Walmart Ties Marketplace To Stores, Cuts Fees

Plus: Invite-only roundtable for revenue leaders

Author

Avinash Duggempudi
September 03, 2025

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Retail Rev Up

Here's what's happening this week in the world of retail and revenue leadership:
- Walmart links Marketplace to stores and trims seller fees.
- Walgreens moves media buying to agencies under new ownership.
- Best Buy scales marketplace and ads while margins compress.
- Dick’s grows comps, but guides cautiously on margins.
- Retail media tech gains traction as deployments slip to Q4.

⏱️THE MINUTE READ

An invite-only roundtable for revenue leaders focused on sharpening sales execution.

Join Hive Perform and Warwick Business School’s Sales Excellence Hub for a closed-room session on what’s really driving sales performance in 2025.

As AI reshapes how GTM teams operate, this roundtable explores the balance between automation and human execution and how leading CROs are adjusting their playbooks. Designed for senior commercial operators. No decks. No pitches. Just practical ideas and candid peer exchange.

📌WEEKLY MUST-KNOWS

Walmart is piloting in-store QR access to Marketplace assortments, expanding next-day WFS in top metros, launching an AI listing tool, and cutting referral fees on toys ahead of peak. The move tightens Walmart’s online-to-offline flywheel, reduces seller time-to-market, and escalates competition on speed and cost. Impacted: marketplace brands and aggregators, third-party sellers, last-mile partners, and holiday category owners.

Walgreens eliminated roughly 15 media-buying roles and shifted parts of paid media to an agency partner as it refocuses on core retail and pharmacy under new CEO Mike Motz and Sycamore ownership. The move signals tighter marketing accountability and a likely reset of retail media resourcing after costly healthcare bets. Affected: brand advertisers, agency partners, and retail media teams planning co-op and trade budgets.

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
Best Buy Expands Marketplace And Ads As Margins Tighten
Best Buy beat on Q2 revenue and EPS but saw operating margin decline as mix shifted to lower-margin categories; it maintained guidance while scaling its online marketplace and advertising initiatives. Marketplace expansion broadens assortment and enables vendor-funded profit levers even as pricing stays aggressive. Stakeholders: CE brands, third-party sellers, retail media buyers, and category managers.

🧠LEADING VOICES

Rethinking Board Packs

Traditional board packs rely on lagging indicators and subjective data—showing what happened, not why. This leaves CROs and CEOs wasting hours in prep, struggling to explain pipeline gaps, and lacking objective insight into stalled traction.

Hive Perform changes that by analysing deals across three lenses: ICP fit, deal quality, and roadmap linkage. The result? Evidence-led forecasts, clear explanations for closed-lost deals, and board packs that stand up to scrutiny—saving time and giving leaders confidence in the story behind growth.

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⚡QUICK READS

Dick’s Posts Solid Q2, Cautious On Margins: Revenue and EPS beat with 5% comps and digital outpacing stores, but investments and tariffs signal near-term margin pressure for sporting goods peers.(More)

In-Store Media Vendor CREX Gains, Margins Tight: Creative Realities grew Q2 EBITDA and secured a national QSR engagement and SOC 2, but gross margin fell and a media network rollout slipped to Q4.(More)

Tolling Tech Pushes Faster, Branded Payments: SwiftPay Guru’s new toll payment system underscores rising expectations for seamless, branded transactions that spill into retail checkout design.(More)

Sales Intelligence is a ClickZ Media publication in the Sales & Marketing division