Arena blog

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a recurring trend of consumers that are drawn to small, emerging, innovative brands rather than large legacy companies. Every consumer is different, of course, but the general feel is that small challenger brands offer advantages as a supplier that some larger brands simply can’t match.

This is great news for brands currently selling at Walmart, or looking to launch at Walmart for the first time. As an emerging challenger brand, your consumer goods can actually leverage your small outsider status to strengthen your pitch to retailers. 

Here’s what those challenger brands are doing to win the battle for space on Walmart shelves.

Most retailers develop their own approach to evaluating their sales success through performance metrics. When you start selling through Walmart, you don’t have to throw that analytics strategy away—but you do need to give priority to the metrics that Walmart buyers care about most.

Every supplier working with Walmart is evaluated with a scorecard that measures weekly, monthly, and quarterly sales, along with a bunch of other performance metrics. Those numbers will have a direct impact on your relationship with your buyer. 

It doesn’t matter if your own performance metrics tell a different story about your retail success: There are certain metrics for which Walmart buyers expect you to put up strong numbers. Here are five data points you can expect your buyer to obsess about.

Walmart doesn’t set a lot of hard-and-fast rules for its suppliers. More than anything, it wants to see that suppliers have the resources and expertise to follow through on its promises. 

Getting your products featured on Walmart store shelves is hard enough as it is. Keeping them there is even harder. With so much competition for this coveted retail space, the margin for error is thin for any CPG brand, which puts pressure on suppliers to avoid the many pitfalls that can hurt a retail brand’s relationship with Walmart buyers.

As a CPG supplier, the value of a strong relationship with Walmart buyers can’t be overstated. These buyers are your entry point to getting your products stocked on Walmart’s shelves, and keeping them happy will support your retail brand’s goals of sticking around at Walmart, and even growing your retail presence.