Independent retailers may choose multiple sales channels

THOUGH AMERICAN and Chinese tech platforms started the e-commerce gold rush, one Canadian company realised early on what money was to be made from selling shovels. That was Shopify, which supplies tools such as software, logistics and payments to allow firms to set up their own online stores rather than selling via giant platforms like Amazon. Its value, at $175bn, is only about a tenth that of Amazon. But in the past five years its share-price rise has outstripped that of “The Everything Store” more than tenfold.