The battle of the e-commerce startups: Bigcommerce buying Austin startup

by Anthony Sodd
April 27, 2015

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The battle for prominence in the software aimed at small online business world is quickly escalating to envelope old-fashioned brick and mortar operations.

Austin-based

Our HQ is set amongst trees and nature trails in the beautiful hills of Austin.
, a software company focusing on getting small businesses set up with an online store, is reportedly about to announce it will acquire another Austin-based startup, Zing. The reports are based on two unnamed sources ‘familiar with the deal’ who spoke with recode.net.

While Bigcommerce’s software is currently aimed primarily at online stores, Zing’s software focuses on merging the checkout and inventory management process of brick-and-mortar stores and online stores. If the deal materializes it’ll allow Bigcommerce to bring its services off the web and into physical stores. The deal should allow Bigcommerce’s customers to better track inventory and customer data both online and offline.

The news of the acquisition comes amidst the backdrop of a quickly changing marketplace for these sorts of services. Big companies like Amazon and eBay are shutting down similar services, leaving Bigcommerce and their main competitor, Shopify, to battle it out for the market. 

Shopify, which claims roughly 160,000 merchants use its service, has roughly twice as many as Bigcommerce, and recently filed for an IPO. For its part, Bigcommerce completed a $55 million round of funding in December, part of which was said at the time to be used for product development.

Both companies have been actively expanding into brick-and-mortar stores. Shopify is creating its own software, while Bigcommerce has been partnering with other companies like Square.

Bigcommerce is now headquartered in Austin, but it was actually founded in Australia, and moved stateside in 2009. They maintain offices in Sydney, but employ around 250 in their Austin office.

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