Sold on Walmart, Sent by Amazon: The Weird New World of Online Retail

Amazon's logistics network will now fulfill orders placed on Walmart.com, the company announced at its Accelerate seller conference, creating a surreal arrangement where the e-commerce giant directly supports its biggest retail rival's online operations. Third-party sellers can now use Amazon's Multichannel Fulfillment service to automatically process Walmart orders through direct integration. The packages arrive in unbranded boxes since Walmart prohibits Amazon-branded deliveries to its customers.

Amazon VP Dharmesh Mehta told GeekWire the system automatically routes any Walmart order through Amazon's fulfillment network. The service expansion includes upcoming Shein integration and existing support for eBay, Etsy, and Temu. Amazon's third-party seller services generated $156 billion in 2024 revenue. The company now competes directly against ShipBob, FedEx, UPS, and ironically Walmart's own fulfillment services while positioning itself as an end-to-end logistics provider regardless of where the sale originates.

Here it comes

[cusco]

Here's the first sign that Walmart is on the way down the drain, when they're contracting out part one of their core competencies for the sake of better short-term returns. That seems to be the beginning of the end for pretty much any large American company, on their way to being managed to death.

Re:

[ndsurvivor]

In Texas, I suggest that you look at HEB. I live here, and Walmart is a failure compared to HEB. There are stories about how Walmart fails in Texas. That may be a clue to a downfall of a "dynasty".

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[sound+vision]

HEB isn't really comparable to Wal-Mart. They don't offer much but groceries. HEB is more comparable to Kroger.

They do have the grocery thing down, though. Nowhere else that isn't a dedicated (and large) liquor store has a better beer selection.

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[ZipNada]

I live in Texas too. For about $100/year Walmart will deliver groceries or anything else they sell at the local store to my house with no additional service charge. Some poor schmuck drives up in their personal car, hauls bags with my order to my front door. I can order in the morning and it will arrive in time to cook the food for dinner. It's great because I hate to set foot in a Walmart.

HEB does something similar but they don't have near as much different merchandise.

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[ndsurvivor]

I flat out do not believe you. HEB does kick ass on Walmart in almost every case. I would quantify it at about 97%. Customer service, delivery, quality of goods... Walmart is a fail in Texas. I would prefer in my opinion, for myself that Walmart stays out of Texas.

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[ZipNada]

>> I flat out do not believe you

I don't care what you mindlessly choose to believe, but here's the proof;

"Get your order delivered to your kitchen, garage, or doorstep—wherever you want! Tips are included, plus, you’ll enjoy no delivery fees, and no item markups."\]
"Annually - $98 plus applicable tax"
https://www.walmart.com/help/a... [walmart.com]

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[cusco]

"Tips are included"

Right, tell me another one. The company which has the HR department hand out applications for welfare because it knows it doesn't pay its people a living wage is going to pass along tips. Totally believable.

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[ZipNada]

Maybe you could try their service before deciding what they do? It's basically the same as a local version of Amazon. You order what you want on their website. Some poor schmuck picks it out of the store, another person with few options delivers it to your door using their private vehicle. No tip is required. I do hand them a few bucks though, it doesn't look like a fun gig.

Re:

[Espectr0]

I do like HEB but their locations in DFW are far too few and all of their locations are chaotic. I would rather get a Joe V which they only have 2 around the area.

so in the meantime i go to a walmart neighborhood market which i have 2 just 2 miles away. i wouldn't go that far to pay $100 a year just to avoid me going to the store. i don't want people choosing produce, meat and fruit for me

Re:

[ndsurvivor]

I hear you. I actually find it humorous how people think that they save money driving from place to place. My mind first jumps to how much are you paying in gas and maintenance on the car? I don't think they "save" shit. Grabbing food from the nearest place always seems to be the most inexpensive to me. Time and Money, both.

Re:Here it comes

[Jeremi]

I'm not sure online sales were ever part of Walmart's core competencies; I suspect they contracted all that stuff out to third parties.

The reason I suspect that is that one of my relatives bought a product from Walmart.com and needed to return it, so she called the number listed on the front page of the Walmart.com web site (and dialled it correctly; I later double-checked the call record on her phone against the walmart.com web page), and the representative who answered put her on hold, then forwarded her to a scammer who tried to trick her into allowing him to TeamViewer in to her computer remotely. When she refused, he got increasingly abusive and eventually hung up on her.

So whomever Walmart was contracting for online support, they were at least bribable, and arguably criminal.

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[sound+vision]

I don't think it's just the support, I recall hearing the whole site was contracted out and the online shopping division within Wal-mart was pretty segmented from the rest of the company.

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[Tony Isaac]

Yeah Walmart is really struggling, as their sales numbers show.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

Oops, the trend is up, not down.

Walmart will die one day, but this is not that day.

Re:

[cusco]

Woolworth's needed most of a generation to collapse, it took a decade to manage Sears into the ground, then the next generation destroyed K-Mart in slightly less time. Target and Macys are well on their way. Walmart will be around for a while, but if management continues to make only short-term plans they'll just follow suit.

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[Tony Isaac]

All of the businesses you mentioned, went through a long period of decline, before collapsing. Walmart is not in any kind of decline.

Sure, Walmart will one day collapse, maybe in a generation, as you propose. But there isn't *currently* any indication that this process is starting to happen.

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[Fly Swatter]

But there are indications at Walmart that society is in decline, if you want to know what kind of neighborhood you are entering just visit the local Walmart and take notice of what is now behind locked doors. Locally it is baby food and spray paint, but 50 miles north it includes underwear!

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[Tony Isaac]

Your anecdote does point to some *neighborhoods* that are in decline, but I'm not sure it can be extrapolated to all of society. In the Houston area, where I live, there are Walmarts in both wealthy suburbs, and in the inner city. They do indeed have different selections of products in locked cases. This does not indicate to me that Houston is in decline--it is, in fact, the second-fastest growing large city in the US, second only to New York City. That doesn't sound like "decline" to me.

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[mspohr]

I don't think shipping is a "core competency".
Most retailers outsource shipping to UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc.
Amazon ships via these carriers and is developing it's own logistics in high density areas.
Still not a core competency... try something like marketing, pricing, product selection, etc.

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[Fly Swatter]

Delivery was never a core competency for Walmart. If they can do that cheaper while using Amazon that's fine.

Their core competency is still the retail stores. Just watch whatever Target is doing and do the opposite and Walmart will be fine.

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[cusco]

Delivery wasn't their core competency, but logistics **IS** and they're farming that out now.

I seem to remember the days..

[ndsurvivor]

when Amazon was "insecure" about transporting things. This seems like a monopoly turned upside down.. I'm saying this is wrong.. Walmart was a Monopoly, and now Amazon is a .. I am speechless, one thing that I did say today that I believe.. is that.. unfettered capitalism does not work. The focus of the middle class should NOT be on Immigrants, nor the poor, but should be on these Billionaire Companies, else..we will lose democracy, and the middle class.

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[nevermindme]

The exact same thing can be said about UPS, USPS and FEDEX. But the economies of scale get things to me for $1.20 to $5.00 while sitting on my home and never going to a store without a bank, grociery, lotto retailer, bakery, sushi bar, coffe shop, cell phone kiosk, parmacy, dog wash and photo printer on the same trip. Good thing the pub is on the way, or home brewing would be more attractive. The american shopping mall and retail distirct has died, it is gone, just like the small town centers they

Re:I seem to remember the days..

[cusco]

Walmart killed the shopping districts in the 1980s, a decade before Bezos ever sold a book online.

Someone Else

[sound+vision]

If they apply the same level of care to their logistic services as they do to their so-called "marketplace", I'll pay extra just to avoid it.

Thankfully I've yet to see anything I really need on Wal-Mart.com that isn't readily available in-store or from someone else. "Someone else" is always going to be the preference when considering doing business with either Amazon or Wal-Mart.

Good/Bad?

[markdavis]

I don't know what to think about this. Does it indicate less monopolistic behavior from Amazon or more? Is this better or worse for the Walmart? For the consumer? Does this mean Walmart is faltering in this space?

I have ordered a lot from Amazon and some from Walmart and really haven't had a problem with either. But there really aren't other solid choices in this now narrow space. Target as a very distant third? I would hate to see it just be one.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

The online stuff all comes from the same Chinese manufacturers. Order it direct instead of paying more to an American billionaire. You'll pay the tariffs either way, I assure the billionaires aren't covering them out of their markup.

Competition?

[timeOday]

We have W+ and Prime and these are probably the main 2 sites I cross-shop these days. They don't overlap entirely; Amazon sells a lot more variety under its own return policies etc, while Walmart is better for things like motor oil that they have locally (if you wanted to go into a Superstore). But there's enough overlap that it's worth cross-shopping, for now.

Competing companies collaborate all the time

[Tony Isaac]

Samsung makes screens for iPhones.
Microsoft Office runs on Macs.
DHL uses UPS for air freight.
Intel and AMD collaborate on PCI Express.
TSMC makes chips for NVidia, Intel, and AMD.
Sony PlayStation uses cloud services from Microsoft Azure.

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[itsme1234]

TSMC makes chips for NVidia, Intel, and AMD.

... and Qualcomm. We've had the semiconductor shortage a few years back for 1970 technology that probably 50 underdeveloped countries can build, imagine now all the top silicone coming from a single company in Taiwan.

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[cusco]

Have no fear, the embargo on high tech chips and fabs have ensured that China is rapidly developing their own silicon industry. The chips in Huwai's new phones apparently rival the Apple A1 in most respects.

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[Tony Isaac]

Competition is a wonderful thing. This is good news, not bad. It will keep the big boys from becoming monsters, because they'll have to still compete in the world marketplace.

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[itsme1234]

Is that ironical in some way? I know only about Apple's A4-19, with the A4 being a 32 bit 2010(?) or so CPU.

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[cusco]

My bad, A14, the 2020 version. For a country which has only been developing its own lithography systems for less than a decade it's pretty amazing.

Not just amazon, either

[hawk]

It's not just amazon.

I ordered a thermostat for my mustang last week. It was described as "sold and shipped by Walmart."

A couple of days later, I found an Autozone box on my porch. And not just the box, but the shipping return address was to auto zone!

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

Yep, and last year I ordered my whole-house generator, from the manufacturer, on Walmart.com.

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[hawk]

there are lots of those, often with their own "store." I find batteries like that a lot.

But this was explicitly a Walmart listing, by Walmart, rather than a 3d party listing.

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[Tony Isaac]

Gotcha, yes, you're correct, they do have lots of different arrangements for fulfilling and shipping items to you.

Competitive markets are a myth.

[PubJeezy]

Competitive markets are a myth.

Wal-Mart shipping is always slower than Amazon....

[bsdetector101]

Usually a day or 2 later, never get it the next day from Walmart !

Ordered from Aliexpress, marked up for the US

[drinkypoo]

Pretty much everything not big-name-brand that's on Walmart or Amazon is marked up 25% or more from the Aliexpress price for exactly the same product. If you're willing to wait for it to come from China, you can get the same crap for less. I've just placed an order for an item that's $200 on Amazon and was $150. I expect it to take maybe an extra week.

done with Walmart

[vilain]

I tried buying some jeans on Walmart's web site (Wrangler & Dickey). Of the three pairs, I got one and it was very poorly made. The other two orders were cancelled but I wasn't notified about it. The only way I knew was to go lookup the order on the site. Never buying anything from Walmart on-line again. The local store was remodeled to be a Superstore with cramped aisles and very tall shelves. There are even fewer associates to ask where to find something. I wandered around 20 minutes trying to find C

If it a 3rd party seller on Walmart, RUN

[cjmnews]

Walmart's 3rd party sellers are shady at best. High shipping prices, elevated product prices, slower than should be expected.

These should be avoided, and find the product elsewhere for less, faster shipping and lower shipping costs.