Amazon intruding on Shopify turf, says CEO Tobias Lutke

Bloomberg

The head of Shopify Inc. said Amazon is encroaching on its turf — and it’s confident it can compete.
“They are creating products now that help small businesses market their products better which is frankly the space we are in,” Tobias Lutke, chief executive officer of Ottawa-based Shopify, said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg TV at a tech conference in Toronto.
While Amazon.com Inc.
is “the most powerful and agile and probably ambitious company in the world,” Lutke said he’s “welcoming competition” in the space and is “very confident” in Shopify’s ability to adapt.
Shopify, which provides online stores for more than 600,000 businesses, is emphasizing its role as a partner rather than a competitor to differentiate itself from Amazon.
Many online merchants want their products on Amazon because it’s the busiest shopping platform, but they’re also wary of being too dependent on the Seattle-based company which also makes its own products.
EBay Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. also market themselves as a “friend rather than a foe.”