Amazon and Walmart Made Competing Moves on the Same Day

My apologies to anyone who spent $11,000 on Fury v. Wilder tickets. The biggest match of the week is actually between retail rivals and I’m covering it for free.

In one corner: There’s Amazon. Yesterday it opened Go Grocery, its 10,400 sq. ft. cashierless grocery store in Seattle.

• Go Grocery is about 5x bigger than the largest existing cashierless Go store. Like its little siblings, it uses discreet cameras and weight sensors to track purchases.
• Amazon’s reportedly in talks with other brands to license its cashierless tech—a new revenue stream disguised as an olive branch to retailers it's bulldozed.

In the other corner: There’s Walmart. On Monday, it introduced Walmart Fulfillment Services, a new e-comm logistics hub for third-party sellers.

• Walmart will handle storage, two-day shipping, and returns for third-party members whose WFS applications are approved.
• Marc Lore, Walmart’s CEO of U.S. e-comm, said the program is designed to court small brands that need extra support (and sell on another third-party marketplace Retail Brew readers know and tolerate).

Apples to Amazon

These two aren't content to stay in their lanes, so they're trying to buy the whole highway.

• Amazon is vying for a larger piece of the nearly $700 billion U.S. grocery and supermarket industry—where Walmart currently leads by a longshot.
• Meanwhile, Walmart hopes to whittle down Amazon’s 38% share of U.S. e-comm. Here, there are glimmers of progress: Walmart’s online grocery sales helped lift its U.S. e-comm revenue by 35% in Q4.

My takeaway: So long as there are carts to fill, Amazon and Walmart will hit copy + paste on each others’ slight advantages. Now, the real question is which retailer can justify all that R&D with definitive wins in their new categories.

Zoom out: When Amazon and Walmart duke it out, there are implications for everyone.

• For groceries...the Publixes and H-E-Bs of the world aren't threatened by Go Grocery, according to Greg Ferrara, president of the National Grocers Association. He says local chains thrive because they’re better suited to meet the needs of local communities.
• For logistics...FedEx and UPS survived Amazon’s fling with third-party shipping bans, but Walmart’s new service could further strain them and other delivery networks.