Shopify launches Tax Platform

Hello & welcome back to Shop Pulse!

In our second edition since changing our publication day to Wednesdays, here’s what we have for you this week:

• Shopify launches Tax Platform

• Shop gets a quiet web launch

• Faire announces more layoffs

Shopify launches Tax Platform

B2B has been one of the core focuses for Shopify as evidenced by the feature announcements both in the Summer Edition and since then on the changelog.

In their quest to improve their B2B capabilities, Shopify is launching Shopify Tax Platform to make tax compliance easier, especially for enterprise retailers.

As Harley states in his tweet, the 2 major benefits are:

• Integrate the preferred tax solution directly in Shopify. This is available only with Vertex right now, the first partner for the Tax Platform

• No need to manage multiple tax solutions across differnt platforms

The launch page states shows that Shopify Tax is US only as of now, and will help in streamlining all sales tax compliance. International businesses can also use Shopify Tax but only for managing US sales tax compliance.

If your preferred tax service isn’t listed yet, you might not have to wait for too long. According to the website, Shopify is working on bringing more services onto the platform.

Shop gets a quiet web launch

In a relatively quiet launch by Shopify standards, Shop has launched on the web. An email to merchants seems to be the only evidence of this being announced in any way by Shopify so far.

At first glance, you might think that Shopify is directly competing against Amazon with their own marketplace, powered by Shop Pay. But Shopify has long maintained the stance of not wanting to build a marketplace.

So what is it? A marketplace? A web version of a mobile app? Something else?

Rick Watson answers this question really well in his LinkedIn post.

• The Shop website is not SEO indexable - which means this will not compete with merchant websites for SEO rankings

• No new features on the website. Everything the website has already exists in the mobile app for Shop.

• Without the existence of a multi-item cart, it’s hard to call it a marketplace.

Here’s looking forward to see what Shopify does with this as we get even closer to the holiday season.

Faire announces more layoffs

Faire, the wholesale marketplace company where Shopify invested earlier in September, has announced about 250 more employees being laid off.

Faire is a wholesale marketplace that was founded in 2017 and is already valued at $12.6 billion. The biggest market is the United States but Europe is a fast-growing geography after Faire launched in 15 European countries in 2021.

Both Faire and Shopify have declined to mention the value of the deal or how big of a stake Shopify is taking with its investment.

The company has previously laid off 7% of its workforce last year in October.

In a statement to Business Insider, the company says that the former organizational structure had multiple layers of management to support their pace of hiring. But when hiring slowed down, they could not grow into the envisioned larger structure.

Pulse Check ⚡️

1. Fintech giant Klarna avoids strike after reaching an agreement with workers.

2. Shopify announces Q3 2023 earnings with revenue up 25% and gross profit up by 36% YoY

3. WooCommerce rebrands to Woo.

That's a wrap for this week! Join us over on Twitter to chat about all things e-commerce. It's like attending the coolest virtual shopping party – no long lines, pushy salespeople, or shopping cart collisions in sight (@theshoppulse)