沃尔玛还将向合格的第三方卖家提供预付款，并免除那些在9月30日之前将库存发送到沃尔玛履行中心的卖家的旺季仓储费。Walmart, the largest retailer in the US, said on Tuesday that it will provide services for e-commerce platform sellers to handle direct shipping of their products from Asia to Walmart's US warehouse, and fulfill orders and manage returns from any e-commerce site. This is a new way to boost its e-commerce platform business ahead of the holiday shopping season.
Walmart's marketplace business has become an important source of revenue, and the company is trying to close the gap with Amazon in handling third-party sales.
The world's largest retailer issued the above statement after reducing its holdings in Chinese e-commerce giant JD last week. Walmart's efforts suggest it is seeking to handle more third-party business internally.
Walmart will also provide advance payments to eligible third party sellers and waive peak season storage fees for sellers who send inventory to Walmart fulfillment centers before September 30.
The initiatives were announced at Walmart's annual Marketplace Seller Summit to help sellers meet their holiday shopping needs and prepare for Walmart's promotions. Historically, these events coincide with Amazon's Prime Day (Prime Day) every October.
Over the past year, Walmart has significantly increased the number of sellers on its e-commerce marketplace, Walmart.com, mainly from China, to profit by encouraging these sellers (usually small businesses or independent stores) to use its Walmart delivery network or Walmart delivery service to complete orders and promote their products on Walmart.com.
The company said that over the past year, Walmart.Com's sales have increased by more than 30% each quarter, making a significant contribution to its global e-commerce sales of more than $100 billion last year.
According to data from research firm Marketplace Pulse, Walmart's online marketplace has more than 0.42 billion products and more than 0.1 million active sellers, with more than one-third of those sellers located in China. However, it still lags behind Amazon, which has over 2 million active sellers.
Walmart also announced that sellers can ship orders to customers at an average 15% cheaper price than the competition through its delivery service, but it didn't provide details about the competition. It also provides a service that handles shipments of goods from third party sellers directly from Asian ports of origin to their US warehouses.