Shopify X Walmart: Will this marriage topple Amazon?

BY CHRISTINA GWIRA

It seems that most of my articles for the past couple of months have surrounded two things: podcasts and Shopify… and with good reason. Firstly, with the advent of quarantine, work-from-home orders and the like, more people were looking for something to do and be preoccupied while doing the mundane. However, Shopify has also been continuously popping up in the news, and this week is the same: Shopify is in the news again for doing something big. I got the news on Monday, June 15^th, 2020 that Shopify and Walmart were teaming up in a big way.

What kind of way might you ask?

Walmart is planning on bringing Shopify onboard to assist them in overhauling the eCommerce department of their business. Next to Amazon, Shopify is slowly becoming the darling of the internet: a rising stock price; a BOOM in traffic to ALL Shopify stores since COVID-19 hit; a partnership with Facebook barely a month ago (we reported on that, check the previous edition) and now this partnership with the legend that is Walmart.

But what does this mean for the little guy, people like you and I?

Well, at the moment, we can’t use or tap into the possibility of this partnership just yet. People everywhere are gunning for Amazon’s spot and Walmart more than anyone. They’ve been slowly lagging behind in the eCommerce race and have continued to lose market dominance to Amazon’s speedy delivery, massive warehouses and even on price, but barely. I must say, if before you were ignoring the behemoth that is Amazon, you better think again. I myself had never purchased from Amazon till I was unable to purchase goods from my local favorites. I wasn’t able to find products in store due to COVID-19, so I went online, to Amazon, to see whether I could stock up. Lo and behold not only was I able to stock up on what I needed, I was also able to get it at a great price WITH free shipping.

From what has been revealed, the Shopify-Walmart partnership would allow (at the present moment) American merchants to sell their products on Walmart’s soon to be rolled out, brand, spanking new, Shopify powered marketplace. Shopify anticipates that approximately 1,200 merchants will be using the new Walmart marketplace to sell their products. Can you imagine the possibilities? This would provide Shopify shop owners with the opportunity to get in front of some 120 million people, who currently use the current iteration of the Walmart marketplace on a monthly basis.

Of course, with news of this partnership, there came the jump in Shopify’s stock price. Touted as the darling of the Canadian markets, Shopify has beaten long-standing RBC as Canada’s most valued publicly traded company. At the time of this writing, Shopify’s current stock price sits at $817.36 USD, a far cry from the $300+ it was trading at at the beginning of September 2019.

This is something that I cannot stress enough, especially as a web designer, but also a member of the black community. If you have a product that you would like to sell to the masses, the best thing that you can do is start your online store today. Don’t wait till tomorrow. As each day passes on, there are more and more opportunities to bring your vision to the world. With tools like Shopify and the internet at large at your back, you have the power to be able to change the tide for your generational tree. This partnership could be just the thing that could catapult your business to the next level.

I am hopeful and very excited to see how Shopify plans to integrate the standard Shopify backend with the Walmart marketplace. Funny enough, I have a client who is currently working on integrating his store with Amazon… maybe he should wait a while and see what this partnership could look like for his business…