[iamnothere]

The problem for sellers on Amazon is that buyers there have little loyalty, and it is easy for people to come in and cut their customers out from under them with lower-priced clone products. Shopify at least gives you the opportunity to create some kind of customer loyalty to the merchant brand, and with the right kind of marketing you can get repeat business depending on what you sell.

I agree that most small companies aren't up to the challenge of managing an online business. The 3PL integration will help a little bit, and I imagine that Shopify will continue to chip away at the problem by integrating other services.