How to Get Listed & Become a Walmart, Target & Costco Supplier
Tuesday, April 30, 2019Eric Zegarski
Here is How You Get Your Products Listed at Walmart, Target, & Costco
Getting listed on shelves of Walmart, Target, or Costco may seem like a tedious task, but it can be split up into two phases. The first step is submitting your product for approval and the second is meeting their EDI requirements. Understanding these phases is curtail since this process does take a bit of time and retailers have strict regulations that you must abide by. Retailers have these regulations in order to be able to work with 100s or even 1000s of suppliers like yourself. EDI compliancy makes it easy for them to process and organize large amounts of data.
Step 1: Submit Your Product to Walmert, Target, & Costco For Approval
Before you get listed, you must submit your product for listing review. Retailers are always looking for new and exciting products they can offer their customer base. Below you’ll find links to product approval guidelines for Walmart, Target, and Costco.
Listing Resources:
Here’s a few tips to improve your chances of gaining approval:
- Include a short description of the product’s benefits
- Include photographs or illustrations of the product
- Mention relevant pricing and ordering information
- Attach patents or other documentation highlighting the product’s retail appeal
- If possible, include customer testimonials
- Don’t forget to show what your product’s packaging looks like
- Share your website and contact information
Remember, your goal is to convince Walmart, Target, and Costco of how THEY will benefit by carrying your product. It also helps to show that you are passionate about your product. Furthermore, you should show that you are planning on building a lasting relationship with the company as well. Be sure to highlight ongoing marketing efforts you’ll make on the store’s behalf to support the product.
Step 2: Meet Their Requirements for EDI
Walmart, Target, and Costco are three of the largest big box retailers in North America. To be a supplier of theirs, you’ll need to transact important business documents through a process known as EDI. Need more information on EDI (electronic data interchange)? Then check out our
Fresh Guide to EDI.
Big-box retailers like Walmart, Target, and Costco have their own set of unique requirements for meeting EDI compliancy. It’s important that you ensure you can meet these requirements in order to improve your chances of being chosen to stock their shelves with your products.
EDI Requirements:
Setting up EDI can be complex and confusing, and if you don’t get it right, you’ll face costly chargebacks from Walmart, Target, and Costco. Failure to transact business documents properly can result in you being delisted from the retailer. The first step to ensure that you’re set up for EDI success is integrating it with your ERP system using a cloud hosted
iPaaS solution.
We make EDI and ERP integration easy