Building beyond marketplaces: These two brands became the architects of their own futures

Ali Osterholz received a call that would forever change her business: a major national publication wanted to feature her brand. 

Soon, millions of readers would be looking for Explorer Knits + Fibers but all she had was an Etsy store that looked like everyone else’s. This was Ali’s big turning point. “I said, ‘It's time to put on your big girl pants and get yourself a website.’”

Marketplaces offer an easy starting point where the barrier is low for new founders and customers are built in. But business owners with growth aspirations soon see the limitations.

Many will outgrow the constraints of platforms that treat their businesses like tenants rather than owners. Here, unpredictable fees and lack of direct customer connection stunt growth. The data confirms what successful merchants already know: owning your online store means owning your future—52% of US entrepreneurs* agree it provides the greatest brand control.

When a merchant transforms from marketplace seller to online store owner, it changes everything, from how they see themselves to how customers experience their brands. 

Success—and a store to match

Ali’s knitting hobby started as a way to unwind amid the pressures of grad school science studies. But when she started experimenting with yarn dyeing, something clicked. Her worlds of science and art collided and she would eventually abandon academia altogether. 

Taking the route many aspiring maker-entrepreneurs do, Ali launched her brand on Etsy. The platform's gentle learning curve made it the perfect springboard for her creative business. It allowed her to build her company slowly without much proactive effort to drive traffic and sales.

In 2018, Better Homes & Gardens magazine came calling. It was a wake up call for Ali who realized her business had reached a new threshold—and didn’t have the professional website to match. At the same time, Etsy’s fee structure was no longer sustainable for her business. “The fees were going up,” Ali says. “I was losing money.” 

Leading up to the magazine feature, Ali moved her store to Shopify. “I felt like this was a chance to tell my story that I didn't want to waste,” she says. “And I wasn't really doing that in my bio on Etsy.”

The decision transformed not only Ali's business model but her creative identity, too. “Having my own space gave me full control to experiment with how I wanted my company to be presented to the world,” she says. More than half of US business owners* agree, saying that freedom to tell their brand story is a top benefit of owning an online store. For Ali, this means finding shared values with her fans and amplifying causes supported by her brand.

With her new store secured, Ali began investing her time in connecting directly with customers, initially through growing her social media channels. Even there, she didn’t have the full ownership she craved. Algorithm changes began to impact her ability to reach customers. “We have seen our most drastic shift in engagement on social media. It really forced me to shift my focus to the website.”

Even as Explorer Knits + Fibers has expanded, Ali’s direct connection with customers remains strong. She’s grown her newsletter and even launched a mobile app to deepen the relationship. Looking ahead, she’s finding more ways to go direct. She’s ramping up her popular yarn-dying classes and meeting her customers in person at trunk shows and pop-ups. 

Ali's direct customer connections mirror a broader trend—54% of U.S. business owners* strongly agree that owning their store enables personalized marketing strategies not possible on marketplaces or other platforms.

Innovation velocity as the competitive edge

While Ali's journey from hobby to business required a small leap of faith, some companies face the same ownership dilemma at a massive scale. World of Books is one such business that started as a book rescue mission. Today, it’s an international force. 

In 2002, founders Simon Downes, Ben Maxfield, and Michael Laundon couldn’t bear to see heaps of literature discarded by their local charity shop, destined for landfill. They bought the lot and sold the books on eBay.

This single act of sustainability rapidly scaled. The trio collected books from thousands of UK charity shops weekly, eventually spanning 37 marketplace accounts across platforms like Amazon and Walmart. 

Surprisingly, the brand’s move toward a dedicated online store wasn't initially brand or customer-focused. Rather, it was risk based and financially motivated—marketplace fee increases had directly hit their bottom line, making diversification essential for survival. 

Their financial motivation reflects a broader trend: cost and pricing flexibility tops** the list when UK businesses migrate to independent online stores.

The fringe benefits became immediately obvious. Marketplaces are price-driven, and with its own online store, World of Books could differentiate in other ways. “It’s such a mission-oriented organization,” says director of product, David Magee who joined the organization in 2021. “We're really able to convey that and bring customers on that journey with us in a way that we can't in a marketplace."

While World of Books still relies on marketplaces, especially in markets where brand recognition is growing, the team is investing the bulk of its efforts in direct channels.

In 2024, under David’s leadership, World of Books migrated from another platform to Shopify, rapidly increasing the brand’s capacity for growth. 

“So much of [our engineering team's] efforts went into just keeping the lights on,” he says. “We have massively increased our velocity of innovation, shipping more features to improve customer experience in the last three months than in the previous five years.” 

Creating a personalized experience is one way World of Books can stand out from marketplace competitors. “We can be so much more targeted in our recommendations to customers,” says David. Shopify’s analytics tools provide a clear path to understanding consumer behaviour. “We can see that data and own it in a way that we wouldn't be able to on a marketplace.”

Since its humble beginnings, World of Books has morphed into a global brand, shipping to 190 countries, operating two warehouses in the UK, and taking over a new 230,000 square foot facility in Chicago, drastically increasing the brand’s US footprint. These latest international moves were supported by Shopify Markets.

The move to Shopify has also allowed World of Books to launch features that were impossible on marketplaces—a mobile app for loyal customers, a membership program with exclusive benefits, and sophisticated testing tools that enable the brand to rapidly optimize the customer experience. 

“There's just an opportunity at every point in the customer journey for them to feel like they're part of the World of Books community,” says David, “rather than just another customer on Amazon.”

While a sense of community is a nebulous thing to measure, the good vibes have translated to real impact: a 10% boost in World of Books' site conversions.

The ownership advantage

From independent makers to global powerhouse brands, businesses are breaking free from the constraints of marketplaces and social platforms. “In a marketplace, you're nestled in with all the others. And more or less, we look the same,” says Ali. 

But growing an online store on Shopify is a leveler in another way: small and large businesses alike get access to the same powerful tools. Think AI-powered themes with no-code editing, seamless integration across all sales channels, and the world’s best one-click checkout. The potential to build something truly unique to each business is endless. 

When entrepreneurs embrace ownership, they stop growing someone else's empire and start building their own.

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* Survey findings are based on an online poll of 507 U.S. business owners and senior decision makers, conducted by The Harris Poll for Shopify from June 5-14, 2025.

** Survey findings are based on an online poll of 503 UK business owners and senior decision makers, conducted by The Harris Poll for Shopify from June 5-14, 2025.