Seller Labs: Democratizing E-merchants Competitiveness

Seller Labs began as an effort to improve Amazon's third-party sellers' competitiveness. The company's core offerings had evolved from a messaging service that facilitated communication between customers and sellers to an advanced suite of marketing, advertisement, and financial software tools. Since its inception, Seller Labs continually increased its customer base and reached more than 9,000 customers by 2019. As among the first and most successful software tool providers that addressed specific business problems that Amazon sellers face, Seller Labs was part of Amazon's Marketplace developer council and at the frontline of innovation. However, Seller Labs' main competitors continued to grow in size and strength both nationally and internationally, which threatened its competitive position. In order to expand its offerings outside the Amazon's Marketplace, Seller Labs acquired X-Cart, an e-commerce platform. However, many challenges lay ahead after the acquisition. How should Seller Labs continue to grow? Should the firm continue to focus on developing solutions targeted to Amazon's third- s third-party sellers? Or should it pivot outside the Amazon Marketplace and develop an integrated e-commerce platform?