Someone from the Walmart marketplace team called me today to join them. He just took over my account, which was created out of an onboarding process that I did at least 7-8 years ago, but that I never fully completed. He mentioned that the migration of the listings would be quite easy, and that I would be able to send stock into their FCs, just the same way we do with Amazon (we’re 100% FBA).
I almost discarded the idea at first, but if the onboarding process is relatively straightforward, I’m thinking I could try listing my top 10 SKUs from Amazon and see how it goes. Since I don’t have any expertienced or know anyone who sells on Walmart, I wanted to ask the seasoned Walmart sellers here first, though - please let me know your thoughts!
Walmart’s platform is “what if Amazon was worse?”
Nothing works as smoothly or easily as Amazon’s platform. If you are willing to fight with it for a bit, you can make it work.
WFS (Walmart’s FBA) is fairly straightforward, I didn’t use it because they only let me ship with Fedex, but I think that’s no longer true. Have to check that.
Walmart’s policies are broadly in line with Amazon’s, though the process for claims and reimbursements is actually even more annoying…
Getting your account set up and all your listings up and running is (or at least used to be) a PITA. Uploads fail for no reason, items get stuck unpublished and nobody can help you, etc. Once things are up and running, it mostly runs smoothly.
I don’t know what you sell, but there is definitely some market share to pick up on Walmart. It is unlikely to hold much of a candle to Amazon, but it’s not nothing.
I would give it a try. Since you are already used to Amazon, Walmart.com isn’t much different, their interface is just a generation or two behind Amazon and everything takes more time to do.
How much sales you’ll gain seems to be connected to what you sell. I know some folks that do a lot of business on Walmart.com. I also know a few that do millions on Amazon and Target online but can’t seem to crack the code on Walmart. Different customer base looking for different products I guess?
For us, Wal Mart was the wild west for IP. Not even a week after having our listings put up there were other knock off sellers on it and our images were in duplicate listings. Their IP reporting was vague and clunky. Just like the old Amazon, there was no vetting of 3p sellers for the products they sold. We pulled the plug in less than 60 days.
Walmart has been making changes recently, though I admit the backend is still incredibly clunky.
Entire categories have been set aside and you have to apply or reapply to enter them. Makeup, vitamins, etc. We handed over more invoices then I choose to remember in order to pass their verification.
That said, Walmart is not caught up to Amazon in the seller side interface. Not even close. Now, Walmart does have its FBA equivelent. It also has Walmart Supplier Central.
Their platform is eons worse than Amazon. You think Amazon is bad with returns-just wait. Also, they are very pushy when it comes to advertising (we tried using their account managers once and made no sales compared to doing it on our own).
Try a few SKU’s like you said and feel them out, I promise you will be dissapointed.
I started selling on Walmart in 2016 (I think), back then it was awesome.
I was a DSV vendor, meaning that Wally gave me a ups and a fedex account, I didn’t have to worry about the cost of shipping, I set it as 0. I could sell items just for the cost of the item. I remember having a product that was $0.99. I lost money on it due to the cost of packaging and time, but it made me happy to sell something for $0.99. Most of my items had logical prices, but the $0.99 item was anecdotical.
You did the work just as you would on FBM, and there were even these orange labels that you could apply on boxes that were shipped to be picked-up on the stores.
Then Covid came, Wally re-structured, and I was shifted to the seller portal.
Currently Walmart is the clunkiest, most difficult platform to sell. I find creating variations unexplainably hard. Wally’s seller support make Amazon’s ss look like phds in customer service. Traffic is a fraction of Amazon, and in many categories, you compete against Walmart itself, so you’ll always lose.
Advertising is much cheaper, but is mostly pointless. Sponsored Brands (or whatever they call it) is a full scam that depletes budgets in seconds, I don’t recommend it one bit.
Over all, Walmart is really an afterthought, but it’s free, so it does have that going. I’d list just for the potential exposure, but I would go with 0 expectations.
I have not been a supplier to Walmart or sold on their website.
Walmart always had a reputation for mistreating their suppliers, but I knew several whose business took off after they became Walmart vendors.
Online sellers are always negative about internet marketplace sites policies and platforms. But some are actually making good returns and the others should find another way to sell. Walmart is not all that different from other marketplaces.
Try it, if it works for you, great. Manage your risks, apply no more effort than you can afford to, and prepare to pull the plug if it appears it does not work for you.
Walmart.com is on an upward sales and market share trajectory see if you have a ticket to ride.
I am going to tell you a brief rundown of my 2 years history selling on Walmart.
Created the same listings as on Amazon, sent in 5 units of each to see how they do.
Sales never reached more than a few a month.
They ended up being more expensive with WFS shipping.
After a year I had to recall a bunch of unsold inventory.
After 2 years of max sales being 20 units in December we recalled all inventory.
It took MONTHS to get our inventory back. Had to wait 30 days to open a case and then wait 2-3 weeks for someone to respond, and then wait another 2-3 weeks for it to be shipped back.
When all of our inventory was back, all the listings were closed.
A few months later we had charges start coming out for long term storage fees.
Walmart ‘found’ inventory that was over. Someone ordered one, but it wasn’t shipped because they didn’t have it and told me it would count against our metrics and needed to appeal. But this is WFS and the listings were closed? No one can answer how or why this happened.
Recalled the inventory again to find out if anything was really there.
Opened a case against the long term storage fees since we had 0 inventory. That case is still waiting any response at all from Walmart (opened in November). Not even a single reply.
Received back 2 items, but that put us over what we shipped and sold so was it a return? Who knows.
Result: Walmart is a mess. Not touching them again until they fix a ton of their WFS inventory issues and seller support response team. Maybe will test it in 5 years.