it turned into as soon as below $100 million.

We also bought an emailed tip that noted that the acquisition turned into as soon as launched to crew earlier this month, and that the crew, is working as section of Shopify’s prolonged carrier tier, Shopify Plus, headed by David Moellenkamp. Indeed, Handshake’s profile on LinkedIn now indicates that it turned into as soon as got by Shopify, andGlen Coates, who had been the founder and CEO of Handshake, is now the director of product at Shopify Plus.

Handshake had raised about $23.5 million and turned into as soon as valued in its final spherical (in 2016 — cloak that it’snow no longer this Handshake) at steady below $54 million, in accordance withPitchBook. Merchants included Boldstart Ventures, Emergence Capital, SoftTech VC, Level Nine and others. (We’re searching for out extra on the value.)

The different that Handshake had identified, and now Shopify is concentrated on, is the discontinuance of the e-commerce marketplace for brands and other merchants selling objects wholesale, potentially alongside user-focused retail efforts.

Right here is mountainous industry: acontemporary memoirchanced on that B2B e-commerce sales within the U.S. by myself passed $1 trillion for the first time in 2018. As with user-focused sales, platforms fancy Handshakes provide merchants the flexibility to tackle these sales straight away, in preference to handing off the sales to third-social gathering marketplaces.

Handshake’s customers include the likes of Bugaboo, Williams Sonoma and Roland.

This deal comes at an spell binding time for Shopify.

Some weeks within the past, we reported on howMailchimp and Shopifyhad stopped working collectively, only to search out out days later that Mailchimp had indubitably also quietlygot an e-commerce startupto delivery out as a lot as plot out extra procuring tools for its customers. In that regard, this most modern acquisition by Shopify underscores the strategy in which it’s also rising and expanding its scope — albeit in a formula that puts it into closer competition with the likes of Alibaba and Amazon, which themselves comprise carved out a solid discipline as B2B marketplaces.