Product Startup Podcast Episode 215: Launch on Walmart Marketplace

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn how to launch your invention idea on Walmart.com from an agency founder that has sold over a billion dollars in products on the platform.

00:00:09 Kevin Mako: This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:18 Kevin Mako: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups, and produced by Mako Design.

00:00:24 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. I'm very excited to introduce Michael Lebhar to the show.

00:00:28 Kevin Mako: Michael is a founder of SellCord, one of the largest.

00:00:30 Kevin Mako: Walmart Marketplace agencies in the world, selling over a billion dollars in products for hardware startups and brands on walmart.com.

00:00:37 Kevin Mako: Today, Michael will share valuable knowledge for inventors, startups and small manufacturers on what Walmart

00:00:41 Kevin Mako: marketplace is, how to launch your new product on the platform, even if it's your first product ever, and how to succeed in growing your

00:00:46 Kevin Mako: product sales from there. Now, on to the episode.

00:00:50 Kevin Mako: This show is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product

00:00:55 Kevin Mako: development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and

00:01:00 Kevin Mako: inventors. Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. Now on to the

00:01:06 Kevin Mako: episode. Hey, Michael, welcome to the show.

00:01:08 Michael Lebhar: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

00:01:10 Kevin Mako: Well, we're looking

00:01:11 Kevin Mako: forward to talking to you today about getting a new product as a hardware startup, getting a new product

00:01:17 Kevin Mako: onto Walmart Marketplace. This is Walmart.com's marketplace for all kinds of products. It differs from the

00:01:24 Kevin Mako: actual retail store, obviously under the same brand and same company, but there's some really big

00:01:28 Kevin Mako: key differences between getting into the actual retail brick and mortar store and being on

00:01:33 Kevin Mako: Walmart online. And actually, there's quite a lot of benefit to being on Walmart online if you want

00:01:37 Kevin Mako: to get into Walmart stores as an end state goal for your new product brand. Before we get into all

00:01:43 Kevin Mako: the details of, first of all, how it's changing as it's rolling into 2024. But in addition to that,

00:01:47 Kevin Mako: how did you tactfully get your product onto Walmart online properly? And then how do you do you do a good

00:01:52 Kevin Mako: job of it? Before we get into all that great stuff, just give us a bit of a backstory of how you

00:01:56 Kevin Mako: became the big success story that you are today, selling over a billion dollars in product

00:02:00 Kevin Mako: for clients through your agency. You've done over $10 million on your own product in the very early

00:02:04 Kevin Mako: day, starting actually in high school. I won't give away the full story. Let's hear it from you

00:02:08 Michael Lebhar: from where you started. Awesome. Yeah. So I was always busy doing a bunch of different things.

00:02:13 Michael Lebhar: And then in early high school, you know, I came across one of my friends were selling a lot online.

00:02:18 Michael Lebhar: Like, I got to learn what this is about. I started selling online in early high school. I think it was

00:02:22 Michael Lebhar: in the 10th grade is when I started. Wow. I think the beginning of 11th grade is when I

00:02:26 Michael Lebhar: actually launched my brand on Amazon. Originally, I started with dabbling with some eBay from there.

00:02:31 Michael Lebhar: Start on Amazon, realized the opportunity it gave to really build a brand with little access to capital

00:02:36 Michael Lebhar: and just putting some money together to kind of launch a product on Amazon. We were able to have some

00:02:40 Michael Lebhar: strong success there. From there, I was able to really build a brand out of it. So that's kind of where

00:02:45 Michael Lebhar: my journey started and really opened up the world for me of like product development, building a

00:02:49 Michael Lebhar: brand, marketing and learned so much from that. From there, you know, built a couple of brands,

00:02:54 Michael Lebhar: one in the fitness space, one in the supplement space.

00:02:56 Michael Lebhar: And yeah, that kind of led us down the journey of banning to other marketplaces.

00:03:01 Michael Lebhar: From there, actually, one of our brands getting into Walmart stores nationwide.

00:03:05 Michael Lebhar: And yeah, and just learning a lot from that.

00:03:07 Michael Lebhar: So that's kind of when my journey started, kind of realized the opportunity on Walmart.com

00:03:11 Michael Lebhar: and how fast Walmart.com was growing.

00:03:14 Michael Lebhar: You know, when we were having really good success there with both of our brands on Walmart.com,

00:03:17 Michael Lebhar: that's kind of around three years ago is when I kind of launched the agency that supports brands on

00:03:22 Michael Lebhar: Walmart.com, helps brands launch on Walmart.com.

00:03:25 Michael Lebhar: So that's also been really fun and exciting,

00:03:26 Michael Lebhar: because it used to be so limited to two categories.

00:03:29 Michael Lebhar: Now I get to see so many different categories, so many different things going on.

00:03:33 Michael Lebhar: So, yeah, that's like my story in a nutshell.

00:03:36 Kevin Mako: That's amazing story, starting young and then now working with all kinds of brands and hardware

00:03:41 Kevin Mako: startups, getting them to succeed on these platforms.

00:03:44 Kevin Mako: So let's talk about walmart.com.

00:03:45 Kevin Mako: What is Walmart.com or Walmart Marketplace?

00:03:47 Kevin Mako: How does that differ from Walmart retail stores?

00:03:51 Michael Lebhar: That's a great question.

00:03:52 Michael Lebhar: I'm going to try to give the answer that gives the full view, but doesn't overcomplicate

00:03:56 Michael Lebhar: it too much. When you think about Walmart, there's obviously Walmart stores and almost everybody's

00:04:01 Michael Lebhar: next to Walmart to some capacity, I think, over in like 90% of American or 95% of Americans live

00:04:06 Michael Lebhar: within 10 miles of a Walmart. So most people are close to Walmart stores and Walmart's obviously

00:04:10 Michael Lebhar: massive on that front. But then there's Walmart.com, right, which is the online platform.

00:04:14 Michael Lebhar: Either you can access it through the app, the Walmart app or Walmart.com. And on that platform,

00:04:19 Michael Lebhar: you basically have number one items that people order on there called pickup and delivery,

00:04:23 Michael Lebhar: where people can actually, even though they're buying technically from the store,

00:04:26 Michael Lebhar: they order it on dot com or from the app. And on the platform as well, on Walmart.

00:04:31 Michael Lebhar: com, you also have brands that sell their product directly to Walmart. Walmart, Walmart sells

00:04:36 Michael Lebhar: it on Walmart.com, even though it's not included in stores or anything like that. But Walmart

00:04:41 Michael Lebhar: Walmart buys inventory from you, they sell it on dot com. And for a while, that's mainly what

00:04:45 Michael Lebhar: Walmart.com was now. But ever since Walmart launched a marketplace, marketplace is another component

00:04:51 Michael Lebhar: within Walmart.com that your listings will show up on the same pages and through the same buying

00:04:56 Michael Lebhar: experience as an in-store item or as an item that Walmart purchases directly, but it's through

00:05:01 Michael Lebhar: the marketplace. And what that means is basically you control the retail. So you choose the price.

00:05:07 Michael Lebhar: You can make an account, list your items. You don't need to get approval to list your items. Once you

00:05:12 Michael Lebhar: have an account approved, you can list your items as long as it's not a restricted category. And you decide

00:05:16 Michael Lebhar: the pricing you want to put on that. You decide how much marketing you want to put on that. You decide

00:05:20 Michael Lebhar: the content and all that. So that's really what the marketplace is. And it really lets you dictate some

00:05:25 Michael Lebhar: of your success there and really put it in your own hand. So that's marketplace has been growing

00:05:29 Michael Lebhar: extremely fast. Walmart.com as a whole has grown extremely fast. And they just released earnings and

00:05:34 Michael Lebhar: they crossed $100 billion in sales on Walmart.com last year. And, you know, a portion of that is

00:05:40 Michael Lebhar: marketplace and that marketplace portion is growing. So yeah, that's like the basic overview of the Walmart

00:05:46 Michael Lebhar: ecosystem from a dot com perspective. That's very helpful to look at it from a high level view. And I want

00:05:51 Kevin Mako: to get into the weeds a bit here. First of all, looking at Walmart.com, how do you actually

00:05:58 Kevin Mako: tactfully get on it? Now, you mentioned it's really easy. You basically just sign up for an account

00:06:02 Kevin Mako: and you're there. You're actually selling basically on walmoth.com, essentially overnight. Talk

00:06:08 Kevin Mako: me through a bit about how that actually works and just how easy that is to actually do for a new hardware

00:06:13 Kevin Mako: startup, even though it's their first product they've ever brought to market. Yeah. So what's great is

00:06:18 Michael Lebhar: is on Walmart, you know, it used to be you have to be a larger brand to get out.

00:06:21 Michael Lebhar: access to it through a certain amount of sales. Now it's much, much easier. So they still have

00:06:26 Michael Lebhar: requirements. Like Amazon is easier to get an account than Walmart, which actually presents

00:06:30 Michael Lebhar: opportunities because you have less competition in general. You have less bad actors on the platform.

00:06:36 Michael Lebhar: So, you know, you have to apply. When you apply, they want to see you have a business set up.

00:06:40 Michael Lebhar: They'd like to see if you're already on another channel. So like it's good if you have a website

00:06:43 Michael Lebhar: already set up for your product. You don't want to try to have that. Or if you have products on another

00:06:47 Michael Lebhar: channel, you're going to want to link that to it. And, you know, they're really looking for items that

00:06:51 Michael Lebhar: fit their assortment and add in more opportunities. So a lot of times if you have you coming to market

00:06:55 Michael Lebhar: with like a unique item, it's a good chance that they're going to want to accept you. So once you get

00:06:59 Michael Lebhar: accepted, you're on the platform and then you could just list your item. So it's, it's really great

00:07:03 Michael Lebhar: in that thing in that sense. And there's so many programs you could actually be part of that Walmart

00:07:08 Michael Lebhar: offers to help actually direct you and accelerate your growth on the platform. It's amazing that's

00:07:13 Kevin Mako: that's that easy for hardware startup. I mean, back in the early days of running this business of the early

00:07:17 Kevin Mako: 2000s, so many inventors. It's almost like the dream. You've got this.

00:07:21 Kevin Mako: product idea in your head and you say, you know what, one day, if I work hard enough and I get

00:07:25 Kevin Mako: this thing designed, get into manufacturing, start selling to the smaller players, then to the

00:07:29 Kevin Mako: mid-sized players, one day I will be in Walmart. And I'll walk down the aisles and I'll see it sitting

00:07:35 Kevin Mako: there. Well, nowadays, obviously with the digital revolution, more and more people are looking to online

00:07:40 Kevin Mako: marketplaces, of course, Amazon, Walmart Marketplace are the main leaders. But remember, you had eBay

00:07:45 Kevin Mako: before that, who's still kicking for a number of different categories and always trying new things

00:07:49 Kevin Mako: as well. There's other smaller platforms that are coming out. You've got direct

00:07:52 Kevin Mako: to consumer through Shopify or through your own website or a variety of other tools. So there's lots

00:07:56 Kevin Mako: of ways to get online. But of course, the big marketplaces, the Amazon and Walmart, those are

00:08:02 Kevin Mako: the giants in the room. And it's just amazing to me how easy it is for a new hardware brand that has

00:08:09 Kevin Mako: a good new product, which should be everybody that's listening to the show. If you've got a good

00:08:13 Kevin Mako: product, you should definitely be doing a great job of actually making a great and making sure

00:08:17 Kevin Mako: it's manufactured to a high quality and all these sorts of things. But at the end of the day,

00:08:22 Kevin Mako: you can get it on a Walmart just like this. Now, I don't want to just get it onto Walmart.com.

00:08:27 Kevin Mako: I want it to be a success story once it's actually on the platform. What are some tips and tricks,

00:08:32 Kevin Mako: Michael, that, you know, in the early phases to both get it on to the platform and present it well,

00:08:38 Kevin Mako: but then I want to talk a little bit later in the episode as well as some of the tools you mentioned that

00:08:42 Kevin Mako: are actually on the Walmart.com platform to scale and grow the sales across those channels.

00:08:47 Kevin Mako: to essentially create an empire out of this platform with your new Harvard product.

00:08:52 Michael Lebhar: The way I like to look at it is you want to really build the initial foundation really strong.

00:08:57 Michael Lebhar: And what that means in the sense of Walmart.com is you're going to want to make sure your

00:09:00 Michael Lebhar: listings optimize really well. Now, a lot of people, you know, build their listing for Amazon and then they

00:09:05 Michael Lebhar: just transferred over to Walmart. That's the wrong way to do where Walmart wants the listing

00:09:08 Michael Lebhar: structured in a specific way. And they have sort of like a gamified system called listing quality score

00:09:13 Michael Lebhar: where they actually judge you based on how well your listings optimize and that will affect

00:09:17 Michael Lebhar: how visible your product becomes. So you're going to really want to make sure you understand the

00:09:21 Michael Lebhar: keywords that are driving the sales of your item, right? Understand what keywords are people

00:09:25 Michael Lebhar: using when they're searching for your item and then understand the Walmart style guides. Walmart has

00:09:29 Michael Lebhar: something called style guides. You can find them in their help center, basically outlining how long

00:09:32 Michael Lebhar: they want their titles, descriptions, key features. They want to fill that a certain way.

00:09:37 Michael Lebhar: They want shorter titles than what you see on Amazon, right? Usually every category is different,

00:09:40 Michael Lebhar: and it's usually around 75 characters. They have those different rules of what they want.

00:09:44 Michael Lebhar: So you're going to want to make sure you structure the front end of you listening like that.

00:09:47 Michael Lebhar: And then the backend of your listing is really important. The backend is all these fields Walmart asks you, like attributes about your product, you know, the size, who should use it, all these different things, which sometimes people are like, oh, that's not so relevant to me. But when you fill those out, your score gets better and your indexing gets better. And those things are how Walmart helps kind of organize the catalog to decide the different filters that causes your item to show up. So when people are using different filters, a lot of them are tied to what you fill down in those attributes. So really important to kind of set your list, your foundation, right?

00:10:17 Michael Lebhar: by sending your listing properly by filling out all those areas.

00:10:21 Kevin Mako: That's super helpful. Now, let's assume we've built a great listing. We've got a great product,

00:10:25 Kevin Mako: built a great listing. We've got it approved. And now we're starting to sell.

00:10:31 Kevin Mako: What are some of the tools to grow that sales to make it a big product?

00:10:37 Michael Lebhar: Yeah. So some of the tools you're going to want to use is number one, you're going to want to enroll

00:10:41 Michael Lebhar: with WFS, which is Walmart fulfillment services. This is basically the equivalent of Amazon Prime.

00:10:46 Michael Lebhar: It's Walmart's version of it. You're sending inventory to their fulfillment centers.

00:10:50 Michael Lebhar: They send it directly to the customer. A lot of times the cost is less than if you were to ship it yourself

00:10:55 Michael Lebhar: just because of Walmart shipping rates, but also even if the costs are more, if you just sell much more

00:10:59 Michael Lebhar: because Walmart's able to get it to the customers within a quick amount of time and they're able to put

00:11:02 Michael Lebhar: a badge on it that shows that's part of their Walmart plus program. So that's kind of one key factor

00:11:08 Michael Lebhar: you could leverage. Number two is you're going to really want to leverage your advertising. So they have

00:11:13 Michael Lebhar: something called Walmart Connect, which is the advertising arm.

00:11:16 Michael Lebhar: a Walmart US, you could get an account automatically through just having a seller account.

00:11:21 Michael Lebhar: And from there, you actually able to run your advertising for your item. So once you know,

00:11:25 Michael Lebhar: people are converting for your item and you have some margin there. It's like, now let's start

00:11:29 Michael Lebhar: running the advertising to really start driving awareness around your item, start driving conversions

00:11:33 Michael Lebhar: and start getting that flywheel going. You know, with any marketplace and any online retailer,

00:11:37 Michael Lebhar: it's really important to get that flywheel going. Start getting traction. So it builds on itself.

00:11:41 Michael Lebhar: And, you know, even if when you're really approaching advertising, it should be a lot from the

00:11:45 Michael Lebhar: perspective of how do you build up this item? So it builds some traction and it organically shows

00:11:49 Michael Lebhar: pretty high when people search for your item. Even if you don't have the margin to afford

00:11:54 Michael Lebhar: running advertising always, in the beginning, it's really important to get that flywheel going on a

00:11:59 Michael Lebhar: marketplace because otherwise your item, if your item sits on page 10, it's just as good as if it wasn't

00:12:04 Michael Lebhar: listed there at all for the most part. So I'm really important to kind of get that flywheel going.

00:12:08 Michael Lebhar: And that's one key program you could leverage to really help draw the sales.

00:12:13 Kevin Mako: Super helpful. Those are great platforms.

00:12:15 Kevin Mako: Obviously, there's a lot of details that go into the weeds about how you do each of those things well.

00:12:19 Kevin Mako: But the important thing, especially as a hardware startup, is just to be aware of these things

00:12:22 Kevin Mako: and start doing your research. You can figure out how to post a great listing, how to use these

00:12:26 Kevin Mako: different tools, best practices, all of this sort of stuff. The important thing is awareness.

00:12:31 Kevin Mako: The more you understand about how you actually do this is more realistic it becomes for your actual

00:12:35 Kevin Mako: hardware brand. So Michael, last question before we actually let you go. I want to understand just a bit

00:12:40 Kevin Mako: bit about what you guys do at SellCord. You've developed this huge agency that helps

00:12:45 Kevin Mako: helps all kinds of different brands from early stage startup to some major brands really excel at

00:12:51 Michael Lebhar: Walmart. Explain a bit about what you guys are doing. Yeah. So a lot of what we've kind of noticed is

00:12:57 Michael Lebhar: obviously Walmart.com's growing so fast. And because it's growing so fast, Walmart's implementing a lot

00:13:01 Michael Lebhar: of programs and a lot of different initiatives. And at the same time, a lot of brands are starting to make a lot

00:13:06 Michael Lebhar: of money off Walmart.com. So they're starting to invest more resources in it. And it's becoming,

00:13:11 Michael Lebhar: you know, not close as competitive in Amazon, but it's still very competitive.

00:13:13 Michael Lebhar: They're still to succeed properly and you still need to have the right tools. And, you know,

00:13:17 Michael Lebhar: most brands don't either, you know, they're focused on running their business, their product,

00:13:20 Michael Lebhar: about whatever the case might be is, or even sometimes other channels, they don't have the time to

00:13:24 Michael Lebhar: properly address Walmart.com. So we've kind of plug into their team, act as an extension of their team

00:13:28 Michael Lebhar: to help them launch on the platform, scale on the platform and be that resource they

00:13:32 Michael Lebhar: could rely on an affordable cost where they could actually take advantage of the platform properly.

00:13:37 Michael Lebhar: And, you know, I think if you have the right time to do the right research and right

00:13:40 Michael Lebhar: information, you could do it yourself as well. That's what's great about the platform.

00:13:43 Michael Lebhar: If you're, you know, you're busy with other channels or you're busy with other areas of your business and you really want to do that or you're looking for faster scale, more expertise. There's a lot there. And then we work with a lot of much larger brands that are national, that everybody has their products in their houses where they need different types of support, where now there's so much more competition on Walmart and how do they get the most money? How do they, you know, with the shelves that they're losing some of their space on and their share of the category, how do we rebuild that properly efficiently? And how do we create

00:14:13 Michael Lebhar: a cohesive strategy that ties in the disruption Walmart Marketplace is bringing into the

00:14:18 Michael Lebhar: Walmart.com ecosystem. So that's kind of a lot of what we do. And we've been able to grow pretty fast with that.

00:14:23 Kevin Mako: And it's been exciting. That's powerful stuff, especially for the scaling element of really utilizing these

00:14:29 Kevin Mako: practices and stretching those dollars. So you can get the best return on ad spend, return on investment,

00:14:34 Kevin Mako: etc. As always, I will put the links to your website for anyone who's interested. They can just click

00:14:40 Kevin Mako: through the links below, or they can go to, I think it's sellcord.com. Yep, exactly.

00:14:46 Kevin Mako: Perfect. And then they can learn more. Michael. Thanks again for all your words of wisdom today.

00:14:50 Kevin Mako: I appreciate all of your help in telling new hardware startups how they can get their new product

00:14:54 Kevin Mako: onto walmart.com and do it well. Awesome. Thanks for having me. It was exciting to kind of speak.

00:15:00 Kevin Mako: Thanks and take care. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast.

00:15:07 Kevin Mako: If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and hit the like button and subscribe.

00:15:12 Kevin Mako: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us any time at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:15:21 Kevin Mako: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for hardware startups.

00:15:28 Kevin Mako: And the podcast is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:15:39 Kevin Mako: Take your product from idea to store shelves at Mako Design.

00:15:42 Kevin Mako: com. That's M-A-K-O-Design.com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.