The retail giant is again calling for innovative products to be submitted for a chance to sell them on Walmart.com and potentially on shelves in select Walmart stores, following last year’s successful launch of the Get on the Shelf competition that had over 5,000 products submitted.
Video submissions of products will be accepted until July 31 11:59 p.m. EST, and the first round of public voting will take place later this summer and the second voting round will begin in early Fall.
The final group of products and inventors will be revealed via a series of webisodes to give the public a chance to hear from inventors and their products and vote for the winners.
Last year’s success
A spokesperson for the company told us that last year Walmart and the public chose three top products: grand prize winner Humankind Water and runners-up PlateTopper and SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit. Winners were chosen after more than 1 million online votes from the public.
While Walmart would not release specific sales figures for products, the spokesperson said that Humankind Water and PlateTopper are available for sale in hundreds of stores across the nation.
In addition, the creator of SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit is working with Walmart to have its product sold in Walmart Vision Stores.
“After the success of our first program, we wanted to give American entrepreneurs and business owners another chance to get their innovative products to the market, as well as give our customers a voice in picking the products they'd like to buy from Walmart,” said the spokesperson.
“The same platform that powers Get on the Shelf is also being used to power the global Walmart Associate Talent Program, a showcase to help discover and appreciate the amazing talent of Walmart's 2.2 million associates in 27 countries around the globe.”
The company hosted a similar program to Get on the Shelf in China last fall, and the platform is continuing to help the team in China source new products. However, the retailer has no plans at this time to have cross-over between the new products sourced in China and the US, said the spokesperson.
To learn more about the competition and submit products, please click here.
To read about last year’s competition, please click here.