Selling on Walmart vs Amazon — that is the question.
The “Tale of the Tape”
If you’ve ever seen a boxing match or the UFC on TV, they’ll often show the “Tale of the Tape” prior to the fight.
Meaning:
They show the 2 competitors side-by-side and compare their physical attributes.
For example, here’s the “Tale of the Tape” for the infamous Connor McGregor vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov fight in October 2018 (can you believe that was 4 years ago?!):
Age: Khabib 30 vs. Connor 30
Height: Khabib 5’10” vs. Connor 5’9″
Weight: Khabib 155lb vs. Connor 154.5lb
Reach: Khabib 70″ vs. Connor 74″
And boy, is there a fight happening in ecommerce right now: Amazon vs. Walmart.
You might be wondering:
Is it even close? How much money can I make by selling on Amazon vs. Walmart? Now, I have my own first-hand experience here.
But to set the stage, here’s our ecommerce “Tale of the Tape” 😉
– Market Cap: Amazon 1.17 trillion vs. Walmart 363 billion
– Ecommerce Revenue (2021): Amazon $470b vs. Walmart $75b
– Third Party Sellers: Amazon’s 6 million vs. Walmart 114k
Anything you notice? Here’s what stands out to me:
– Amazon beats Walmart on ecommerce. Badly! Which makes sense because Walmart is a newer entrant
– while Walmart does a lot of revenue overall ($559 billion in 2021; I just Googled it) most of Walmart’s revenue is still from their physical stores. Their ecommerce is much smaller
– However, Walmart offers a more favorable “seller to shopper ratio” which is a good thing for sellers
Now:
In my first-hand experience (I know ~30 sellers that sell on Walmart every month), if you’re selling on Amazon and are thinking about Walmart, Walmart will deliver you 15-20% of your current Amazon revenue. Which makes sense, since Walmart’s e-com revenue (above) is 16% the size of Amazon’s.
So in general, I’d do one thing at a time:
Step 1: Scale up Amazon in 1 market
Step 2: Expand internationally on Amazon
Step 3: Expand to Walmart
Because by then, you’ll be getting 15-20% of a BIG NUMBER. And it’ll be great.
Everyone I’ve talked to at Walmart re: selling has been very helpful. Their selling platform (“Seller Center”) has a ways to go in terms of tech, but they’re building optimistically.
If you want help scaling up on Amazon, that’s literally all we do.
We’re specialists at profitable Amazon growth, and we’re always looking for sellers to help. If you’ve got product people love, we can help you grow it (most likely). But to be sure, we always like to start things off with a chat, so here’s the link to that:
done-for-you service