Amazon Gives Merchants Tools to Manage Walmart, Shopify Inventory

Merchants that sell on Amazon can now use Amazon’s software tools to manage their inventory at rival retailers, including Walmart, Shopify, eBay and TikTok, Amazon announced Thursday at its annual conference for sellers. Merchants will be able to update their product listings and track orders for all retailers from their Amazon Sellers Central dashboard.

In an interview, vice president of worldwide selling partner experience Mary Beth Westmoreland said that Amazon’s 2021 acquisition of ecommerce startup Veeqo enabled the new features. Veeqo provides the “plumbing” to connect various retailers’ sites and data with one another, she said.

Amazon says 95% of the independent sellers on its marketplace sell across multiple channels, although Amazon has been taking up an increasing share of merchants’ retail mix recently.

Amazon has for several years offered multi-channel fulfilment, where merchants can use Amazon’s logistics network to fulfil orders from other retailers.

The data sellers put into the tool will be ring-fenced, meaning it stays within Sellers Central and is not accessible to other parts of Amazon’s business. Amazon said it won’t use the data to help its own shopping business.