Walmart gets serious about online marketplace
Walmart has embraced the marketplace model as means to expand its online assortment and gain ground on Amazon where third party sellers already account for half of the company’s unit volume.
In a major move announced April 12, Walmart agreed to work with cloud-based e-commerce solutions provider ChannelAdvisor to integrate with Walmart’s global marketplace. In doing so, ChannelAdvisor becomes Walmart’s first launch partner and will facilitate retailers and brands listing their products on Walmart.com and optimize their merchandise sales. Through this integration, ChannelAdvisor customers can team up with one of the largest online retailers in the U.S. and gain access to its loyal customer base.
“Our partnership with marketplace retailers allows us to provide our customers with more brands and products on Walmart.com,” said Seth Beal, Walmart’s senior vice president of global marketplace. “Through integration with ChannelAdvisor, we can quickly team up with ChannelAdvisor’s expansive network of sellers and brands to help our customers find what they want.”
The announcement was made at ChannelAdvisor’s annual Catalyst customer conference where Beal appeared on stage with ChannelAdvisor CEO David Spitz. Beal was joined at the two day event by a team of several dozen Walmart employees who set up a meeting room at the event to hold meetings with the more than 1,000 attendees gathered at Catalyst.
“Our integration with Walmart’s global marketplace provides retailers and brands with a great opportunity to get in front of Walmart’s massive audience,” said ChannelAdvisor CEO David Spitz. “We’re excited to help Walmart increase its product selection by onboarding more third-party sellers, and to help our customers build their brand recognition on the website of the top retailer in the U.S.”
Walmart launched its marketplace in 2009 and products from third-party retailers are displayed alongside Walmart’s own inventory and called out as Walmart Marketplace items. The seller name is displayed on third-party items and sellers gain access to special promotion opportunities, like Value of the Day offers.
“We’ve worked with Walmart the last couple years on their marketplace. This has been a relatively quiet effort,” Spitz said, noting that Walmart is the third largest marketplace it supports behind Amazon and eBay. “Walmart plans to grow seller base very aggressively this year.”
Walmart’s interest in expanding its marketplace is understandable given the dramatic success achieved by Amazon and the company’s own desire to quickly broaden its product offering. There are more than two million third party sellers on Amazon’s marketplace, according to Spitz, and roughly half of the units sold on Amazon are from third-party sellers. Roughly 70,000 sellers in Amazon’s marketplace generate annual sales in excess of $100,000.
By working with ChannelAdvisor, Walmart has chosen a platform that offers retailers and manufacturers leading cloud-based solutions to efficiently automate and manage the online selling process across multiple channels, including third-party marketplaces. Through a single inventory feed, ChannelAdvisor customers manage their overall online selling process, from listing to order management, from one platform.