Small business owners using the Shopify platform can now request to have their products featured on Target’s virtual, and even perhaps physical, shelves.
Objective announced On Monday, the company announced it will begin accepting applications for its Amazon-rivaling online marketplace Target Plus for small businesses that partner with Shopify.
Shopify merchants in the US can now apply to have their products featured on Target Plus via Connect to the market In turn, Target will have the ability to understand which promising latest products resonate with its customers.
Target plans to bring popular Shopify products that web shoppers have discovered and loved to its brick-and-mortar stores “in the coming months,” making it the first retailer to offer Shopify products from the e-commerce space to brick-and-mortar stores.
The push to bring select Shopify products to physical shelves sets Target apart from rival Walmart, which has he worked with Shopify since 2020.
The Shopify-Target alliance could prove useful to each Shopify and Target’s small businesses.
Smaller brands on Shopify can reach a broader demographic in the stores of established retailers. Target gives smaller brands a “halo” and acts as an “accelerator for the entire business,” Cara Sylvester, Target’s director of guest experience, told CNBC.
Target Plus is also “one of the fastest-growing parts of Target’s business,” Sylvester told the publication. The marketplace is like Amazon, but by invitation only; it only features select products from Target’s curation team.
Partnering with Shopify could help Target Plus grow and find more merchants to catch up with its competitors.
Goal Plus has 1,200 merchants after launch in 2019. For comparison, Walmart There are over 100,000 lively sellers on the market and Amazon Almost 5 million merchants added since 2018.
“Make no mistake, we are fully committed to Target Plus,” said Target Chief Digital and Product Officer Prat Vemana he stated.