Walmart has unveiled a business-to-business procurement website in its latest bid to compete with Amazon.
Launched Friday (Jan. 20), Walmart Business is an eCommerce site and “customer experience” aimed at Walmart’s small and medium-sized business (SMB) and nonprofit customers.
“Our focus is to remove complexity in purchasing, lower costs and give our customers more opportunities to serve their customers and communities,” Ashley Hubka, the service’s general manager, said in a company announcement.
The company says Walmart Business includes a “curated assortment” of more than 100,000 items, with categorization and navigation designed for organizational shoppers.
“As we’ve spoken with customers, they have identified key product for their operations,” Hubka said. “These areas include office supplies and furniture, food and beverage, restroom, electronics, classroom and facility needs. Walmart Business simplifies restocking by grouping various items together in a way that makes sense to organizations.”
The announcement says Walmart also offers multiuser accounts and lets customers share payment information, order histories, and purchasing power across organizations.
Amazon has a substantial lead on Walmart in this area, having operated its own B2B service, Amazon Business, for the last several years.
More recently, the two companies rolled out new tools for small businesses almost back-to-back. Earlier this month, Amazon said it would expand its Buy With Prime tool — previously an invitation-only service — to all merchants in the U.S.
The same week saw Walmart announce that its Commerce Technologies and GoLocal units were working with Salesforce to provide curbside pickup, local delivery and order fulfillment services to retailers that use its cloud-based software.
As PYMNTS has written, the two retail giants are also facing similar pressures, “as household spending and habits aren’t responding to the same old tricks as they once did.”
Meanwhile, recent research by PYMNTS has shown that Amazon sellers are trying to reduce their dependence on the retailer.
While 71% of sellers using eCommerce marketplaces view the platforms as essential and report a 90% satisfaction rate, some are planning to branch out, “and the impact could be seismic,” PYMNTS wrote in December.
For example, one survey found that nearly all Fulfillment by Amazon sellers who had not yet sold with other marketplaces planned to sell on rivals’ platforms — including Walmart Marketplace — this year. The move is driven by rising fees, with half of the sellers surveyed citing it as their main motivator for seeking a new marketplace.
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