8th & Walton’s Terry Clear explains how Walmart’s store-based marketplace fulfillment will impact Walmart suppliers.
Lainie: What does store-based marketplace fulfillment mean for supplier inventory, strategy, and placement?
Terry: For marketplace suppliers, it means forward-deploying their inventory to be closer to the customer. Walmart wants to increase fulfillment speed, and the only way to do that is to have inventory pre-positioned.
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Lainie: And how might this pilot change delivery expectations and SLAs for Walmart Marketplace sellers?
Terry: There’s a lot to work out here, and it’s really about getting the right product to the right location. This is not going to work for every product. But for those that it can work for, it’s now going to be on the supplier to manage inventory at multiple locations so that fulfillment of the order can happen in hours instead of days.
Lainie: Where do you see Walmart gaining or losing with this versus Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon when Walmart expands this model?
Terry: This is just another leg in the Amazon-Walmart race as they both work to reduce fulfillment times. In one area, Walmart does seem to have an advantage—they’ve got 4,500 dots on a map. They could pre-position a lot of inventory and get it to the customer quickly. Amazon can get products delivered quickly as well. This is not the last move that either party will make, and with any new initiative, there will be things learned and there will be hiccups. But that’s what happens when you try new and innovative things.
