For many brands, Amazon and Etsy are the fastest ways to start selling online. The marketplaces already have traffic, customer trust, and fulfillment infrastructure. Instead of spending months building an audience from scratch, founders can start generating sales much more quickly. That is why many successful brands begin on marketplaces first.
However, as the business grows, the goal is no longer simply generating sales. The focus shifts toward improving profitability, building a stronger brand, and creating long-term assets that the business actually owns.
As a result, many founders begin facing new challenges that are often less noticeable during the early stages of growth.
1. Platform transaction fees grow as sales increase.
In the early stages, marketplace fees often feel like a fair trade-off.
The marketplace brings traffic, trust, payment processing, and fulfillment support. Most founders are happy to pay for faster access to customers.
As revenue grows, however, these costs become much more noticeable.
Depending on the marketplace and fulfillment setup, sellers may be paying:
- Referral fees
- Fulfillment fees
- Storage fees
- Advertising fees
Individually, each fee may seem reasonable. Together, they can consume a significant portion of revenue and place increasing pressure on profit margins.
Many brands discover that revenue can grow faster than profit. This leaves less capital available for inventory, marketing, hiring, and future expansion.
2. Limited Ownership Of Customer Data
Another challenge many Amazon sellers eventually face is customer ownership. On marketplaces, sellers can see orders and revenue.
What they often do not fully own are:
- Customer email lists
- SMS audiences
- Loyalty programs
- Customer communities
Much of the customer relationship remains tied to the marketplace rather than the brand itself. As the business grows, this limitation becomes more noticeable. Without direct access to customer data, it becomes much harder to build retention programs, increase repeat purchases, and develop long-term customer relationships outside the marketplace.
3. Marketplace Success Does Not Build Brand Equity
Another challenge many founders face as they grow is brand building.
Marketplace success does not automatically create brand equity. Many customers remember the marketplace where they made the purchase rather than the brand itself.
As competition increases, this becomes a bigger problem. Founders want to build customer loyalty, increase repeat purchases, and create stronger relationships with their customers. However, those efforts can be difficult when most customer interactions happen inside the marketplace.
Many brands eventually begin investing in social media communities, email marketing, content marketing, customer retention programs, and other channels they can control directly.
This is one reason many successful marketplace sellers eventually launch their own ecommerce store. It gives them more control over the customer relationship and creates additional opportunities to grow beyond the marketplace.
How Shopify Helps Solve Marketplace Growth Challenges
For many founders, these challenges eventually lead to the same question:
How can the business keep benefiting from marketplace sales while building stronger profit margins, owning more customer data, and creating a brand that can grow independently over time?
In reality, many successful brands continue using marketplace infrastructure while building their own ecommerce store.
Instead of replacing Amazon or Etsy, they use Shopify to:
- Build direct customer relationships
- Collect first-party customer data
- Improve profit margins
- Create stronger brand equity
At the same time, fulfillment can still be handled through existing marketplace infrastructure. This reduces operational complexity while allowing the business to expand beyond the marketplace.
One example is our work with Sunhouse.
After gaining traction on Amazon, the company wanted to build its own ecommerce presence in the United States while strengthening brand ownership, customer data, and profit margins. Rather than starting from zero, the business leveraged the assets it had already built on.
At IMP, we helped launch a Shopify store while integrating Amazon fulfillment directly into the operation. We also imported Amazon product reviews into the store to strengthen social proof and improve conversion rates.
To streamline operations, Shopify was connected directly with Amazon so orders could continue being fulfilled through existing marketplace infrastructure. We also set up automated email flows and advertising accounts that were ready to activate from day one.
Despite being a large enterprise brand with multiple layers of internal approvals, Sunhouse was able to launch a fully functional ecommerce store within just 12 weeks.
Conclusion
Amazon and Etsy can be excellent places to start. They provide traffic, trust, and infrastructure that help businesses generate sales much faster than building an audience from scratch.
However, as the business grows, many founders eventually begin looking for higher margins, stronger customer ownership, and more control over their long-term growth.
For many established marketplace sellers, the fastest path is combining the strengths of the marketplace (Amazon, Etsy) infrastructure with a Shopify store that the brand fully owns.
If you are considering that transition, you may also enjoy reading our article “How Amazon Sellers Can Launch Shopify Store Without Starting From Zero“, where we share specific ways successful marketplace sellers expand beyond Amazon without starting from zero.
FAQ Revenue Share Model
1. Why do Amazon and Etsy sellers launch their own Shopify store?
Amazon and Etsy sellers launch their own Shopify store to improve profit margins, own more customer data, and build stronger brand equity. As marketplace sales grow, fees, limited customer ownership, and weak brand recognition can make it harder for sellers to scale long term. A Shopify store gives brands more control over customer relationships and future growth.
2. What challenges do marketplace sellers face as they grow?
Marketplace sellers often face higher platform fees, limited access to customer data, and weaker brand ownership as they grow. Amazon and Etsy can help brands generate sales quickly, but the customer relationship often stays tied to the marketplace. Over time, this can limit repeat purchases, retention programs, and long-term brand building.
3. Can Amazon sellers use Shopify without replacing Amazon?
Amazon sellers can use Shopify without replacing Amazon. Many brands keep using Amazon for marketplace sales and fulfillment while building a Shopify store to own customer data, improve margins, and strengthen brand equity. This allows the business to expand beyond the marketplace without starting its ecommerce operation from zero.
