Shopify and Walmart team up to take on Amazon: the 3rd-Party Seller Wars
The Rebel Alliance... Shopify's corona-conomy MO: keep your friends close, and your would-be enemies closer. The out-of-the-box ecommerce platform partnered with Facebook in May to power Instagram "Shops." Now Shopify is teaming up with Walmart to integrate with its 3rd-party seller platform, Walmart Marketplace.
- Quid pro quo: Shopify's approved small business sellers get access to Walmart's 120M monthly customers. Walmart gets a cut of sales and a more diverse/robust product offering without the product grunt work.
- The ultimate goal?: Take on the Amazon Empire, which controls legions of sellers (and 300M global customers).
Own the market, not the booth... Amazon and Walmart provide sellers a platform to hawk goods on — but they don't actually have to source/provide all the goods you see on their websites. It's like owning a Farmers Market lot, then taking a cut of each booth's food/bev sales:
- Marketplace is a “strategic priority” for Walmart. Businesses are moving online faster than ever. Even OG eBay's stock recently hit an all-time high.
- Walmart's ecommerce biz grew 74% last quarter. Marketplace sales grew faster than sales of Walmart's very own products.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend"... It's The Art of War, applied to business. Ecommerce platforms that aren't Amazon are teaming up with one goal in mind: fight Amazon together. Standing up against the forces of Darth Bezos might lead to more surprising partnerships.