Walmart has officially entered the promotional products space, quietly launching Walmart Promo Shop, where the retail giant has a huge stock of promotional products, including sunglasses, drinkware, bags, writing instruments and more.
After doing commercial battle over the years with its e-commerce nemesis, Amazon, with both parties doing things like growing their apparel offerings through acquisitions and new lines, Walmart is fully committing to promotional products and customized e-commerce on a level Amazon hasn’t reached just yet.
But, with this development, that could change in the future.
Walmart Promo Shop has products in drinkware, bags, clothing, pens and writing, outdoor and leisure, health and wellness, home and auto, desk, and technology categories. This covers the majority of promotional products companies categories, barring a few like edibles and printed products.
Similar to existing services like CafePress, customers can choose a product and customize the design online when ordering.
With Walmart’s recent growth ($485.87 billion in revenue in 2016), and footprint in the U.S. (more than 4,000 locations in the U.S.), this has the potential to be a major shakeup in the promotional products industry.
This also follows the trend of online retailers like Vistaprint gaining traction in the industry through opening physical locations where customers can talk to sales representatives about promotional products and printed items.
As we’ve said before, Walmart and Amazon have been racing each other in just about every aspect of their respective businesses, so if Walmart sees success in the promotional products sector (especially with Staples being sold), Amazon may very well follow its lead and introduce a bona fide promotional products arm of business.
What’s stopping them?
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