Amanda Schmutzler
Rebuilding Walmart Marketplace's brand permissions system
Assign ownership rights, update privileges, and authorize resellers or team members — across Brand Portal and Seller Center.
Brand Portal & Seller Center
Introduction
Third-party sellers drove over 45% of Walmart's online sales in 2023 — but the tools controlling who could edit content, manage listings, and use marketing tools on a brand's behalf hadn't kept pace. This project rebuilt that permissions system across its two surfaces: Brand Portfolio, inside Brand Portal, where a brand owner manages access directly, and Brand Manager, inside Walmart Seller Center, where a seller can request that access themselves.
Process
From competitive benchmarking to a shipped, auditable permissions system.
Define
Defined the problem: sellers had no self-serve way to request access, manage their team, or grow their listing.
Research
Benchmarked Amazon's Brand Registry and mapped Walmart's existing flow to find the gap.
Design
Built Figma flows for verifying ownership, assigning roles, and managing listings.
Validate
Iterated with engineering and the Marketplace design system team before final designs moved into build.
Hand off
Delivered flows and component detail, with the Brand Portfolio PRD as the shared source of truth.
Problems
- Insufficient content-editing privileges for brand-partner sellers
- No reliable way to manage listings at scale
- Restricted access to marketing tools tied to brand status
- Difficulty assigning content roles across a seller's own team
This PRD covers Brand Portfolio specifically. Brand Portfolio and Brand Manager were two separate initiatives, each with its own requirements — this case study walks through both.
Solutions
- Simpler UI: a redesigned permissions flow sellers could self-serve.
- Enhanced user management: clear roles like "acting brand owner" and "authorized reseller."
- Improved access control: tighter, auditable permissioning across a team.
- Competitive positioning: closing the gap with platforms like Amazon's Brand Registry.
Where sellers got stuck
Mapping the existing flow surfaced the same three friction points again and again.
Sellers had no self-serve path to prove brand ownership or request elevated privileges — everything ran through slow, manual channels.
Once approved, there was no clean way to extend specific, scoped permissions to teammates or an outside agency.
Marketing tools and richer content stayed out of reach until access was sorted out, stalling a brand's growth on the platform.
Competitor research
Amazon's Brand Registry was the clearest reference point in the market — a mature, well-understood system sellers already knew how to navigate. I benchmarked Walmart's existing flow directly against its Protect and Monitor dashboard, Build Your Brand page, and Global User Permissions flow: how ownership gets verified, how roles get delegated, and how much friction stands between a seller and their first edit. That gap became the brief.
Overview of Brand Portal
The hub the Brand Portfolio permissions system lives inside.
Official overview via Walmart Marketplace's YouTube channel.
Flows
End-to-end flow mapping for the Brand Portfolio experience — ownership, access roles, and permission changes traced across the full seller journey.
The access problem
Before this project, Brand Portal had no formal concept of a "brand team" — access was effectively all-or-nothing. A single login controlled everything, so a brand owner couldn't safely hand day-to-day content work to an agency or a teammate without giving up full control of the account.
Sorry for the blurry screenshot — I didn't think to grab a proper "before" shot back when this was live. In my defense, it was pretty rough to look at even in HD.
The redesign
The new flow introduced defined roles — acting brand owner and authorized reseller — each scoped to specific content and advertising rights. Brand owners could finally delegate work without delegating risk, and Walmart could enforce exactly who was allowed to touch what.
Access could be granted two ways: a brand owner could assign it directly inside Brand Portal, or a seller could request it themselves through Brand Manager inside Walmart Seller Center — submitting an application that the brand owner could approve, deny, or send back for more information.
Design ideation
Using Figma, I explored interface concepts for verifying ownership, assigning roles, and managing listings — iterating with engineering and the broader Marketplace design system team before final designs moved into build.
Two platforms, two audiences
- Brand Portal — where a brand owner registers trademarks, verifies ownership, and manages access to a brand's content and advertising tools. This is where Brand Portfolio lives.
- Seller Center — where sellers run their day-to-day business on Walmart Marketplace: listings, orders, fulfillment, and performance. This is where Brand Manager lives.
Seller-facing
Walmart Seller Center
Brand owner-facing
Brand Portal
Brand Portfolio
Selected screens from the Brand Portfolio experience — adding a seller, reviewing activity, and approving access requests.
Brand Manager
Selected screens from the Brand Manager experience — applying for brand privileges, tracking application status, and staying updated via notifications.
Design hand-off
Design handed off to engineering in stages — flows first, then component-level detail — with the Brand Portfolio PRD as the shared source of truth throughout the build. Close, ongoing collaboration kept scope and intent aligned as edge cases surfaced during implementation.
Value added
The redesigned Brand Portfolio gave sellers a simpler, more capable way to manage their own presence on Walmart Marketplace — better user management, tighter access control, and a real competitive edge against platforms like Amazon's Brand Registry.
Modeled impact: Designed a Brand Portfolio experience projected to enable improved content management across 5.7M branded products and contribute up to $50M in incremental GMV.
Seller growth & GMV lift
Easier day-to-day management
Stronger brand protection
Verified, compliant accessSupporting pages
As part of this project, I expanded sections on each of these three pages — a landing page, a marketing page, and a help center — explaining what Brand Portfolio is and how it can help sellers.
Marketing page
A longer-form page walking through each core capability — managing brands, protecting IP, building a brand portfolio, and account benefits — aimed at educating prospective brand owners.
Landing page
The public entry point for Brand Portal — introducing the product, who's eligible, what's needed to get started, and a short FAQ before a seller ever creates an account.
Help page
The in-product help center for Brand Portal, answering the most common questions sellers have once they're already signed in and managing brands, users, and claims on a day-to-day basis.
Click any image to enlarge.
— Aakash Mehta, Director of Product Management, Walmart Marketplace