News is confirmed that Amazon have acquired a UK multichannel start up – Veeqo. Based in Wales and founded by Matt Warren, Veeqo has been a quiet success story, attracting investment, and now the attentions of Amazon.
We heard a whisper that an acquisition was on the way back in November and now Octopus Ventures, a Veeqo investor to the tune of £3.3 million, has confirmed that the acquisition by Amazon has been completed.
A massive congratulations to the Veeqo team. A winning combination of product, personnel, and a dynamic approach to strategy have led to an exciting next step for Veeqo. We’ll be watching with excitement to see what comes next!
– Octopus Ventures
At its core, UK multichannel start up Veeqo’s software helps small and medium sized online retailers efficiently manage and grow their multi-channel business with inventory, order, shipping, and warehouse management capabilities.
The big question of course is what does Amazon want with Veeqo – do they want to get into the multichannel management field and are buying the technology, or are they happy to be a quiet investor in a periphery company that assist merchants to sell on their platform?
Veeqo isn’t Amazon’s first multichannel acquisition – Just over a year ago they acquired Selz, founded in Sydney, Australia. Currently neither website discloses that they are now owned by Amazon, although if you check the whois registrations, it’s revealed that both companies domains are now operated by Amazon Technologies, Inc.
The future for Veeqo will be exciting, Amazon have the resources to grow their business in multiple ways, but probably, we suspect, mostly for growing Amazon’s main business and assisting retailers, brands and merchants to sshift more inventory through their marketplace.
2 Responses
Selz: “Thank you for your interest in Selz, but we are not taking new sign-ups at this time.”
Bodes well…
I think I would have two main concerns with this. First would be Amazon having all that data – customers, suppliers, cost prices, order details and volumes etc. Second would be the risk of them cutting access and killing the whole business if my Amazon account was suspended for some reason known only to their bots.