DoorDash's Shopify Integration Could Change Local Commerce | Fast Five Shorts

DoorDash has launched a native integration with Shopify, allowing any Shopify merchant with a brick and mortar US presence to add their product catalog to the DoorDash marketplace directly from their Shopify admin.

No separate onboarding, no manual catalog uploads, and no workflow disruption is required.

DoorDash is positioning this around independent local retailers, gift shops, sporting goods stores, specialty food shops, not big box chains.

Citing that 90% of merchants in its own economic impact reports say DoorDash has helped them reach new customers.

The integration launches in the US first with international expansion planned in the months ahead.

Alex, I will start off with my usual 1 to 10 question.

1 To 10 on the impact of the future of retailing scale.

How big of a deal is DoorDash's integration with Shopify?

Give this a 4 or 5.

This isn't a revolution, but I think it is an improvement.

If I think about where this does matter, it matters for small retailers.

Managing inventory.

The seamless inventory integration is a big thing.

I think particularly during peak periods.

It also allows for some types of retailers to get in front of customers they wouldn't get in front of before.

I do worry about the disintermediation of the customer from the retailer and over time the long term effects of this are so I don't know necessarily.

It's entirely a positive in the long run.

Interesting.

That's interesting take.

I'm not sure I agree with that one.

Brandon, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean I'm for like smaller retailers, I'm probably a little bit more bullish.

Probably like a six or seven.

I mean the option of like a turnkey solution.

Right.

You know, you don't have to do any work.

You get access into another channel.

You already have customers there.

Right.

It's probably like a quick win to grow another channel pretty rapidly for a lot of these retailers.

I would say the risk, I agree with Alex's risk assessment.

I mean you want to hold onto your customers long term.

Is there a risk of disintermediation?

I think there could be.

The other thing I was thinking is I heard this question is Shopify has already demonstrated the value of scale scale when it comes to technology infrastructure.

DoorDash is building out the infrastructure for delivery and at the end of the day you're going to have to aggregate a lot of that scale scale to drive the economics down to compete with the Walmarts and Amazons of the world.

And so I think as, as people latch on to these platforms, you know, scale is going to be an advantage.

That they collectively share.

Yeah, that's why, I mean, you kid at it a little bit for me there, I'm actually more like in the 8 or 9.

And if I was being like really hard on myself, I'd be like the 7 too.

Because I think DoorDash is really well, positioning itself for the future of commerce here particular particularly, you know, it's got its dash pass.

It's making AI investments in generative AI search on its site.

It already has a high usage rate given the food delivery aspect of what it does.

And so it's, it's very well positioned to become like the marketplace of marketplaces as you look five to 10 years out.

And adding Shopify expands that reach overnight.

And it does it in a very differentiated way.

Like, you know, these, these, these, these retailers, these Shopify retailers, they're not necessarily positioned to be, you know, on, you know, I don't know, like how many of them are on Walmart's marketplace, how many of them are on Amazon's marketplace, but at least gives DoorDash the same availability of those products or gives their pro, their consumers the same product availability that they'd get somewhere else.

So I just can't get over how well run of a company DoorDash is too.

That's the last point I'd make here because they seem to be on top of it and moving with the trends here ahead of everyone else.

But Alex, I'll give you the last word since I kind of disagreed with you to some degree in terms of my assessment versus yours.

You know, look, my, my skepticism comes from two areas.

I think this place is where it's very valuable, where the overlap of a retailer, like a florist, for example, is low to these big players like Amazon, Walmart, so forth.

I think where you sell similar products, it's hard to compete.

And then the logistics challenges, I think for a lot of these stores in terms of delivery and fulfillment can be challenging.

And then, you know, I think the professionalism of the consistency of the DoorDash delivery model is, is challenging as well.

I think it's good sometimes and bad sometimes and it's less consistent than one of these bigger players overall.

Right, right.

That's a good point too.

That's a good point.

That's a good point to end on too.

There's a lot of devil in the details in this story too.

Like, yeah, you can, you can link up your Shopify store to DoorDash, but then getting the delivery actually coordinated is a whole nother story.

Step in the process that you're bringing up.

And it all matters in the mind of the consumer at the end of the day.