Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

[theturtletalks]

A couple of years ago, I had an interesting idea. What if there was a marketplace where all the underlying tech was open-source? The order management system, the storefront, customer support, etc.

The marketplace would simply connect to the seller’s infra instead of locking them in. If, for some reason, the seller is removed from the marketplace, their software stays with them and they can continue accepting orders directly.

This model can be used to disrupt any marketplace from AirBNB to UberEats: building tech for home renters and restaurants and later, leveraging that to build a competing marketplace.

In 2019, I started building the first piece, Openship, an order management system that lets you source orders and fulfill them from anywhere. Now that that’s in stable release, next up is Openfront (an e-commerce platform for storefronts) and Opensupport (ticketing software for customer support). Together, they provide the staples for any modern business: sales, fulfillment, support.

Let me know what you guys think of the idea and if you see any potential pitfalls.

[johnorourke]

You are trying to solve a real-world problem experienced by a lot of profitable companies, so there is already a market of paying customers waiting for this. One of my clients is actively trying to reduce their dependence on Amazon and instead integrate with other marketplaces.

I see it's just Shopify-to-Shopify for now - bravo for starting with probably one of the most costly integrations. I'm working with a client right now who had to build these integrations using a low-code drag-n-drop platform which allows a quick MVP but has slow job processing, so isn't great for high order volume.

The "amazon" comparison is good for marketing - sure you're not doing all their marketing, or having their reach but you are connecting suppliers, buyers and fulfilment which is a genuine problem.

The companies who would use this often have developers on board already, so providing open source, accepting contributions and turning this into a useful dev-friendly service will almost certainly find paying customers.

Following :)

[anakaine]

Can I ask, out of curiosity, what was the low-code solution they ran with? I've tried a few and been only marginally happy with most.

[jpatt]

A few points I'm skeptical of:

  simply connect to the seller’s infra instead of locking them in.

One of the value-adds of Amazon is there's a whole bunch of tech sellers don't need to know how to write, run, and maintain. You'd need to understand how big the niche "technically literate to run their own e-commerce business, but selling on Amazon for other reasons" is, then how your operation would answer those "other reasons" to make you competitive to the niche.

  If, for some reason, the seller is removed from the marketplace, their software stays with them and they can continue accepting orders directly.

Apart from the software systems, there's a whole bunch of basic business processes that Amazon takes care of, which are less portable. Using FBA? Leaving means learning how to run a warehouse, shipping logistics, pricing, staffing, etc. Not using FBA? How's your Marketing department doing? Hopefully you didn't let it get too anemic or too fitted to "people who are good at gaming Amazon's algorithm."

In short, if your value add is: "Amazon, but you get to take the tech home with you if you leave the platform," then that feels like a small niche of highly competent businesses, then you're stuck with "well if they could do all this on their own anyway, why are they choosing Amazon?"

Hope that helps and wasn't just me blabbering. Good luck!

[swyx]

i think the branding "open source Amazon" is just way too ambitious/big. invites a lot of confusion/criticism if Amazon is different things to different people.

[ajvs]

More of your storefront being portable is a big plus for any business that fears lock-in or unwanted removal from Amazon.

I haven't looked into the specifics of this offering, but if you were able to use your own custom domain for your storefront, minimise the platform's insights into your actual sales (i.e. to prevent a similar case to Amazon launching products in your niche), etc and mainly leveraging a centralised platform for the audience, then that's the best of both worlds.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

It's the word "simply" that usually raises all the red flags :-)

[brudgers]

My first reaction to the idea a few hours ago was along those same lines.

Coming back to the ShowHN just now, I thought “China.”

By which I guess I mean manufacturing, and not drop shippers, middlemen, importers, etc.

To me, it seems like this matches the way manufacturers multi-channel their sales, and fits the IT priorities a manufacturer is likely to have…bills of materials, inventories, forecasting, design, etc. and not a big emphasis on the web, saas, and building websites.

YMMV.

[kornhole]

>One of the value-adds of Amazon is there's a whole bunch of tech sellers don't need to know how to write, run, and maintain. You'd need to understand how big the niche "technically literate to run their own e-commerce business, but selling on Amazon for other reasons" is, then how your operation would answer those "other reasons" to make you competitive to the niche.<

The bigger stores with IT staff and budgets would be first to join and contribute. Some of us consultants could help the smaller shops and possibly combine energies into communities or coops using shared resources.

[kaiusbrantlee]

re " how big the niche "technically literate to run their own e-commerce business, but selling on Amazon for other reasons" is,

As the platform matured, the level of technical literacy could decrease over time. e.g. the more technical aspects get abstracted away from the users.

Furthermore, users who are motivated enough would begin to extend their technical reach by means of self education, and/or collaboration with more technical party/(ies).

This is a common arc in technology.

[melony]

You can always do what bookshop.org did and appeal to social justice and hipster oppression. Talk about supporting "small business" and pretend that everyone's not just dropshipping from asia.

[eastbayjake]

Love open source projects in the eCommerce domain, especially ones that are JavaScript instead of PHP! Two pieces of feedback:

- Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license.

- You've really built an Order Management System for marketplace use cases, which is in industry typically a distinct domain from a Warehouse Management System (WMS) or a Transportation Management System (TMS) which at large-scale tend to handle how orders actually get fulfilled and shipped to customers. Your naming is a bit misleading - at the very least I'd emphasize somewhere on your landing page that this is an open source Order Management System if you want eCommerce domain folks to grok quickly what you've built and how it plugs into a broader architecture.

[ryan29]

> - Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. You'll have a lot more luck with mid-size and enterprise adoption with an MIT license.

What makes the AGPL unattractive? I thought it was basically just the GPL with a limitation on using the software to provide a SaaS product. You don't even have to contribute unpublished changes, right?

Before reading your comment I actually checked the licensing in the repo because I was thinking the exact opposite; using MIT would be a mistake because it's too easy to undermine the turnkey offering by selling a competing service without the cost of development.

[ddevault]

>Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be.

Maybe some (but certainly not most!) tech businesses, but what makes you think that vendors of real-world products give a shit about AGPL?

https://drewdevault.com/2020/07/27/Anti-AGPL-propaganda.html

[appleflaxen]

> Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter

Completely disagree. It protects the end user, and if another license is absolutely necessary, they can negotiate for it or create a different service tier.

AGPL with paid alternative licensing is strictly superior to MIT for start-ups.

[clairity]

js has come a long way but i'm skeptical that it's maturing fast enough for this to be the right medium- to long-term language/platform choice for something that's meant to be more infrastructure than just web app. and while php[0] is long past the hype cycle, it's more proven in this role than js, but even that is usually superceded, or at least augmented, by more "industrial" languages when approaching amazon's scale. for instance even mid-market WMS systems are often written in compiled languages like C# because of the need for speed and robustness.

[0]: nowadays i prefer ruby/rails, which can also get you pretty far before needing extra help.

[zelphirkalt]

Akin to saying: "You should not ask businesses for money for your work, because they do not like it."

Greedy businesses not wanting to contribute back can buy another license and have their way, at least paying the maker(s) of this project.

[maxloh]

AGPL by default with a paid, non-copyleft license would be a good business model.

[rocket_surgeron]

Those efforts look impressive but no service will be a version (open source or otherwise) of Amazon until it can place a single tube of toothpaste in my garage 18 hours after I ordered it, which it just did thirty minutes ago.

Amazon’s “tech” stack, both consumer- and seller-facing is horrible and borderline irrelevant.

Their fleet of trucks and aircraft is not.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

18 hours is a pretty stupid selling point IMO. You either need something immediately or you can wait. Rarely do I need anything 18 hours from now.

I think many sellers would love to not be locked into Amazon and at least use something like this as an additional alternative. I'm on the other side of the table where I avoid buying from Amazon as much as possible.

[hk__2]

I’m pretty happy to live in world where it’s difficult to build a business where you move trucks around cities to deliver a single tube of toothpaste to someone who ordered it the day before. Yes, it’s hard to do this as fast as Amazon does. But should we really go that way, anyway?

[betwixthewires]

You're right, amazon is a logistics company first and foremost. But if you can replace the website with something like this and then let all the other logistics providers (ups, USPS, FedEx, dhl unfortunately) handle the logistics you can re-enable competition in this space.

[kayson]

A lot (most?) of that is contractor based now, though. At least the last mile. And from the sounds of it, most of the contractors aren't huge fans of Amazon anyways. Seems like it would not be insurmountable to leverage that market for similar delivery times.

[XCSme]

https://bol.com in the Netherlands has delivery within a few hours (by bicycle) for some cities and select products. I got in this way an inflatable mattress (old one was punctured, so I needed one by the evening for my guests) and a few other electronic devices or household items.

[UncleEntity]

> Their fleet of trucks and aircraft is not.

A little while ago I drove past a giant blue pyramid dedicated to the grand and wise Jeff Bezos where I can only imagine The Great God of Online Commerce conducts his human sacrifice rituals on unwitting union organizers. Pretty sure they are currently keeping the management indoctrination ceremonies low key being Labor Day weekend and all that.

And people thought the Long Beach shipping container height restrictions were lifted over practical concerns…

[throwayyy479087]

Amazon.com is likely the most a/b tested piece of software on the planet. It is ugly and clunky because that's what _works_ - same with Alibaba and Yahoo JP.

[the_cat_kittles]

getting stuff that fast is very stupid 98% of the time. people may like it and want it and sing its praises, but its mostly stupid. and i think stupid things generally tend to die out. that is all to say that maybe that edge that amazon has is not that important.

[marban]

18 hours — Or ~ 4 hours if you're in Japan.

[betwixthewires]

I think it's fantastic.

Growth will be slow. This is something like xmpp or mastodon, people will use it for sure, it will grow over time, but you're not going to see an explosion of use like amazon did. Keep at it, your work is much needed and this system you're building is wonderful.

Don't concern yourself with monetization too much. I know you need to eat, HN is populated largely by people in startups (because it's run by a sv startup accelerator) and you'll have a lot of replies asking you how you'll monetize and giving you advice on that. Don't do anything too hasty, don't break what you're building by being short sighted. You can run storefronts as a service to people who don't want to, that's in your back pocket (or front pocket, I don't know your plans), so changing the open dynamic of this thing is not necessary and it would end the whole value proposition of what you're building.

I don't know if you are familiar with OpenBazaar, if you aren't take a look at it and see if you can get any ideas from it, or even if you think what you're building could improve on it. I think it's cool but lacking and I think what you're putting together could actually be widely useable.

[adavid17]

So this is really a open-source Shopify replacement, right? An OMS that lets you sell on multiple channels (website, Amazon, Instagram, Etsy…) and manage/fulfill those orders in one location?

I was confused at first by your title (open source Amazon) which seemed like it was going to be a e-commerce marketplace like Amazon.com - but it seems like that’s the 2nd step.

Why does a new e-commerce marketplace also require a new open-source OMS? OMS’s have a lot of seller lock-in, but it seems like way less lift to have OpenSourceAmazon.com be a channel sellers using Shopify’s OMS can sell on with a few simple steps on Shopify.

[craniumslows]

I think this is a good solution for businesses that are starting to outgrow their home garages. Here's my feedback:

When I read this post and looked at the site I thought you were offering a turnkey drop shipping solution service. I also had the impression that you offered warehousing and other logistical services.

I know this is not the case, but it took me several minutes to figure out what exactly was happening.

[jollyllama]

Wouldn't this be more of an open source Ebay then, if the logistic components, which make up much of Amazon's value, are not there?

[mtmail]

Quick note, the third submission was automatically blocked by the HN algorithms. Posting the same three times in 24h is too much.

> Show HN: I'm building an open-source order management system and marketplace API

> Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

> Using open-source to disrupt marketplaces

[theturtletalks]

Yes I saw that. The last one was a blog post I made in 2019 describing the vision in detail.

[sandeepeecs]

in india they are doing some thing called ONDC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Network_for_Digital_Comme...

ONDC is not an application, an intermediary, or software, but a set of specifications designed to foster open interchange and connections between shoppers, technology platforms, and retailers.[3] Technological self reliance, demand for level playing field mainly from small retailers, lower the barrier of entry and discovery online, adoption of open digital ecosystem across key sectors and fixing the non-competitive behavior of big ecommerce firms like Amazon and Flipkart to capture the US$810 billion domestic retail market led to its creation.[4] Designed to keep check on Big Tech companies from violating Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2021 due to concentration of market power by integrating them into an open-source decentralised network where data portability will break data silos while data interoperability will allow innovation.

[lisper]

What would be an Amazon-killer for me as a consumer -- and just about the only thing that I can imagine that would be -- is something like Amazon that connected me to the inventory of local merchants where I could buy things for same-day or next-day delivery via something like Doordash. There is a ton of inventory within a 30-60 minute drive of my house (in the Bay Area) but no centralized service to connect me to it, so if I want some glassware and some shower cleaner (my actual current use-case) I have to visit two different merchants, place two different orders, set up two accounts, take twice the risk with my credit card number, etc. A centralized order dispatcher that was connected to local inventory and delivery which would let me order everything I needed all in one place and know that fulfillment would come from local merchants that I can trust to vet their suppliers would kick some serious tushy.

[mathgorges]

I drive for Amazon flex and they’re beginning to trial orders similar to what you describe.

I don’t have a clue what the interface for ordering is like, but I know there’s a new offer type where I’m expected to pick up orders from one-or-several brick and mortar stores in a single shopping plaza before delivering

[jahewson]

This is really high quality work, great job!

> Let me know what you guys think of the idea and if you see any potential pitfalls.

Yes, so I don't agree with this:

> This model can be used to disrupt any marketplace from AirBNB to UberEats: building tech for home renters and restaurants and later, leveraging that to build a competing marketplace.

Because the value in a marketplace is the people, not the tech. Here's a thought experiment: if Amazon were to open-source their entire marketplace tomorrow, what would change? My answer is: close to nothing.

What makes marketplaces so hard is that you need people - on both the demand and supply sides.

You seem to have a good handle on the tech and the way that businesses use it, so keep talking to people and I'm confident that you'll find a valuable niche! People will find the quality of your work very compelling.

[ivoras]

One of these day someone will do OpenBazaar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBazaar) right. They were on to something, and just possibly, all this infrastructure built around web3 might not be completely useless for that kind of a distributed marketplace.

[tobinfekkes]

This is a fantastic idea, and you're off to a great start.

I've spent 6 years building a similar thing for local business in my area, just not quite this polished and expansive.

I will be keeping an eye on this for sure, love it!

[bbatchelder]

I happen to be building this exact same product, but closed source, and somewhat attached at the hip to my company's 3PL WMS product.

One thing I did not see in your demo, is inventory synchronization. I'm guessing thats because your first use-case is drop shipping.

I'd also disagree that you're open-source Amazon. You're more like open-source DropStream or maybe Boomi.

If I were you, I'd do this:

1) Pick an open-source WMS and write a channel for it. 2) Make it dead easy to write ad-hoc channels. 3) Quickly implement shop connectors for BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce.

Good luck!

[WesleyJohnson]

This seems like a reseller's dream. If you're lucky enough to find an untapped resource on Etsy, Shopify, eBay, etc and you think you can market it better and flip it for a profit - create your own stores, route the orders through OpenShip and have the lesser-known seller fulfill them for you.

I didn't dig in, but in that above scenario, does the "supplier" dropship directly to my buyer or does it come to me and I reship it?

[MisterBastahrd]

Saying that you're building an open source Amazon to complete with Amazon is like saying that you're working on an audio player skin to compete with Winamp.

Amazon isn't a web site. It's the one of the most sophisticated supply chain systems on the planet. The website is what people interface with, but it's also one of the most inconsequential parts of the system with regards for why people use it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What's the first?

[qabqabaca]

On your deployment page[0], it says you can deploy the entire thing to Vercel or Netlify and pass in the postgres connection string to the frontend directly. Am I understanding this correctly? Is the connection string for the database readable from the front end?

[0]https://docs.openship.org/deployment

[theturtletalks]

It uses Next.js API routes as the backend which is all server-side.

[jiggywiggy]

I really like the look of the site. And seems like wonderful work.

I see no base for your claim however: "This model can be used to disrupt any marketplace from AirBNB to UberEats".

A tech stack is hardly what makes platforms, it's the consumer side of things that disrupts.

So just to make it more fair to the suppliers of the marketplace would not really lead to a disruption imo. Not saying it's not worth it.

[jollybean]

This looks really nice but it's really hard to tell 'what it is' from your website.

I can't make heads or tails of it.

You have:

A powerful new standard for fulfillment Multi-channel fulfillment at scale

And then kind of a complicated diagram.

"Get Started!" <- with what?

Who is this for? What problem does it solve? 'What is it' and roughly how does it work?

Mid way through your landing page you have this UX experience where 1,2,3 etc fade in and out with some kind of relative diagram at the bottom - this is also confusing and counter-intuitive. I see why you'd want to do that, but don't. Just find a way to express the concept without that oddity.

"Let me know what you guys think of the idea "

80% of makers fail to express their idea in digestible terms. It's shocking and uncanny but the reality is 1/2 of ideas fail because they are never communicated properly.

I think from the comments here on HN this looks pretty neat - congrats - please work on communicating it.

[turtlebits]

I don’t think you should compare it to Amazon. What makes Amazon so popular isn’t the that their store front / reseller portal / interface is great.

What makes people buy from Amazon is the speed in which you get your product and their customer service.