Kevin Richards, the CEO of Las Vegas based Ventura Web Design, broke the news that Amazon would be shutting down its Amazon Webstore ecommerce hosting service. Speaking at this year’s IRCE Focus Digital Design conference in Los Angeles, Richards told the audience that Amazon Webstore will be closing its doors as early as July 2016. This gives Webstore clients just over a year to migrate to a new platform.

Kevin later confirmed the news in an interview with eCommerce Bytes saying, “Ventura Web Design is a Solution Provider with Amazon Webstore, so we were in direct contact with Amazon’s Webstore team on this announcement.” Amazon later confirmed via email to its subscribers its plans to terminate the Amazon Webstore product. Of the announcement, Richards said “We’re very thankful to Amazon for giving its Solution Providers and Merchants such advance notice. This early messaging shows how much Amazon values and respects the relationship that it has with retailers. It is important to note that sellers can still use many tools to sell on Amazon, including Seller Central, Product Ads, and FBA.”

Speaking about other recent ecommerce platform news, particularly about the Yahoo spin-off of its Yahoo Stores, Kevin said, “This seems like a great opportunity to correct some of the confusion that exists on some of the blogs and social media. Yahoo is not shutting down Yahoo Stores. In fact, they are doubling down their efforts, re-energizing their employees, and significantly reinvesting in both their existing Yahoo Merchant Solutions product and the new Yahoo Stores product. We work closely with Yahoo and we’re seeing an enthusiasm, from both management and engineering, that gives us incredible confidence moving forward. Existing merchants should be looking forward to what will quite possibly be the best years yet.”

Kevin Richards opened his first digital business in 1990 and founded Ventura Web Design in 1997 and helped clients generate more than $1 Billion in revenue. Ventura is partnered with major e-commerce companies including Yahoo, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Amazon, and are experts in helping clients migrate from one platform to another.