Walmart Hidden Clearance: finding the best deals for online arbitrage

Using SourceMogul to identify profitable products at Walmart

Because of their enormous product range, manually searching for profitable products on the Walmart website to resell can be an enormous task. For a start, you’ll have to search their entire product catalogue (160 million lines!) for potential products whilst comparing their prices with similar products on Amazon. Sure, doing it this way is possible, but the time you spend doing this is time you’re not focusing on running your arbitrage business, which is going to cost you money in the long run and hinder the growth of your business.

This is where SourceMogul makes things so much easier. Everyday it scans millions of products in the inventories of not just Walmart, but hundreds of the biggest US retailers and identifies products which are selling on Amazon for more money. Not only this, using a set of easy to use analytics tools, it helps you calculate sales tax, Amazon fees, and shipping fees as well as making it easier to calculate your profit. And, unlike many other online arbitrage platforms, SourceMogul doesn’t have any daily search limits meaning you can always stay one step ahead of your competitors.

You can start a free 7 day trial of SourceMogul today using the link below.

What are the best products from Walmart to resell on Amazon?

Once you start using SourceMogul you’ll find it so much easier to find the products that are going to make you a profit to resell on Amazon, but with Walmart having such a large inventory, it’s difficult to know which are the best types of products to start selling. Luckily our arbitrage experts here at SourceMogul know a thing or two about this, so they’ve put together a list of the best product categories from Walmart that will offer you the best profit opportunities.

Small appliances and electronics

The great thing about small appliances and electronics is that Walmart will often buy them in bulk at a very low cost price. This means that when they come to discount them, they will often apply a very hefty discount making them the ideal products to resell for profit.

For example, at the time of writing this article we found a Renpho HEPA Air Purifier which was selling at Walmart for $89.99 but was selling on Amazon for $149.99 which is a $60 profit before fees and tax. We also found a Tienco A10 Cordless Stick Vacuum cleaner at Walmart for $83 which was selling on Amazon for $159.99, which is an even bigger profit of $76.99 before fees and taxes!

Toys and games

Toys and games are a great product to sell on Amazon. They’re popular year-round due to birthdays and other gifting occasions, and in many cases they are often cheap for Walmart to buy meaning that they can be discounted quite significantly. We found a Magic Mixies Misting Cauldron for $45 at Walmart, with the same product selling for $64 on Amazon, giving you a profit of $19 before fees and taxes.

One important thing to remember when looking to resell toys and games on Amazon FBA, is that there are some restrictions when selling certain brands of products such as Lego. These products are often gated, meaning you have to get approval from Amazon before you can sell them. So it’s important that you make sure you understand these rules before buying a product which you may find you can’t resell later. Check out our guide to getting ungated on Amazon.

Are there any other ways to save at Walmart?

Like we said above, the Hidden clearance section at Walmart isn’t necessarily the best way to source your products if you’re running an online arbitrage business. That doesn’t mean there aren’t still plenty of other ways to increase your profitability by shopping there. Here’s some of our top tips for finding the best deals.

Walmart Clearance Section

Walmart has a continually changing online clearance section available on their website, with most product categories featuring some kind of discount, either as a percentage discount or in some circumstances a ‘Buy X get X Free’ offer. In this section Walmart will usually publish the lowest price that product is available at, but also display whether it falls into another discount category such as a Rollback Deal (see below).

Because of the huge amount of products available on the Walmart website, the clearance category is absolutely huge and can be really difficult to find a true bargain. Which is where using a tool like SourceMogul can really help.

Walmart Rollback Deals

Rollback deals happen at Walmart when they lower the price of a product for a limited period of time. These deals usually happen because Walmart has negotiated a discount on a parcel of stock from a specific manufacturer, meaning it can be sold at a lower price without Walmart losing money. The rollback deals only last for a set amount of time, usually 4 to 10 weeks, after which time the price gets returned to its normal price.

Rollback deals are a great way to pick up a supply of product at the lowest price possible, and because these deals have often been negotiated by Walmart, other retailers, including Amazon won’t be able to match this price which means there’s excellent potential for you to make some profit. Also, because the rollback deals are marked down in store and online, SourceMogul will be able to tell you when these deals happen without the need to manually check the prices yourself.

Shopping at the right time

Walmart is known for discounting its products at certain times during the month. For example, they will often start applying discounts during the first five days making it the best time to start looking for deals. This isn’t necessarily the point where you will get the highest level of discount. You may find that discounts on some items will get bigger throughout the month, but you will have the most choice of the best items that are available, so it’s always worth checking at the beginning of the month anyway.

Check for seasonal discounts

Walmart will often run seasonal discounts at specific times of year which help them reduce their remaining stock levels. Garden items, such as outdoor toys, patio furniture and gardening equipment will often be discounted at the beginning of September, so this can be a great time to look for a bargain. Don’t ship them to FBA straight away if you don’t think you can sell them until next season, however – as you’ll pay a fortune in storage and overage fees.

Walmart+ 

Walmart+ is a rewards scheme offered by Walmart,  which gives members a range of benefits when you join including Walmart Cash (see below), discounts on other memberships and cheaper gas prices. However, one of the main benefits to you as an online arbitrageur is that you get unlimited free delivery on all orders, with no minimum order value.

Obviously when you’re running your online arbitrage business, you have to factor in the delivery costs from the retailers you purchase from in order to better calculate your profitability. With a Walmart+ membership you don’t need to worry about this as your delivery is included in your membership.

It’s worth noting that you have to pay to be a Walmart+ member, with membership costing $98 per year or $12.95 per month. However, if you regularly purchase cheap products from Walmart to sell on Amazon, you can easily make this money back with the savings you make from delivery charges. Also because there is no minimum cart value to get free delivery, you won’t be stopped from purchasing smaller lower value items.

Walmart Cash

As we mentioned above, one of the other benefits of a Walmart+ membership is that you can start saving Walmart Cash. This is a type of loyalty currency that you can earn when you make purchases on qualifying items in store and online at Walmart. This cash is accrued as a balance in your Walmart+ account which you can use against future purchases online at Walmart, helping to increase your profit margin further.

Walmart Hidden Clearance FAQs

Do any other retailers offer hidden clearance discounts?

Walmart isn’t the only retailer to offer hidden discounts, with the most notable being Target. However, as with Walmart, there are other great ways to find clearance items at other big retailers including Kohl’s, Walgreens and Sam’s Club to name a few. So it’s always a good idea to check these out as well.

What is unmarked clearance at Walmart?

Unmarked clearance is just another name for the Walmart hidden clearance. It’s called this because the true price of the product is not displayed and you are just shown the RRP instead. To find the hidden Walmart clearance items you have to use the Walmart app.

Does Walmart let you return clearance items?

Yes, it does. According to their returns policy you can return a clearance item to Walmart that you have purchased in store or online within 90-days, just as you would with any other product you purchase from them. It’s worth noting that some products may have a shorter return window, so you should check this before you make your purchase if you think it’s relevant.

Summing up

Although the Walmart Hidden Clearance may seem like the perfect way to grab a bargain, it doesn’t really lend itself to product sourcing for an Amazon FBA business. For a start, you’ll often have to visit your local Walmart store to find hidden clearance items using the Walmart app. However, because Walmart has such a wide range of products available, and they often have rolling discounts there are still plenty of opportunities to be found when shopping there.

This also leads to one of the main problems you’ll find if you start using Walmart to grow your Amazon FBA business, the huge quantity of products can be daunting at first, and trying to understand which are the right products to sell and when is a challenge. This is why we’d recommend using SourceMogul to help you easily identify products that are profitable to sell. You can start a free 7-day trial by clicking on the button below.