Retail Software Maker Lightspeed POS Acquires SEOshop For E-Commerce Push

Lightspeed POS is announcing that it has acquired SEOshop, an Amsterdam-based maker of e-commerce software.

As the name implies, Lightspeed’s offerings for brick-and-mortar retailers and restaurants include a point-of-sale system, as well as inventory management, a customer database and more. It also offers tools for creating a web store, but founder and CEO Dax Dasilva said the acquisition will allow his company to expand significantly on that front.

For starters, the SEOshop product is being rebranded as LightSpeed eCom, and there are plans to launch fuller integration with Lightspeed’s platform early next year.

Dasilva says this is the first time Lightspeed has offered products for online-only businesses, though he also suggested those businesses could use the web as a way to test the waters before opening a physical location. And for businesses that do operate a physical location or locations, the e-commerce option could help them “to sell everywhere even if you can’t have retail stores everywhere.”

“Over time, we don’t see we see the retail and e-comm as different sales channels for the same retailer, but rather as different ways to reach the customer,” Dasilva added.

The 80-person SEOshop team will be joining LightSpeed, bringing the company’s total headcount to around 440 employees. SEOshop CEO Ruud Stelder is becoming Lightspeed’s director of e-commerce revenue, while CTO Dennis Cuijpers is becoming its director of e-commerce development and architecture.

Lightspeed acquired Belgium-based point-of-sale company POSIOS last year, but Dasilva said this is the company’s biggest acquisition so far, and with it, LightSpeed now has 34,000 customers.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. SEOshop last raised a 1.1 million euro round from Henq.