Walmart Inc. is quietly reshaping its battle with Amazon.com Inc. by stuffing third-party sellers’ goods into the backrooms of its Supercenters. The tests, underway in several Dallas stores, aim to slash delivery times for marketplace orders to same-day speeds. Sellers hold onto ownership until a purchase clears. They hand over commissions and fees to Walmart for the service.
This push builds on a foundation already strong. More than one-third of e-commerce orders fulfilled from stores hit customers in under three hours, per Walmart data. Around 20% arrive in less than 30 minutes. Store-fulfilled delivery volumes surged nearly 50% year over year in the recent quarter, as detailed in Yahoo Finance. Coverage now spans 93% of U.S. households, up from over 80% a year ago, thanks to geospatial tweaks on the Spark platform that added 12 million households, according to Retail Dive.
Dallas makes sense as ground zero. The city has long served as Walmart’s lab for tech rollouts. A source familiar with the project told the Financial Times that placing inventory closer to shoppers could match Walmart’s own warehouse speeds—one or two days—to third-party lags that often stretch longer (FT).
Automation Clears the Path
Warehouse upgrades made room. Greater automation there sends first-party stock to stores pre-sorted and sales-floor ready. Backrooms freed up. AI steps in too, picking spots for products based on local buying habits. That’s straight from the Yahoo Finance report citing FT sources. Walmart’s chief financial officer John David Rainey noted the marketplace now carries 500 million items, with revenue climbing 20% annually.
Manish Joneja, Walmart’s senior vice president of U.S. Marketplace and Fulfillment Services, confirmed the tests. “Starting in a few markets, we’ll soon be offering a select assortment of marketplace items through the pickup and delivery experience customers already know and love. It’s an intentional test that will help us learn and scale over time,” he said, as quoted in PYMNTS. No word yet on expansion timelines. But the intent signals confidence.
Stores already handle a big chunk of online work. Over 4,700 U.S. locations act as local hubs. This trial extends that to rivals’ wares. Third-party sellers gain speed without building their own networks. Walmart collects fees while boosting platform appeal. Win-win, if space holds.
Challenges lurk. Backrooms aren’t endless. Analysts flag limits on how much inventory fits, per the FT account. Sellers must ship stock there first. Picking and packing add labor steps. Still, early signs point to viability.
Amazon’s Shadow Looms Large
Amazon sets the bar with Fulfillment by Amazon, offering same-day for third-parties. Walmart’s marketplace, launched in 2009, trails in scale but grows fast. This move borrows a page from the playbook—while flipping it. Amazon eyes Walmart-style supercenters under Project Kobe, blending retail and robots, as leaked docs showed in Business Insider reports from earlier this year. Walmart counters by making every store a mini-warehouse.
Broader trends favor the tactic. Over 50% of Walmart’s e-commerce fulfillment now runs automated systems. Next-generation centers process double the orders daily. Symbotic Inc. grabbed Walmart’s robotics unit in 2025, inking deals for 400 micro-fulfillment setups backed by $520 million. That’s store-level action, per investor chatter on X.
But Walmart’s edge? Physical footprint. 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a store. Turning backrooms into staging zones shrinks last-mile costs. Delivery expenses already dropped 20% via automated regional DCs and inventory tech, notes an AInvest analysis.
Scale matters. Marketplace revenue hits escape velocity at 20% yearly growth. Same-day for third-parties could pull more sellers from Amazon. Customers won’t care about the source. They’ll notice the speed.
Walmart eyes 95% household coverage by year-end. If trials succeed, backroom warehousing rolls out wider. Amazon might copy again. But Walmart’s stores—dense, embedded—offer a moat tough to match. The retail giant isn’t just stocking shelves. It’s weaponizing them.
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