Why it matters:
- This Girl Walks Into a Bar’s drink mixers earned a Golden Ticket through Walmart’s Road to Open Call, launching the brand onto retail shelves.
- O Positiv leaned into Walmart’s expanded women’s health strategy, securing store placement for its supplements alongside other emerging brands.
- The Hate Stains Co.’s Miss Mouth’s Messy Eater stain removal products earned its first major brick-and-mortar presence at Walmart thanks to consistent success on Amazon.
Breaking into Walmart—one of the world’s largest mass-market retailers—is no small feat for a startup. The retailer needs products that sell quickly, can scale fast, and appeal to a broad national audience.
In fiscal year 2025, more than 60% of Walmart Inc.’s U.S. suppliers were small businesses, while at least 100 new small and medium-sized businesses join Walmart each year via its Open Call.
To earn space on Walmart shelves means clearing a high bar: tough standards around pricing, supply chain reliability, packaging, and margins. But the payoff for brands is enormous. Landing at Walmart is a game-changing milestone that can validate a brand, unlock exponential growth, and open doors to other major retailers.
From entering Walmart’s annual Open Call pitch competition, to pouring resources into a buzzy, high-demand product, to first proving traction in a breakout Amazon category, three very different brands share with CO— how they won over Walmart buyers and what the retail breakthrough has meant for their business.
This Girl Walks Into a Bar earns coveted golden ticket to Walmart’s Open Call pitch, propelling its drinks mixers onto store shelves
As a bartender and bar manager at a popular Santa Monica spot in 2010, Jordan Catapano frequently fielded questions about how she broke into the business, which was male-dominated at the time. With her sister, Jocelyn Dunn, Catapano documented her knowledge by writing two books and a blog. Then, the sisters funneled their energy into an idea that popped up during the writing process: launching a mobile bartending business.
In 2016, the sisters launched their company, This Girl Walks Into a Bar, which provided bartending for events like office and birthday parties and charity events. In 2024, they ran 450 bartending events and employed 150 bartenders across four states.
After their clients repeatedly asked where they could buy a margarita mix made with more natural ingredients, the sisters created one of their own. They launched their Organic Margarita Mix followed by an Organic Bloody Mary Mix and Organic Pineapple Mint Mojito Mix.
Then in 2025 came the Palisades wildfire. Catapano’s home burned to the ground. With it went their bartending equipment, coolers, uniforms, and alcohol. “It was way too expensive to replace everything,” Dunn said. After the fire, local events petered out. They turned fully to making mixers.
“It’s been a real pivot for the business,” said Dunn. The sisters hired retail strategy firm Joyful Ventures as retail growth advisors. They also got support from volunteer PR group LA Strong Comms Coalition (LASCC), which helped businesses affected in the fires.
“Our new little mixer company was hanging on by a thread, and LASCC swooped in to help us in a time when the future of the business seemed very bleak,” Catapano added. “I did not have the headspace to think about promoting This Girl Walks Into a Bar, but this group of incredible PR professionals did and made it a priority.”
LASCC put Walmart’s Road to Open Call pitch competition on the sisters' radar. Selected entrepreneurs get the chance to meet directly with Walmart and Sam’s Club merchants to present their products, with the potential to secure deals that put their items on store shelves.
From entering Walmart’s annual Open Call pitch competition, to pouring resources into a buzzy, high-demand product, to first proving traction in a breakout Amazon category, three very different brands share with CO— how they won over Walmart buyers.
They attended an Open Call session through the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce in downtown LA. This Girl Walks Into a Bar was one of a handful of companies to earn a Fast Pass to the main Open Call event in Bentonville, Arkansas. In October, the sisters pitched their mixers to Walmart and Sam’s Club and received a coveted Golden Ticket. This Girl Walks Into A Bar mixers are now sold on Walmart.com and are headed for its store shelves.
Walmart recognized the startup offers “something American consumers are asking for—cleaner products, more transparent labels with no dye and no junk. We hope they’ll put cases of our mixers in every single Walmart store,” Catapano said.
The brand is now sold in dozens of Total Wine stores, in all ten Erewhon grocery stores in California, and on Amazon Prime. It landed a large national distributor, KeHE distributors, which has brought the mixers to stores in Hawaii and Wisconsin. “They continue to open up opportunities for us,” Catapano said.
Since 2021, This Girl Walks Into A Bar’s revenue has grown ten times. When customers choose to purchase from a business like theirs at a major retailer like Walmart, it makes a huge difference for small businesses, the sisters said.
“It is a tough business, CPG [consumer packaged goods],” said Catapano. “But thank God we have each other, we’re sisters, we’re locked in, we’re very resourceful and scrappy.”
[Read more: 3 Scaling Startups Unpack Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategies Driving Growth]
Walmart tapped O Positiv for a spot in its expanded women’s health section
During a family dinner, Brianna Bitton complained about how the products she turned to for help with difficult PMS symptoms were reactive, and not proactive.
She and her younger brother, business school graduate Bobby, talked about creating products that could address women’s health challenges from the source. They were inspired by their designer father and inventor mother, who came up with the idea of adding plastic animals to Softsoap soap pump bottles to encourage kids to wash their hands. The soaps were previously sold in Walmart. “Seeing that was possible really inspired us,” Bitton said.
From the siblings’ kernel of an idea, in December 2018, they launched their women’s health brand, O Positiv, with a vitamin called FLO designed to help uncomfortable PMS symptoms. “And we got this incredible response from women,” Bitton said. “We decided pretty soon after that we were on to something here: approaching taboo issues woman deal with head-on from a natural, proactive approach.”
Now, seven years later, the brand sells over 20 women’s health products, including prebiotic fiber gummies, menopause vitamin capsules, and a whole body probiotic. For its first five years, O Positiv sold direct to consumer. In late 2023, Walmart reached out to the brand’s Chief Operating Officer with an opportunity.
The retailer had plans for a women’s health section that would include supplements, menopause support, and other wellness-geared items. “They were really passionate about including us in this women’s health destination initiative, which was so up our alley,” Bitton said.
Last year, Walmart rolled out the section in more than 1,000 stores—about a fifth of its U.S. locations—and online. In addition to O Positiv, it featured brands including PlusOne and pH-D Feminine Health. “It was a dream come true,” said Bitton. “We were so excited to join forces with Walmart, and were really inspired and surprised about how such a national brand could take so much care in including these emerging brands for their customers.”
O Positiv launched in Walmart on an end cap with nine products. As a testament to the launch’s success, several months in, O Positiv increased the Walmart stores in which it sells its products by 75%. Now, its products are sold in more than 3,000 Walmarts across the country. Bitton believes staying rooted in its mission and delivering a clear vision and ethos helped them get onto Walmart’s radar.
Most recently, an O Positiv probiotic item became the number-two–selling brand in Walmart’s digestive aisle. “And we’re going for that number one,” said Bitton. “Walmart has been instrumental in accelerating our growth as a brand and giving us much more access to our customer,” she said. “The growth has been exponential.”
O Positiv products are now for sale in Target and select CVS stores, too, and the siblings have their sights set on breaking into more big retail while expanding their product line. “We want to keep growing, we want to be accessible to all of our customers, and for them to be able to get us anywhere,” Britton said.
[Read more: Food Startups David, MOSH, and PopUp Bagels Take a Nuanced Approach to Product Expansion]
Establishing a leadership position on Amazon helped Miss Mouth’s Messy Eater stain removal products capture the attention of Walmart executives
For The Hate Stains Co.’s Miss Mouth’s Messy Eater stain removal sprays, pens, and wipes, the key to getting on Walmart shelves—the brand’s first full-scale brick-and-mortar retail launch—was a steady track record of success on Amazon, according to Sarah Young, Chief Commercial Officer at Thrasio, the brand’s parent company.
The viral stain remover brand, popular with new families and young moms, originated in 2020 on Amazon, where it built a following. Then Amazon aggregator Thrasio acquired The Hate Stains Co., among other brands on Amazon across multiple categories. Part of the brand’s success, Young said, has been building a trusted product consumers believe in. Miss Mouth’s has doubled in size every year for the past four years.
“Consumers don’t just buy products, they buy brands they believe in,” she said. Consumers seek out the brand’s products because of its EPA Safer Choice Certification or because they heard about the products from an influencer or from a friend they trust, Young added.
“And we’ve really taken that mindset and lifestyle into consideration in terms of who we partner with.” The brand partners with leading influencers in the parenting, clean tips, and fashion and home categories. “We have found that today's moms trust these influencers and their genuine, everyday use of the product with their own families,” Young said. “It’s been a powerful driver of awareness and growth for the Miss Mouth’s brand.”
The brand has recently driven over 50% of growth in the prewash stain removal category on Amazon, Young said. “And when you get to a certain place and penetration, the next question is where to next?” The brand’s category success on Amazon piqued the interest of Walmart executives. It secured a temporary featured placement for its four-ounce spray in the retailer’s trending items section.
Both the success of that trial and Amazon traction helped propel the brand onto shelves in Walmart’s main laundry and stain remover section. “The Walmart partnership really came about because we were driving category growth,” Young said.
Now five of the brand’s products are sold in two-thirds of Walmart stores and three products are for sale in the rest. With its launch, Miss Mouth’s rolled out its inaugural full-scale marketing and advertising effort. The initiative introduces the brand’s new mascot, “Miss Mouth,” who appears in content across digital video and social media channels. The campaign emphasizes everyday spills and stains, demonstrating how Miss Mouth’s simplifies cleanup and makes it hassle-free.
Young said, “we continue to see strong exponential growth of the brand, and our early [Walmart] results are meeting expectations. We’re excited to continue … look at the many opportunities to make stain removal and laundry cleaning a better experience.”
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