Today Walmart passed a big milestone - 10,000 sellers on the marketplace.
Even though Walmart marketplace was launched in 2009, it took a while before it started to gain traction. The first time we covered Walmart was in May 2016, when the Walmart marketplace just passed 500 sellers. But the growth soon accelerated and started adding 1,000 new sellers every month.
Out of 10,000 marketplace sellers, more than 6,000 currently have products listed.
More than 3,000 have received at least one feedback review in the last 30 days. Since not all customers leave feedback, the actual number of sellers who had sales is likely larger. We are estimating that at least 50% of those 10,000 sellers are active - selling at least one product a month.
While the 10,000 figure might look small when compared to Amazon’s numbers, the fact that Walmart requires pre-approval to sell on Walmart means high percentage of sellers do end up selling after joining it. This is highlighted by the 1,400 new sellers we detected in the last 30 days, of which 500 already had at least one review.
Walmart said that it had $13.6 e-commerce sales in 2016, but it has avoided to mention if that figure includes marketplace sales (we think most likely not), or if that figure includes international sales. So far Walmart has not shared any specific numbers about e-commerce sales or the marketplace.
In the last reported earnings for 2016 Q4 Walmart said “US e-commerce sales and GMV increased 29.0% and 36.1%”, after previously reporting global e-commerce growth only. Maybe because Walmart global e-commerce sales growth decelerated last quarter. US e-commerce figures also include Jet.com growth, so overall it’s really hard to understand Walmart e-commerce performance.
It is exciting to see Walmart marketplace continue to grow, but we are yet to see official numbers to understand just how big it is. Until then, Walmart remains the first marketplace to expand after Amazon.
