Walmart Permits Foreign Sellers to Use Online Marketplace

In order to catch up to the everything store, Walmart realized it has to be everywhere. The company’s now permitting foreign third-party sellers to use its domestic marketplace.

• Non-American suppliers can now use Walmart’s website, advertising, and fulfillment services.

This could help Walmart gain e-commerce ground, largely by tapping into China’s manufacturing industry. Amazon has offered fulfillment services to all marketplace sellers for 15 years. Walmart’s BigCommerce and Shopify partnerships are also closing the gap.

A risky proposition: Third-party sellers have burnedWalmart and Amazon for listing items that don’t meet rising quality standards. Giving access to more suppliers opens the door to more substandard and counterfeit products, which Walmart will try to restrict.

• Prospective sellers will still be rigorously screened under its invite-only model that should prevent distribution of “unsavory items,” per Bloomberg. Amazon’s open registration process, for comparison, is much more lax.

“We are opening our US marketplace to a limited number of international companies who share our commitment to customer trust and safety,” CEO Doug McMillon told Bloomberg.

Race to the top: Amazon’s reach with Chinese manufacturers runs deep, so Walmart has some work ahead of it. Chinese suppliers accounted for 75% of Amazon’s new marketplace sellers in January, a 47% YoY increase.