Walmart leans into pricey items online, from Chanel to Labubu
The retailer synonymous with low prices has been leveraging its third-party marketplace to expand its selection online to things that can cost quite a lot.
On Aug. 11, more than 50 Labubu dolls and other collectibles from Pop Mart’s The Monsters series appeared on Walmart’s third-party marketplace through sneaker platform StockX. Some are priced at more than $200, including shipping, such as a “secret version” Labubu doll from the Big into Energy series. The big-box retailer first partnered with StockX last year to add more pre-verified high-demand shoes such as Nike’s Air Jordans to the platform. Michael Mosser, vp and category lead at Walmart Marketplace, told Bloomberg in 2024 that the partnership could expand to tens of thousands of products.
Walmart at the start of this year similarly teamed up with the resale platform Rebag to add tens of thousands of pre-owned luxury handbags, jewelry and watches from brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Chanel. Additionally, Walmart added a section of its marketplace for collectibles like toys, media and music, trading cards and sports memorabilia in 2024. The section is now led by former eBay trading cards executive Bob Means, who is now gm of electronics, toys and seasonal at Walmart.
For Walmart, adding to its website higher-profile, in-demand brands that its customers are searching for but don’t expect to find with the retailer could boost site traffic and advertising revenue.
Scott Benedict of Benedict Enterprises, a retail consultant and former buyer for Walmart and other retailers, said expanding some of these categories helps Walmart to expand its reach with higher-income customers. The company has seen large gains with people making incomes of $100,000 or more over the last few years, and the company has been focusing its messaging more toward that audience.
“If you lure those higher-income consumers in with some of these neat new product lines and neat new partnerships, you may — if you’re Walmart — earn the opportunity to serve them every day on basics, on grocery and consumables, and on some of those everyday needs,” Benedict said.
Walmart already offered some used luxury fashion items through third-party sellers, but the Rebag partnership greatly increased that selection to include Rebag’s full catalog of about 27,000 items, including products from brands such as Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Chanel, executives told Modern Retail in January. Rebag’s catalog ranges from smaller accessories to Birkin bags that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
“A fashion enthusiast might have had their eye on a Saint Laurent bag that was out four or five years ago that they haven’t been able to find,” Michael Mosser, vp of Marketplace for Walmart, said in an interview with Modern Retail earlier this year. “And now, we can bring that to customers as they come and shop with Walmart as really their destination for everything.”
A battle is brewing between major e-commerce retailers in employing this tactic. Amazon announced a similar partnership with Rebag in June. Amazon had made some attempts in the luxury space through the years. It launched a section of its site dedicated to the category in 2020, but over the years, it has struggled to win over some major luxury brands because of brands’ fear of counterfeits and the need to compete with billions of other listings.
Offering luxury brands via resellers could be an avenue for Walmart to attract these brands directly in the future — such as partnering with Labubu maker Pop Mart to sell the popular plushes — said Sky Canaves, principal retail and e-commerce analyst for eMarketer.
“If those brands saw that there was demand for their goods on Walmart, they might give it a second look as a distribution channel,” Canaves said. “But Amazon has been trying to do this for many years and has gained little traction among luxury brands. Walmart will be just as — if not even more — challenged, because part of the luxury definition that we follow involves exclusivity and scarcity, and Walmart is anything but exclusive. It’s the most massive mass retailer, so luxury brands will be less willing to put their brands on a platform at odds with how they position their brands, in terms of exclusivity and prestige.”
Benedict said this kind of challenge with Walmart in working with vendors goes back decades. He was Walmart’s director of e-commerce in the late ’90s, ahead of the launch of Walmart.com, and later worked for Sam’s Club from 2002-2016 and then Walmart until 2017.
“I can recall, both at Walmart and Sam’s, that there were times where I had to convince higher-end brand manufacturers to sell to us because they perceived a Walmart or a Sam’s Club customer as low-end,” Benedict said. “Walmart’s customer is very broad. They represent a broad swath of the population.”
These partnerships also give the resellers, like StockX, a new opportunity for growth through such massive resellers, after a drop in growth that followed a boom during the pandemic, Canaves said. In January, Rebag CMO Elizabeth Layne told Modern Retail that bringing its products to Walmart would help it reach a much wider audience than ever before.
“It’s all about the reach and building awareness for us,” Layne said.