Dive Brief:
- BigCommerce sealed a new partnership with Walmart — a move that gives its sellers the ability to sell products on Walmart.com, according to a press release Wednesday.
- U.S. BigCommerce merchants can now find Walmart Marketplace as a new channel in the BigCommerce Channel Manager, the company said.
- Walmart is also rolling out a "New-Seller Savings" offer, designed to waive commission fees during a merchant's first month working with Walmart.com if they join the platform by March 31 this year. Merchants who want to sell through Walmart's online marketplace will also get an expedited application review to quickly get their goods posted on Walmart.com, per the release.
Dive Insight:
After reporting 79% growth in e-commerce sale in the past year, Walmart's partnership with BigCommerce signals a heavy push towards growing its online presence and crowd of third-party sellers. In recent years, Walmart has steadily built alternative revenue streams. Walmart's head-on competition with Amazon means that it is increasingly making moves beyond brick-and-mortar retail.
The collaboration with BigCommerce is the latest initiative the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer has made to grow its online business. A year ago, the retailer began the rollout out of Walmart Fulfillment Services for its third-party marketplace merchants, offering storage, picking, packing, two-day shipping, returns and customer service operations.
Walmart also teamed up with Shopify last June to bring 1,200 third-party sellers to its marketplace by the end of the year. Shopify merchants won't pay to list their products on Walmart.com, but once they make a sale, the retailer will charge a "referral fee."
While Walmart doesn't outline how much it makes from its other business ventures, Amazon's net sales through third-party commission, fulfillment and shipping fees nearly doubled since 2018. Amazon's third-party seller services account for 20.8% or $80.5 billion of its net sales in the fiscal year 2020.
However, Walmart's e-commerce results over the past year displayed tremendous growth, due in part to the demand for contactless fulfillment. Walmart.com now has over 120 million unique consumers each month, according to the statement.
With this partnership, BigCommerce will automatically sync all products with Walmart.com so that sellers can manage their orders in one central location, making it easier to track orders, inventory and fulfillment.
BigCommerce merchants will also have the chance to choose their tech stack. They will have access to a network of complementary partners like CedCommerce, Codisto Channel Cloud and Feedonomics to guide them through their order, advertising and fulfillment needs.
"Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to have that broad omnichannel presence," said Russell Klein, chief commercial officer at BigCommerce. "Partnering with an industry leader like Walmart not only gives our merchants access to one of the world’s largest marketplaces, it also opens additional opportunities for them to strategically expand their ecommerce footprint."
