Tag: ECWID

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Lightspeed buys Ecwid for $500M; NuOrder for $425M in ongoing e-commerce consolidation play

Lightspeed has picked up two more companies in what is shaping up to be an acquisition spree for the Canadian point-of-sale software provider. The company today announced that it would acquire e-commerce platform Ecwid for $500 million; and NuOrder, a B2B ordering platform servicing wholesales, brands and retailers, for $425 million.

Together, the two deals underscore the long-anticipated consolidation trend swirling around the fragmented e-commerce industry, at a time when digital transactions are playing an ever more critical role in the Covid-impacted global economy, and smaller players are looking for better ways to compete against behemoths like Amazon and Stripe with a mix of tools and services addressing the various needs of merchants, brands, suppliers and everything in between.

“By joining forces with Ecwid and NuOrder, Lightspeed becomes the common thread uniting merchants, suppliers and consumers, a transformation we believe will enable innovative retailers to adapt to the new world of commerce,” said Dax Dasilva, founder and CEO of Lightspeed, in a statement. “As economies reopen and business creation accelerates, we hope to embolden entrepreneurs with the tools they need to simplify their operations and scale their ambitions.”

Lightspeed will pay $175 million in cash and $325 million in shares for Ecwid; and it will pay $212.5 million in cash and $212.5 million in shares for NuOrder, the company said. Both deals are expected to close at the end of September, pending regulatory and other approvals.

Lightspeed is publicly traded and has a market cap of about $9.4 billion. It has been on an acquisition march in the last several months, with the bigger picture being to build a complete, end-to-end, one-stop-shop for customers beyond the basics of the point-of-sale software that helped the company make its name. That has also included acquiring Upserve in a $430 million deal in December to deepen its presence in the restaurant industry.

Ecwid itself has been around for years, initially making its name as a key partner of Facebook’s to help small businesses build commerce experiences on the social media platform, and eventually expanding to provide tools for merchants that use services like Square and Wix, as well as other third-party platforms like Instagram and Google — sometimes competing with but also potentially integrating with other e-commerce backends like Shopify.

The company — originally founded in Russia — had largely been under the venture radar until last year, when it raised $42 million from Morgan Stanley and PeakSpan Capital, to double down on growth.

And that growth has been good. It currently has 130,000 paying customers across 100+ countries and Lightspeed said it had revenue of more than $20 million in the year that ended in March, with growth of 50% year-over-year. The deal, which is subject to customary closing conditions and post-closing working capital adjustment, is expected to close during the quarter ended September 30, 2021 after the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals.

“The distinction between online and brick-and-mortar retail has disappeared. Lightspeed and Ecwid, two best-in-class platforms, will unite to truly empower businesses. By eliminating the barriers merchants face when selling online, we will only more rapidly achieve our common vision of democratizing retail for independent businesses worldwide and enrich the communities they serve,” said Ruslan Fazlyev, Ecwid CEO, in a statement.

NuOrder, meanwhile, will help Lightspeed deepen its role in supplier relationships and transactions — an essential cornerstone in how commerce works and one where Lightspeed had already been building a business, by way of its Lightspeed Supplier Network. NuOrder has 3,000 brand and 100,000 retailer customers — some of them include Canada Goose, Converse and Arc’teryx — and Lightspeed said that some $11.5 billion in orders were made through its platform in the year that ended in March.

Like Ecwid, NuOrder also posted revenues of $20 million in that period; its growth rate was 30% year-over-year.

“At NuORDER, we have been on a journey to revolutionize retail by building a global network for brands and retailers. The coming together of Lightspeed and NuORDER accelerates that vision exponentially. The power of connected commerce comes to life now,” said NuORDER co-founders and co-CEO’s Olivia Skuza and Heath Wells in a statement. “We are thrilled to join forces with Lightspeed to unlock transformative value for brands and retailers globally. This represents an inflection point in the history of retail.”

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Ecwid raises $42M from Morgan Stanley and PeakSpan

In the same week that Facebook announced a redoubled effort to make a bigger mark in e-commerce, one of its long-time partners has closed a large round of funding. Ecwid, the startup that sells e-commerce tools directly and via third parties like Square and Wix, letting businesses build e-commerce experiences on their own websites and apps, as well as via Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Google, and more, has raised $42 million from Morgan Stanley and PeakSpan Capital.

Notably, now San Diego-based Ecwid had only raised about $6.5 million since 2009, the year it was founded in Russia as a spinout of X-Cart, a previous company founded by the founder and CEO Ruslan Fazylev; and it’s already profitable. So rather than being used to operate, Fazylev said the funding enabled earlier outside investors — Russia’s Runa Capital, iTech from Latvia and the IT-park business incubator from Kazan — cash out, and gives Ecwid funds that it can use both for acquisitions and to continue expanding its platform organically.

Ecwid is in the stable of e-commerce companies that include the likes of Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce, which have seized on the growth of online shopping over the last decade and helped companies that are not digital by nature — specifically small and medium brick-and-mortar businesses — become a part of that digital economy. And to underscore that low barrier to entry, its pricing starts at free to enable shopping on a website covering 10 or fewer products. (Further priced tiers include the ability to integrate with Facebook and other sites, as well as sell more items, apply more analytics and so on.)

That mandate and opportunity to provide analogue SMBs a route to the next generation of shopping has taken on a new dimension in the last few months. Authorities in many jurisdictions have closed down brick-and-mortar establishments and offices, and restricted day-to-day movement and contact between people in an attempt to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In other words, if e-commerce has been a long-term growth opportunity with upside for those that cared to invest in it, overnight it became a must-have for any small business that wanted to continue to operate through and after this health crisis.

Just as we’ve seen that trend play out for Shopify (whose share price has been on a roll), Fazylev said that Ecwid, too, has had a big boost. Ironically all that activity started after it closed the round (which was raised before COVID-19 really hit).

“The moment we signed the term sheet, things started to go really crazy,” he said. “Overnight, demand tripled because SMBs were under immense pressure to transition to online ordering. We at Ecwid are not worried about the Walmarts of the world but about the small guys and making it super easy for them. And so demand went through the roof.” Transaction volume between March and April grew by 50% and to meet demand.

Even before that, Ecwid was an under-the-radar success, which is why PeakSpan and Morgan Stanley came knocking.  Even if it’s not the 300% growth of the last couple of months, 2019 saw sign-ups double on the platform with a Net Promoter Score of above 60. (Fazylev said Ecwid lives and dies by its Net Promoter Score so he’s especially proud of this above-average figure.)

And in addition to its direct-to-SMB offering, it white labels through a number of popular channels like Wix, GoDaddy and Square. Together, there are some 1.5 million SMBs across 175 countries (and 54 languages) using its e-commerce rails. This might actually have been one reason why it wasn’t a part of the Facebook Shops news: it’s quietly enabling an army of competitors. But to be very clear, when I asked about the omission, Fazylev said he was stumped by it himself.

PeakSpan Capital Co-Founder and Managing Partner Phil Dur, and Pete Chung, Managing Director and Head of Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, are both joining the board as part of this round.

“Covid-19 is reinforcing what we already knew: e-commerce is vital, and it’s available to even the smallest of merchants now with Ecwid’s free tools that even novice Internet users can adopt quickly,” said Dur, in a statement. “We have been watching Ecwid for many years.The company’s impressive capital efficiency and very strong long-term market opportunity made it an easy decision for us to partner with them during this next phase of growth.”

“Ecwid is truly helping its customers make the most of e-commerce enablement at a time when their traditional retail businesses have been disrupted so dramatically,” said Chung, in a statement. “Ruslan is an e-commerce visionary who has built a team and beloved solution that allows any mom-and-pop shop to embrace the online world,  dramatically expanding their revenue and market potential.”