I echo your sentiment as well (also from a background of having ran a Shopify app with thousands of installs).
There's a lot of misconception of how much hard work it is amongst beginner Shopify merchants in order to generate sufficient traffic. Amazon, at the very least, provides an audience -- which solves a very major problem for any business (to get traffic).
There's a lot of success stories running on Shopify, but these companies would have pretty done well creating their own custom solution.
At the end of the day, it's a piece of software (ie. shovel) to sell to people who want to try and make money online (ie. the gold rush).
Why not do both? Amazon gets you your first orders. You ship with a note saying visit mystore.com for the full range, and sign up for discounts at mystore.com/discounts.
You set up a successful business on Amazon having done a lot of marketing yourself and now you are forced to use them to sell everything. You are now working for Amazon, or lose your business.
There's a lot of misconception of how much hard work it is amongst beginner Shopify merchants in order to generate sufficient traffic. Amazon, at the very least, provides an audience -- which solves a very major problem for any business (to get traffic).
There's a lot of success stories running on Shopify, but these companies would have pretty done well creating their own custom solution.
At the end of the day, it's a piece of software (ie. shovel) to sell to people who want to try and make money online (ie. the gold rush).