Gorilla Commerce built a 9-figure business on Amazon. Now, it’s launching in Walmart stores

And in July, the company hit a significant milestone in its quest to live beyond Amazon. It launched its Gorilla Grip bath mats in more than 2,600 Walmart stores after previously selling through the company’s third-party marketplace for two years. In doing so, Gorilla Commerce hopes that it has built a repeatable marketplace-to-stores playbook, one that it can leverage to eventually launch more products in more physical retailers. 

“We know we’re good on the marketplace side, but we knew we wanted to have the opportunity to really reach new customers and in different ways,” Bilangino said.

When asked what has driven Gorilla Commerce’s success on Amazon over the past decade, Bilangino said it’s hard to pinpoint one thing. But, he said the company prides itself on responding quickly to customer feedback. 

“The star ratings obviously matter, but really reading the reviews and seeing what the customer feedback is [is important], Bilangino said. “For the most part, we know very quickly within a couple weeks when we launch a new product … whether it’s resonating with the consumer.” Gorilla Commerce also does everything from product development to advertising in-house.

Testing new marketplaces

The company knew it wanted to start with its hero brand, Gorilla Grip, in its quest to prove that its products could live beyond Amazon. First, Bilangino decided to launch Gorilla Grip on Amazon Canada. It was a good way, he said, to prove that the brand was logistically ready to launch into new marketplaces. With Amazon Canada, Gorilla Grip had to adapt to new packaging requirements, a new logistics system and a new customer base. Then, six months after that, Gorilla Grip launched on Walmart’s third-party marketplace. 

Gorilla Grip chose Walmart marketplace first, Bilangino said, simply because it was one of “very few partners that had that true omni-channel experience,” in the sense that it seemed to be relatively focused on both its third-party marketplace and its stores business. 

Gorilla Grip first launched with a handful of products; since then, it has expanded its assortment to include dozens of products, including cheese graters, oven mitts and dog food bowls with feeding mats. Its Gorilla Grip bath mat has garnered more than 1,000 reviews on Walmart.com, giving it a 4.6 rating. It was recognized by Walmart as “Outstanding Home Seller of the Year” in 2025. 

Conversations to bring Gorilla Grip into stores started during semi-regular meetings Gorilla Commerce had with the Walmart 3P team. Bilangino said that occasionally, someone from the 1P team would join with questions about a particular product that was taking off on the marketplace. What was also helpful, Bilangino said, was attending Walmart’s annual summit for marketplace sellers. At the summit, he said attendees had the opportunity to meet with merchants in their particular category. 

“I think that really shows the emphasis that Walmart is putting on building a true omnichannel platform,” he said. 

Will Haire, co-founder and CEO of marketplace management agency BellaVix, said that while Amazon is still the “800-pound gorilla” in the marketplace space, there is a lot of interest among his clients in launching through Walmart. That’s because many of them, like Gorilla Grip, hope they can use their success on Walmart’s marketplace to earn a spot on retail shelves.

And in his experience, Haire said, Walmart has proven receptive to the idea. He gave an example of an unnamed pet brand he works with. The brand sells through both Amazon and Walmart’s marketplaces, and one of its products in particular really took off on Walmart. The brand then had the opportunity to meet with people on Walmart’s pet team at an event in China, and Walmart did a small regional rollout of that product in stores. 

But, “the biggest weakness from just a dot-com perspective is demand isn’t there,” he said, relative to Amazon.

In his experience, “typically 10-20% of your Amazon or DTC sales is what you can expect from [Walmart’s marketplace]. He said he’s worked with a couple of brands that have performed exceptionally well and have been able to hit about 30% of their Amazon sales on Walmart’s marketplace. But ultimately, the demand between the two platforms has “never been toe-to-toe.”

A bet on back-to-school season

Gorilla Grip’s bath mats are landing in Walmart stores in time for back-to-school season and will be featured on a sidekick in stores. Bilangino said people mainly buy the bath mat for safety purposes — to prevent slippage in the bathtub, especially in households with young kids or elderly adults — and for hygiene. “Parents are buying it for their kids when they’re going off to school,” he explained, to spruce up a dorm bathroom.

Launching into physical retail for the first time has required a whole host of changes. Gorilla Grip recently went through a logo redesign, for example, so its products can stand out more on physical retail shelves. The refreshed logo consists of a Gorilla standing so that its arms and legs form the outline of a house shape – a subtle callout to tell customers that Gorilla Grip sells home products.

The biggest challenge that Gorilla Grip faces, Bilangino explained, is that customers often buy a product from Gorilla Grip without even realizing it. Or, maybe they are familiar with the Gorilla Grip bath mat, but don’t realize all of the other products the brand now carries. 

“Then they look on their Amazon account or Walmart account, and they find that they’ve actually bought not one, not two, but three products of ours in different categories, and they didn’t put it all together,” he said.

Bilangino believes there are opportunities for Gorilla Grip to expand its partnership with Walmart next year, though he didn’t elaborate on what those were. But by expanding into physical retail, the hope is that more customers will start to remember the Gorilla Grip brand.