Store gallery: Walmart-owned Sam's Club unveils lab-driven store

The Walmart-owned retailer is focusing on three key areas – growing membership, driving the quality of its own-label products and evolving its digital offer to become a “competitive advantage” for the business.

The latter two of those three pillars are evident in Sam’s Club’s new-look store in Bentonville, Arkansas, as the retailer integrates lessons it has learned from the insights of members.

It has integrated scan and go checkouts and self-ordering points across the store to speed up and simplify the shopping experience, while also combining physical retail with its digital capabilities.

Shop floor staff also benefit from the use of new technologies, managing inventory digitally through mobile devices.

Broad proposition

The store, which sells thousands of products across a number of categories including grocery, fashion, electricals and homewares, also has a ‘Club Pickup’ click and collect point, where customers can drive up to the store and have Sam’s Club workers deliver their order to their vehicles without even having to leave the driver’s seat.

Sam’s Club has also placed a greater emphasis on “wow items”, such as a $199,999 diamond necklace, while emphasising its fresh food credentials through deli, butchers and “fresh catch” fish and sushi counters.

Sam’s Club president and chief executive Rosalind Brewer said: “This is the first Club in our fleet to really reflect what we think Sam’s could look like in our ongoing strategy.

“This started from a lab we set up in our San Bruno offices, where we built a building that helped us understand how our members wanted to shop with us.

“Everything in that lab, every piece of it, was from member insights. It wasn’t what we thought should be the next step, it was forward thinking based on insights from members of Sam’s Club and you can see those executions in this store.”