Yesterday, Shopify released its Shop app intended to help consumers discover and shop products from Shopify merchants. The app is a move towards creating a marketplace of vendors.

The app is technically a re-release of an existing app, previously titled Arrive which had been installed by over 16 million users. The new app makes it possible to discover products and shops running on the Shopify ecommerce platform, and allows customers to use a Shopify Pay account for checkout. The search and discovery features are somewhat limited currently, allowing searches by shop name rather than product type.

Shopify has nearly 3 million merchants and provides much more flexibility to brands than many major marketplaces, like Amazon, etsy, ebay, etc. With less ability to create strong brands, products become commodities, where cheap wins and innovation & quality are devalued. Shopify has an opportunity to create a much higher-value marketplace and this app feels like the first move in that directions.