Walmart’ acquisition of Jet.com wasn’t a seamless experience for everyone selling on Walmart’s marketplace.
“A lot of our products went off Walmart.com at the end of July,” said Ian MacDonald, Director of Ecommerce for Silver Star Brands, number them in the thousands. “We have not gotten a clear answer about what happened. I’m under the impression that Walmart had to do some infrastructure upgrades in preparation for the acquisition.”
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MacDonald said Silver Star used ChannelAdvisor for the integration with Walmart. “At the end of July we were getting a lot of errors within ChannelAdvisor and Walmart,” he said.
Walmart announced in August it was acquiring Jet.com for $3.3 billion. The company placed a major bet that Jet will help it grow its ecommerce business faster by expanding customer reach and adding new capabilities.
Walmart also announced it would slow store openings to focus on ecommerce sales.
MacDonald said Silver Star had been selling on Jet.com for over a year. He said there were no changes, either good or bad, on Jet.com after the acquisition. Long term he expects it will be a net positive for his company as Walmart invests in Jet.com. “I think long-term [any issues] will work themselves out and both of these marketplaces will continue to grow,” he said.
Prior to the acquisition the experience on Walmart and Jet was positive for Silver Star as it was finding new customers on both marketplaces.
“One thing about selling on these marketplaces is that shoppers there are different than our core customers,” MacDonald said. “We are introducing our products to people who might not have otherwise seen them.”
MacDonald said he is expecting positive results on both Walmart.com and Jet.com this holiday season since sales were growing on both channels before the acquisition. He added they have each have a large customer base, giving Silver Star a lot of great exposure.
Daniela Forte is Multichannel Merchant’s Associate Editor