Commerce, the newly rebranded parent company of BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift, launched two apps for Shopify merchants to help maximize reach, enhance data, simplify operations and scale.
Yes, you read that correctly… BigCommerce Commerce is now building Shopify apps! The apps include:
- Feedonomics for Advertising – an app to sync your Shopify product catalog with Feedonomics and prepare it for advertising across hundreds of channels including Google Shopping, TikTok, Meta, Microsoft, and Pinterest.
- Feedonomics Listing & Orders – an app to syndicate your product catalog, streamline order processing, keep inventory and pricing updated, and optimize product data across your Shopify store and hundreds of other channels with Feedonomics.
Al Williams, general manager of B2C at Commerce, said:
“Merchants today need a unified way to optimize product data and manage orders across multiple channels without sacrificing time or accuracy. Our new capabilities for Shopify simplify complex workflows, enhance data integrity and empower brands and agencies to scale their operations with confidence.”
Why are they two separate apps? Wouldn't it make more sense just to have one single “Feedonomics” app for Shopify that handles everything? After all, product feeds, pricing, inventory, and advertising go hand-in-hand. Williams even used the words “unified way” in his quote, but unified means “one” not “two.”
Plus aren't the Shopify apps just a bridge to connect a merchant's product catalog, orders, and other store data to the Feedonomics platform, which then does all the heavy lifting? I'm curious why Commerce needed to build two bridges to the same island.
If you know the answer, please let me know.
Either way, I think it's smart for Commerce to move towards better serving the Shopify ecosystem, and Feedonomics is their best play at doing so.
Tim Richard, co-founder at Factory, asked me a few months ago:
“What's your thesis on how Big Commerce (or Commerce) is positioning for the agentic evolution. You reckon they'll be the platform of choice for pure agentic shopping (eg, humans outsource this to agents)? As opposed to Shopify who might make it difficult for bots to interact with their platform?”
My answer at the time was:
“I actually think the bigger play is with Feedonomics in that area. If they can position themselves to be an agentic commerce reach platform, that helps merchants get their products discovered by all agentic agents regardless of what platform they start on, then I think it would be a great way to serve an upcoming need by an established player. And then it could work in conjunction with the BigCommerce platform the same way it does with Shopify and every other CMS.”
I later added:
“I think it makes the most sense to offer AI reach through their feed management tool instead of their CMS so that it's platform agnostic and opens up a bigger market for them. Then they can more heavily target B2B through BigC and focus D2C efforts through Feedo. I don't mean to insinuate that they should give up on D2C with BigCommerce, but locking all their agentic AI offering into their CMS doesn't seem like a great long term move when the greater D2C market is happening off of the BigCommerce platform.”
Although Feedonomics could previously integrate with Shopify via API connections, these new dedicated Shopify apps should help streamline the process for merchants, as well as offer a new discovery channel for Feedonomics through the Shopify App Store.