• Viral imitations of Hermès' Birkin bag have boosted awareness of Walmart's e-commerce marketplace.
• The positive attention is a tailwind as Walmart aims to take on Amazon's online dominance.
• Dupes like the so-called "Wirkin" can also pose a challenge for the retailer's brand relationships.

For all of the fanfare they received last month, the internet-famous dupes of the ultra-luxe Birkin handbags have been disappearing from Walmart's e-commerce marketplace.

Walmart itself has been fairly quiet about the trend.

"In some instances, products may no longer be available," a Walmart spokesperson told Business Insider, declining to comment on the items specifically. The spokesperson added that the company encourages shoppers to explore its website for "exciting alternatives."

The frenzy around these imitation luxury accessories, available for a fraction of the price of the designer versions, highlights how such an increase in attention can be a somewhat mixed bag for online platforms like Walmart. An imitation bag going viral on TikTok can bring publicity to an online marketplace while also posing legal and reputational risks for brand owners.

"The Birkin dupes on Walmart's site have attracted such attention because of the juxtaposition of a very price-focused brand and a very aspirational product," GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders told BI. "It underlines how much its marketplace has evolved over recent years. Walmart has been actively expanding the offer to attract more consumers, especially younger and more affluent ones."

Walmart executives have touted the massive assortment of products available via third-party sellers in its online marketplace, which launched in 2009. Last quarter, CEO Doug McMillon said the SKU count is approaching 700 million items — a figure that dwarfs the 120,000 SKUs typically carried in a Walmart Supercenter.

McMillon has spoken at length about how important a huge selection of products is for Walmart to become the first place shoppers think of when they need anything from a dozen eggs sold by Walmart to a pair of sneakers from a third-party seller.

"When somebody thinks about buying anything and they want to go search or they want to go find a specific item, we want to be in that consideration set and that requires 1P and 3P," he said in a September 2023 earnings call, referring to first-party and third-party goods.

Amazon largely achieved this place in American consumers' minds by offering more than 600 million products on its site, of which 588 million are sold by third-party vendors, according to Capital One.

But what happens when sellers offer — and shoppers want — products that might infringe on another company's intellectual property rights?

Neither Walmart nor Hermès have said publicly whether an official complaint was filed, but McMillon has often said the company prizes its brand partnerships and wants to keep suppliers happy.

A Walmart employee who works in the Marketplace division told BI the company takes a cautious approach with potentially risky listings.

"We sure block a lot of stuff I could just get on Amazon," he said.

While many of the listings for the imitation Birkin bags are no longer available on Walmart's website, similar bags were available on Amazon as of Wednesday morning.

One third-party seller on Amazon was offering a $100 "Wirkin welmes" leather handbag, using keywords that were popularized in reference to the delisted dupes on Walmart.com. The listing was taken down after BI contacted Amazon for comment.

Amazon told BI it automatically scans every product listing for potential IP infringement, and said there is a difference between IP-infringing products and products that otherwise resemble brand-name products. The company also said several bags have been removed for violating marketplace policies, including the listing mentioned above.

Balancing new customer awareness with protecting brands could help explain Walmart's relatively low-key handling of the Wirkin trend publicly. However, this likely won't be the last time the company will have to thread this needle.

The Walmart employee said the Marketplace team regularly writes new rules to address new situations, and that AI image recognition is increasingly being trained to flag listings for review by human staffers.

Opening the marketplace to an ever-larger number of sellers means there will be no shortage of listings that will go on to be deleted. Those future listings will likely come and go with less attention as more people realize Walmart's offering goes well beyond its physical stores.

If anything, the kerfuffle over the Wirkin shows that Walmart's marketplace ambitions have reached a key milestone, attracting a level of viral attention in league with existing titans like Amazon and eBay.