{"id":14578,"date":"2019-03-28T01:06:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T01:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/before-breaking-up-with-shopify-mailchimp-quietly-acqui-hired-lemonstand-a-shopify-competitor.html"},"modified":"2019-03-28T01:06:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T01:06:32","slug":"before-breaking-up-with-shopify-mailchimp-quietly-acqui-hired-lemonstand-a-shopify-competitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/before-breaking-up-with-shopify-mailchimp-quietly-acqui-hired-lemonstand-a-shopify-competitor.html","title":{"rendered":"Before breaking up with Shopify, Mailchimp quietly acqui-hired LemonStand, a Shopify competitor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s an interesting twist on the story from last week about the break-up between Shopify and Mailchimp<\/a>, after the two said they were at odds over how customer data was shared between the two companies. It turns out that before it parted ways with\u00a0Shopify<\/a>, Mailchimp<\/a> quietly made an acquisition of LemonStand<\/a>, one of the e-commerce platform\u2019s smaller competitors, to bring more integrated e-commerce features into its platform.<\/p>\n

After news broke of the rift between Mailchimp and Shopify, rumors started to circulate among people in the world of e-commerce about Mailchimp buying Vancouver-based LemonStand, which announced on March 5<\/a> that it was shutting down its service in 90 days, on June 5, without much of an explanation why.<\/p>\n

We were tipped off on those rumors, so we contacted Ross Paul, LemonStand\u2019s VP of growth and an investor in the startup, who suggested we contact Mailchimp. (Paul now lists Mailchimp as his employer on his LinkedIn profile<\/a>.) Mailchimp confirmed the deal, describing it as an acqui-hire, with the team now working on light e-commerce functionality.<\/p>\n

\u201cMailchimp acqui-hired the team behind LemonStand at the end of February,\u201d Mailchimp said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. It did not provide any financial terms for the deal.<\/p>\n

Mailchimp \u2014 which is privately held and based in Atlanta \u2014 said it made the acquisition to provide more features to its customers, specifically those in e-commerce.<\/p>\n

\u201cMailchimp helps small businesses grow, and our e-commerce customers have been asking us to add more functionality to our platform to help them market more effectively,\u201d the company said in a statement. \u201cThe LemonStand team is helping us build out our e-commerce light functionality.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mailchimp is clear to say that its acqui-hire was not related to ending its relationship with Shopify.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur decision to discontinue our partnership with Shopify last week is unrelated to LemonStand,\u201d Mailchimp said. \u201cShopify knew we were working on e-commerce features long before we hired the LemonStand team. In fact, we launched Shoppable Landing Pages last fall in partnership with Square, and Shopify chose not to partner with us on the launch.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even if the LemonStand deal is not related to its rift with Shopify, the acquisition of one and the breakup with the other both point to the same thing: the growing role of Mailchimp\u2019s e-commerce business.<\/p>\n

The company \u2014 which provides email marketing and other marketing services to business \u2014 has been slowly building a revenue stream in e-commerce by integrating a number of features into its platform to let its customers, for example, sell items as part of the marketing process. These are less about building full check-out experiences or commerce backends, but for offering, say, one-off sale items as part of a particular promotion or campaign.<\/p>\n

Last year, when Mailchimp launched those new shoppable landing pages with Square<\/a>, it said that 50 percent of its revenues were now coming from e-commerce, with its customers selling more than $22 billion worth of products in the first half of 2018. Mailchimp\u00a0made some $600 million in revenue in 2018, which \u2014 if its 50 percent e-commerce figure remained consistent \u2014 meant that it made $300 million last year just from e-commerce-related services.<\/p>\n

The Square partnership is instructive in light of this acquisition. While Mailchimp is indeed building some native e-commerce features for its platform, it will continue to work with third parties (if not Shopify, the biggest of them all) to provide other functionality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe small businesses are best served when they can choose which technology they use to run their businesses, which is why we integrate with more than 150 different apps and platforms including e-commerce platforms,\u201d Mailchimp said in its statement to TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to become an e-commerce platform or compete directly with companies like Shopify,\u201d it added, \u201cand we think that adding e-commerce features in Mailchimp will help our e-commerce partners. Companies will be able to start their businesses with Mailchimp and have a seamless experience, and eventually use Mailchimp along with one of our e-commerce partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/RvzkRBUtWq8\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s an interesting twist on the story from last week about the break-up between Shopify and Mailchimp, after the two said they were at odds over how customer data was <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-14578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t