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Walmart is Stepping up their game, getting serious about 3rd party sellers
Many retailers tried integrating 3rd party sellers into their platforms (Sears did this, among many others, and it just wasn’t great).
Walmart has allowed 3rd party sellers for a while, but they are really trying to take on Amazon, and they’re one of the retailers with enough marketshare to do so. Billed as the world’s largest omnichannel retailer, Walmart wants a big piece of the internet retail pie.
How does Selling in the Walmart Marketplace Work?
They call it the Walmart Marketplace, but that’s just a fancy way to say come sell your products on Walmart.com
But selling on the website of one of the world’s biggest retailers is no small potatoes.
Setup is fairly straightforward, starting at Walmart’s Marketplace Registration, you go through a 5-step process to get selling.
Is Selling on Walmart Marketplace Better than Selling on Amazon?
Fuflilment by Amazon (FBA) really gives Amazon an edge with free, fast shipping for Amazon Prime Members and buyer headspace. Need to buy something online? Amazon is usually the go to, plus existing customer reviews for products.
However, Walmart has introduced WFS (Walmart Fulfillment Services), which is their version of FBA.
Why sell on Walmart?
Many sellers are growing frustrated with Amazon as the sight matures and introduces more restrictions (many are meant to help sellers and stay compliant with regulations, but mistakes happen that can make things difficult like bots designating your product as a pesticide even when it’s not). Although sellers in general don’t want to leave, they’d like to not have their eggs all in one basket.
Selling on Walmart is a way to reach more customers as they’re shopping on Walmart and to diversify your sales channels.
Because the Walmart 3rd-party marketplace is “relatively” new, there are fewer sellers on the platform, and due to some tighter registration qualifications, it means that there could be less competition in the search results for your product/category vs Amazon.
Why you Wouldn’t Sell on Walmart and Just Stick with Selling on Amazon
Walmart looks like they’re requiring something for their marketplace that they do for inshore sales, the UPC the number that gets turned into a scannable barcode needs to be registered to your company. BuyABarcode and similar services likely won’t work for selling in the Walmart Marketplace.
Unless they change this, you’ll need a GS1 barcode registered to your company. They give you a prefix (the first part of the number) that is the same for all your barcodes and links them to your company. If you already have that, then, you’ll be ahead of many sellers wanting to sell on Walmart.
Amazon, as of this writing allows you to use UPC’s from places like BuyABarcode, so there’s not the same restriction there.
Which Should You Choose?
If you can sell on Walmart and have the resources and qualifications to be accepted, it would be a shame to miss out on the opportunity while there aren’t as many sellers (compared to Amazon).
Selling on Amazon can help you reaching millions of potential customers, and getting started is easy. If you haven’t started with either, setting up shop on Amazon would be a good place to get started to learn the ropes and then explore Walmart Marketplace as an additional opportunity.
