Walmart is streamlining how products – including seafood – appear online, in order to give the retail giant the ability to add more products to Walmart.com.
Walmart Stores, which operates nearly 11,600 stores globally, including Sam’s Club and Neighborhood Markets, is reorganizing its process of how it gets in-store items to appear online. Now, if an item is available for sale in the store, it will also be approved for the online assortment.
The changes will allow Walmart’s in-store buyers to purchase items for both its stores and online sales. In the past, a supplier would have to deal with two separate buyers to make the item available for sale in stores and online.
“This is part of a continued effort to better serve customers by creating a more efficient process that accelerates how we bring the full assortment of products in stores to Walmart.com. It also allows for Walmart.com buyers to focus on expanding the online assortment,” Walmart said in a statement provided to SeafoodSource.
However, Walmart will not combine buying the buying teams for products sold at its stores and online, as a Reuters article reported.
A large consumer goods supplier told Reuters the previous process was “extremely inefficient” for both Walmart and for its vendors.
"For example, they would buy five million cases a year for stores and 500 cases (for) online and then make us go through a different buyer for online,” the supplier said. “It was a nuisance."
Walmart's buying team in San Bruno, California, will continue to handle suppliers with goods listed exclusively on Walmart.com.
