Shopify acquires Handshake, a B2B e-commerce wholesale platform

Shopify, one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms, has acquired the company Handshake — a platform specifically developed for B2B wholesale purchasing.

Handshake, and now Shopify, is targeting the area of the e-commerce market where brands and other merchants sell items wholesale, potentially alongside consumer-focused retail efforts.

While Shopify is a well-established e-commerce platform, B2B and wholesale purchasing are areas where Shopify can expand.

Shopify Acquires Handshake

The e-commerce-focused platform, Shopify, has purchased the company Handshake, which specifically focuses on developing an e-commerce platform for B2B wholesale purchasing. Shopify has confirmed this with a statement:

“Handshake is now a part of Shopify. We consider acquisitions in the normal course of business as we focus on making commerce better for everyone.”

B2B e-commerce sales in the U.S. alone passed $1 trillion for the first time in 2018. As with consumer-focused sales, platforms like Handshake offer businesses the ability to handle these B2B sales directly, rather than handing off the sales to a third-party marketplace. This also eliminates the need to pay a third-party vendor and play by its rules.

For marketers who are part of these businesses, you get the opportunity to work with a popular platform like Shopify that can offer many integrations to the tools you are already using.

How This Could Change Shopify

While Handshake’s customers include some larger companies like Bugaboo, Williams-Sonoma, and Roland, we can expect this acquisition to be big news for businesses of all sizes who deal in B2B wholesale and need a scalable e-commerce platform.

Shopify has done an outstanding job over the years offering a platform that is easy to use and customizable, and that integrates with many popular tools and platforms.  As such, Shopify is a valued partner of many different size merchants.

Since Shopify has mainly focused on B2C merchants in the past, we can hope that Shopify will now open up a similar opportunities to businesses and merchants working in the B2B wholesale market.

For marketers in these B2B industries, it is important to understand the opportunities that come with being able to work with a popular platform like Shopify. There are over a thousand integrations to use in order to connect the other marketing technologies you use like HubSpot, Google Shopping, and more! Shopify also offers other benefits like platform security and integrated SEO features.

With Shopify expanding its capabilities for B2B industries, the platform becomes a better fit for companies that have not had the chance to use it.

What’s Next?

If you are looking for your next e-commerce platform and sell in the world of B2B wholesale, make sure to keep Shopify on your radar.

While no major shifts have happened yet for the two companies, we can expect some news to be coming out of Shopify as it prepares to stay competitive in the e-commerce world.