In another bid to unseat Amazon from its third-party seller throne, Walmart added a new inventory service to its Walmart Marketplace over the summer. Inventory Transfer Services (ITS) is designed to provide sellers with better inventory availability, lower costs, and faster shipping.
While the odds of the retail giant delivering Amazon a knockout punch are slim, the new service does offer third-party sellers another valuable tool to help drive ecommerce sales.
ITS Leverages Sortable Inventory for High-Volume Sellers
Walmart’s ITS is a value-added service that lets third-party sellers on Walmart Marketplace ship their inventory to a centralized location, where Walmart will then distribute it to its fulfillment centers across the country. The goal is to provide sellers with a solution for seamless and efficient inventory management.
To use ITS, sellers need to create a Walmart Fulfillment Services shipment plan and select ITS as the shipping destination. Walmart then provides the seller with a shipping label they can use to send their inventory to the transfer station. Once the inventory arrives at the transfer station, Walmart will take care of distributing it to its fulfillment centers.
ITS has a number of benefits for sellers, including:
- Improved inventory availability. By using ITS, sellers can ensure their products are always available to customers, even in high-demand areas. ITS automatically distributes inventory to the fulfillment centers that are closest to customers.
- Reduced costs. ITS eliminates the need to ship inventory to multiple fulfillment centers, helping sellers reduce their shipping costs. Centralizing their inventory in one location means lower inventory storage costs, as well.
- Faster shipping times. ITS helps sellers offer faster shipping times by distributing inventory to the fulfillment centers closest to the customer’s shipping address. This means expanded two-day and next-day shipping coverage, a convenience consumers have come to expect.
ITS is a great option for sellers of all sizes, but is especially beneficial for sellers with high-demand inventory and those who sell bulky items. ITS can save these sellers time and money, while also improving the customer experience.
ITS and other recent improvements to its fulfillment service are an effort by Walmart to reduce seller costs and make shopping more convenient for customers. With so many options available to sellers — not just Amazon, but other platforms like Shopify, Shipbob, and Flowspace — every little edge matters.