Target teams up with Shopify to supercharge its marketplace as Big Retail looks to small biz for growth

Adding to cart… Select Shopify merchants yesterday became eligible to join Target’s exclusive third-party marketplace. Refresher: Target Plus launched in 2019 and has featured 2M+ products and today supports 1.2K selling partners. Target curates the companies allowed to sell through Plus, working on an invite-only basis. Now Target can connect with cos selling products through Shopify’s extensive network of millions of merchants.

Plus perks: Target Plus lets customers shop on a familiar site and offers perks like free shipping on some orders and free returns.

Missed: Target’s total sales have fallen in three of the past four quarters.

Race to the marketplace… Amazon dominates global retail. With nearly 2M active sellers, the Zon made up 80% of marketplace sales last year. FYI: more than 60% of Amazon-store sales involve independent sellers. But rivals are stocking up. As of last fall, Walmart Marketplace had more than doubled in size over the preceding year and a half, reaching 100K+ active sellers. It’s also opened to merchants based in China, Canada, Japan, and the UK. On the newcomer front, TikTok Shop doubled its US merchant base last year, topping 500K+ vendors.

THE TAKEAWAY
There’s power in numbers… Marketplaces like Target Plus let retailers grow their listed inventory without spending as much of their own $$ (think: paying for products, warehousing, shipping costs). Meantime, they can help sellers reach a bigger audience. US ecommerce sales made through marketplaces are forecast to make up more than a third of retail sales by 2027.