Walmart Marketplace is either the easiest growth you will find this year or a total waste of your time. There is very little in between, and the deciding factor is not your product.
The honest filter
Walmart works when your category has real Walmart shopper overlap, your price point sits under about $50, and your competitors there have thin listings. Less competition, cheaper ad inventory, and a customer who is genuinely different from the Amazon Prime shopper.
Walmart does not work when your category is barely searched there, when your margin cannot absorb WFS fees plus a lower average price point, or when nobody on your team will own it.
That last one kills more Walmart expansions than economics do. A half-managed second marketplace is worse than no second marketplace, because a bad listing with bad reviews now represents your brand in a new place.
$6K to $52K in five months
We launched a household brand on Walmart last year. Their Amazon business was strong and their category had real overlap. Month one did $6K. Month five did $52K, with a CPC roughly 40% below what they paid on Amazon for the same keywords.
Sometimes the right call is "don't"
We also told a premium skincare brand not to bother. Search volume in their category was a fraction of Amazon's, and their price point was wrong for the audience. That was the right call, and it cost us the extra retainer.
Expansion is not a badge. It is a math problem with an ownership problem attached.