Gorilla Commerce is taking a major step beyond Amazon. The home goods company, which built its business around the Gorilla Grip brand, began selling its bath mats in more than 2,600 Walmart stores in July after first using Walmart’s third-party marketplace for two years. The move marks an important test for a company that has long relied on online marketplaces and now wants to show its products can succeed in physical retail as well.
Founded in 2014 with a single slip-resistant bath mat, Gorilla Commerce has grown into a multi-brand business with revenue in the “couple hundred million dollars range,” according to CEO CJ Bilangino, who joined the company in 2022. Bilangino said the company has been deliberate about learning whether its products can travel well across channels. Before entering stores, Gorilla Grip launched on Amazon Canada to work through new packaging needs, logistics changes and a different customer base. It then moved onto Walmart’s marketplace, where it started with a small assortment and later expanded into dozens of items, including cheese graters, oven mitts and dog food bowls with feeding mats.
A marketplace playbook aimed at physical retail
The company’s bath mat has become one of its most visible products on Walmart.com, where it has more than 1,000 reviews and a 4.6 rating. Walmart also named Gorilla Grip its “Outstanding Home Seller of the Year” in 2025. According to Bilangino, discussions about a store rollout grew out of regular meetings with Walmart’s third-party marketplace team, along with occasional conversations with the retailer’s first-party team. He said Walmart’s annual seller summit also helped by giving brands direct access to merchants in their categories.
Gorilla Commerce believes the brand’s success comes from moving quickly on customer feedback and keeping product development and advertising in-house. Bilangino said the company watches reviews closely and can tell within weeks whether a new item is resonating. That approach, along with its marketplace experience, is now being used as a foundation for a broader retail strategy. The bath mats are arriving in stores ahead of back-to-school season and will be placed on a sidekick display. Bilangino said the product is typically purchased for safety and hygiene, especially in homes with young children or older adults. More broadly, the company sees the Walmart rollout as a way to reach new shoppers and potentially create a repeatable path into additional retailers.
Source: modernretail.co
