Why the Conditions for Winning With Walmart Have Never Been Better
Start with the number John David Rainey put on the table during Walmart’s Q4 FY26 earnings call on February 19, 2026: advertising and membership income together represented nearly one third of Walmart’s operating profit in the quarter. Then consider that Walmart’s global advertising business reached $6.4 billion for the full fiscal year, that the U.S. eCommerce operation was profitable in each of the four quarters of FY26 for the first time, and that full-year eCommerce sales exceeded $150 billion, up 550 basis points as a share of total sales in two years. That combination of scale, margin diversification, and digital momentum is not a transition story anymore. The transition is over. What suppliers and sellers are looking at now is a mature, compounding platform actively investing in the infrastructure that makes its partners more successful.
The nature of the Walmart partnership has changed as a result. A platform still building toward profitability is conservative about digital commitments and primarily interested in volume. A platform generating double-digit incremental eCommerce margins and growing advertising revenue at six times the rate of retail sales is investing in tools, data access, fulfillment infrastructure, and supplier development programs because those investments make the platform more valuable to everyone on it. Walmart has never offered more entry points, more analytics capability, more fulfillment support, or more deliberate development infrastructure for businesses of every size. The suppliers and sellers who act on that now will hold structural advantages that compound through the next several planning cycles.
The Partner Development Infrastructure Has Never Been More Comprehensive
One of the clearest signals that Walmart’s partnership model has shifted is the range of programs now available to suppliers at different stages of development. Grow With US, launched in April 2025, gives U.S. small businesses access to a four-track program: a learning track with 30 free e-learning modules in the Walmart Supplier Academy covering retail readiness, business fundamentals, and Walmart-specific operations; a discovery track with product showcase opportunities through Open Call, RangeMe, and Walmart Marketplace; a mentorship track pairing businesses with experienced retail mentors; and a financing track providing access to Walmart’s Early Payment Program and Bridge loan marketplace, where eligible businesses can access lines of credit and purchase order financing through banking partners including JPMorgan, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.
John Furner, President and CEO of Walmart U.S., wrote in a blog post announcing the program that small businesses are the backbone of communities and that Walmart sees countless examples of businesses finding long-term growth through the partnership. More than 60% of Walmart’s U.S. suppliers are small businesses. The Grow With US program joins a global family of supplier development initiatives that has already graduated 70,000 small businesses in four years, according to Walmart, including Vriddhi in India and Crece con Walmart in Mexico.
At the 12th annual Open Call in October 2025, more than 500 entrepreneurs from 47 states pitched directly to Walmart and Sam’s Club merchants, with more than 100 receiving Golden Tickets offering the opportunity for shelf placement in stores and online. Leah Platz, Walmart SVP of merchandising excellence, told the Open Call audience that Walmart wants to be the best place suppliers come to sell, while acknowledging the platform knows getting started is not always easy — the precise problem that Grow With US was built to address. Open Call 2025 also expanded for the first time to include presentations from 13 companies developing technologies that support U.S. manufacturing, from shelf-life extension to advanced production techniques, signaling that Walmart’s interest in domestic supplier development now extends into upstream supply chain innovation. Between Supplier Academy, joint business planning frameworks, Grow With US, Scintilla, and Marketplace, the pathway from first pitch to national distribution has more support behind it than at any previous point in the company’s history.
eCommerce Profitability Changed What Walmart Invests In, and Partners Are the Beneficiaries
When Rainey confirmed on the Q1 FY26 earnings call that Walmart had achieved global eCommerce profitability for the first time, the significance for suppliers was not the milestone in isolation. It was what the milestone enables. A profitable eCommerce business generates different capital allocation priorities than one still absorbing losses. Investment moves toward tools that grow a profitable channel faster, and every supplier and seller whose success depends on a faster, better-equipped digital platform benefits from that shift.
The investment shows in the operating results. Walmart U.S. eCommerce grew 27% in Q4 FY26, marking the eighth consecutive quarter above 20%. Approximately 35% of store-fulfilled orders were delivered in under three hours in Q4. U.S. fast delivery grew more than 60% for the full year. Walmart now reaches 95% of the U.S. population with same-day delivery options, fulfilling those orders from more than 4,600 stores acting as forward-deployed inventory nodes. About 60% of U.S. stores receive freight from automated distribution centers, and roughly 50% of eCommerce fulfillment center volume is automated, improvements that reduce delivery cost, improve in-stock accuracy, and make each supplier’s product more reliably available to the customer at the moment of demand.
The connection to supplier in-stock performance is specific. Store-fulfilled delivery draws from live store shelves, which means an OTIF failure or a replenishment gap is simultaneously an eCommerce availability failure. Supplier teams that evaluate OTIF compliance separately from their digital channel performance are managing two linked problems as if they were independent. Bringing replenishment data and Scintilla Channel Performance data into the same planning view, and presenting that unified picture in the JBP, is one of the most direct ways a 1P supplier can demonstrate it understands how Walmart’s operating model currently works and is prepared to grow within it.
The Data Ecosystem Is the Sharpest Competitive Advantage Available to Suppliers
Walmart Data Ventures launched Scintilla In-Store in February 2026, extending the platform from desktop analytics into physical store execution. The platform gives supplier field representatives access to the same real-time item and modular data that Walmart store associates use, enabling them to identify low-stock items, flag planogram issues, and update inventory records during store visits rather than reconciling discrepancies the following day. Pamela Stewart, North America Chief Customer Officer at the Coca-Cola Company, described the capability as providing real-time inventory visibility that enables representatives to make data-driven decisions during every store visit. Walmart Data Ventures has indicated that future updates will add AI-driven task prioritization and deeper integration across in-store systems.
The Scintilla desktop platform continues to develop in parallel. Mark Hardy, SVP of Walmart Data Ventures, has described an AI-powered intelligence capability coming to Scintilla that will help users “improve performance and understand what they should do next” by making key metrics more interpretable and actionable. Charter subscribers with access to Customer Perception, Shopper Behavior, and Digital Landscapes modules are sitting on insight capability that most category competitors are not yet fully using. Suppliers who build systematic workflows connecting Scintilla output to Connect campaign planning, category range reviews, and JBP narratives will enter every buyer conversation with a sharper, more credible point of view than those still relying on syndicated data or lagging sell-through reports. Scintilla Charter also includes API access for integration into a supplier’s own analytics infrastructure, eliminating manual extraction and enabling the daily decision-making cadence that eCommerce now demands. The suppliers who invest in those workflows now will be operating from a different information position than their competitors within a single planning cycle.
Walmart Connect Is the Best Retail Media Investment Available at This Stage
Walmart Connect grew 41% in the U.S. in Q4 FY26. The global advertising business reached $6.4 billion for the full fiscal year, up 46%. When asked whether that growth could be sustained, Rainey told analysts at the Q4 earnings call that Walmart still has “long ways to go” to reach the advertising penetration of best-in-class competitors, pointing to the gap between Walmart’s advertising revenue as a percent of its addressable GMV and Amazon’s equivalent ratio. Marketing Dive, reporting on the same call, noted that Rainey characterized the overall advertising trajectory as having significant runway ahead. The platform is growing fast on a base that, by Walmart’s own leadership assessment, has years of expansion remaining.
That assessment translates into a specific window. The Connect auction is less competitive today, category by category, than it will be in two or three years as more brands arrive at the same conclusion about the platform’s value. Documented outcomes support the case for moving early. Walmart Connect’s case study data shows that a full-funnel campaign for Danone’s Cold Foam Creamer launch drove almost 45% of the brand’s growth at Walmart in the measurement period. Mondelez combined onsite strategies with seasonal full-funnel campaigns and the Search Incrementality solution, which isolates the sales generated by Sponsored Search beyond the organic baseline, increasing ad-attributed sales 53% year over year while improving incremental ROI by 29%.
Search Incrementality is now available broadly. Any supplier trying to justify Connect budget expansion to leadership should use it to separate what advertising is actually generating from what it merely correlates with. The argument is cleaner, the ROI case is defensible, and the joint media investment conversation with a buyer is more productive when the measurement framework is in place before that conversation starts.
The VIZIO integration adds a measurement dimension that was not available to Connect advertisers two years ago. Walmart now connects home screen placements to Walmart.com homepage inventory, with tracking from in-flight delivery through end-of-campaign ROAS. Rainey described VIZIO advertising as delivering triple-digit growth in Q4 and characterized the channel as one where scale is still building. CPG suppliers with seasonal concentration in home, kitchen, and entertainment categories have access to a closed-loop attribution path across the living room screen and the digital shelf that no other retailer can replicate at comparable household reach. Building VIZIO placements into FY27 seasonal planning is a practical next step that most category teams have not yet taken.
Marketplace sellers occupy a distinct position in the Connect ecosystem. Rainey stated explicitly that advertising growth from 3P sellers is running ahead of growth from 1P brands, reflecting both seller count expansion and Walmart’s deliberate investment in ad products tailored to the 3P experience. Sellers who have not activated Sponsored Products for their core listings are competing for Buy Box visibility without a lever their category competitors are already using, and the auction grows more expensive each quarter as the seller base continues to expand.
WFS and Marketplace Mechanics Give Sellers a Genuine Growth Engine
Walmart Fulfillment Services now handles roughly 52% of Marketplace order volume, according to Rainey on the Q4 FY26 earnings call, and the economics behind that adoption rate are straightforward. WFS fulfillment rates run approximately 15% less per item than competing fulfillment providers based on Walmart’s internal data, and sellers using WFS see an average 50% lift in GMV on items carrying the Walmart Fulfilled and 2-Day Shipping designation. Next-day delivery through WFS now covers Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta.
The 50% GMV lift reflects both the search algorithm preference for WFS-fulfilled listings and the conversion effect of the delivery promise at the point of purchase. A seller running self-fulfilled listings in a category where most competitors carry the Walmart Fulfilled badge is competing at a structural disadvantage in search ranking and conversion simultaneously. The economics of WFS adoption should be evaluated at the item level for every SKU in the top half of a seller’s revenue distribution, with both the cost differential and the GMV effect in the model, not the fee comparison alone.
At its August 2025 Let’s Grow! Marketplace Seller Summit, Walmart announced an AI-powered listing tool designed to reduce time to market and improve conversion rates, a Smart Assistant providing 24/7 seller support, a Seller Advisor program, and a brand portal giving sellers more control over how their products appear to shoppers. Manish Joneja, SVP of Walmart U.S. Marketplace and Walmart Fulfillment Services, described the investment philosophy as building smarter tools, expanded fulfillment, and global reach with a single purpose: accelerating seller growth. The Marketplace is also beginning to bridge into physical stores. The Supercenter in Cypress, Texas, features in-store QR codes directing shoppers to extended Marketplace assortments through the Walmart app with home delivery, a format Walmart plans to expand to additional locations.
Cook and dine, fashion, and home decor each grew over 40% on Walmart Marketplace in Q4 FY26, according to Rainey on the earnings call. Those growth rates in categories historically associated with physical retail discovery indicate that the Marketplace is pulling demand from a customer base that previously would not have been considered Walmart’s core online audience. Sellers in these categories have an active demand tailwind that belongs in FY27 inventory planning and Connect campaign intensity decisions.
The U.S. Manufacturing Commitment Is an Active Sourcing Preference, Not a Promise on Paper
Walmart’s $350 billion commitment to products made, grown, or assembled in the U.S. through 2030 is backed by $176 billion in cumulative spend already applied toward that goal, with about two-thirds of total U.S. product spend going to domestically sourced goods as of fiscal 2025. Furner disclosed on the Q1 FY26 earnings call that Walmart purchased $296 billion in the United States in the prior fiscal year. The domestic sourcing program represents one of the most significant and sustained open doors in Walmart’s supplier history, with meaningful spend remaining and the 2030 deadline still years away.
More than 86% of Walmart shoppers say it is important that the products they buy are American-made, according to Walmart’s own customer research, and that preference creates real buyer incentive to prioritize domestic sourcing when assortment decisions are otherwise competitive. Suppliers with U.S. manufacturing or assembly operations who are not surfacing that origin story in their JBP conversations, category sell-in narratives, and line review materials are leaving an active sourcing preference signal unused.
Open Call, now in its 12th year, is the most visible entry point for new domestic suppliers, but it is not the only one. The Grow With US program gives small businesses structured preparation for the pitch and for the operational readiness that follows a Golden Ticket. Suppliers who can document domestic sourcing transitions or manufacturing efficiency improvements in specific input categories will find those narratives gaining relevance in category management conversations as the commitment’s 2030 deadline approaches, because buyers will be working to close the remaining gap between current cumulative spend and the $350 billion goal.
Why Now Is the Moment
The case for acting now rather than next year rests on a convergence of conditions that are unlikely to exist simultaneously for much longer. Walmart’s eCommerce is profitable and growing. The advertising platform is large, expanding fast, and by leadership’s own assessment still well below its long-term penetration ceiling. The Scintilla data ecosystem is the most capable it has ever been. The supplier development infrastructure, through Grow With US, Supplier Academy, Open Call, and the Marketplace seller toolkit, is the most comprehensive it has ever been. The U.S. manufacturing commitment has meaningful spend remaining with active buyer incentives attached. The WFS GMV lift is documented and available to any seller prepared to commit to it.
What compresses the window is competition. Walmart’s Marketplace crossed 200,000 active sellers in mid-2025, according to Marketplace Pulse, which tracks seller counts through web scraping and API monitoring of live listings — Walmart does not disclose this figure directly. The Connect auction gets more expensive as more advertisers reach the same conclusion about the platform’s value. The Scintilla data advantage accrues to the suppliers who build workflows to act on it before their category competitors do. The WFS search ranking benefit is strongest for sellers who adopt it while self-fulfilled listings still represent a majority in their category. These are early-mover advantages available on a platform that is still in the most productive phase of its competitive maturation.
Furner closed the Q4 FY26 earnings call by noting that Walmart has momentum, a clear omnichannel strategy, and an experienced leadership team positioned to extend both. Suppliers and sellers who structure their FY27 plans around that momentum are not speculating about a future state. They are aligning with a business model that is already generating results, on a platform whose own leadership has made clear it still has its most significant growth ahead.
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