In an Amazon Age, Startup Finds Following With On-Demand Warehouses

Amazon has turned the business of handling basic e-commerce chores for independent merchants—including storing their merchandise in Amazon warehouses and packaging them into customer orders—into a goldmine. But not every merchant wants to rely on Amazon to provide these services—and a growing array of companies are emerging as alternatives.

Shopify, a rising e-commerce powerhouse known for helping merchants with the online portion of online shopping, recently announced it will start offering clients “fulfillment,” the catchall term for the picking, packing and shipping of customer orders. Then there’s Flexe, a startup in Amazon’s backyard in Seattle, that allows retailers to rent storage space for their inventory from a network of more than 1,300 warehouses across the country, along with fulfillment services.