It's been well documented that Walmart has not had an easy time of it over the past couple of years. That said, the world's largest retailer has announced a whole host of initiatives including rollbacks, small store concepts, in-store pickup of online orders and expanded assortments to help it regain its momentum. Now, two separate reports suggest the company sees the potential to build sales through appliance sales and online grocery.
A piece in The Wall Street Journal reported the retail store operator was ready to get into home appliance sales beginning with a test in more than 100 stores in Texas. The pilot project in Walmart locations would sell appliances manufactured by General Electric.
While Walmart did not offer comment on the report, the Journal reported remarks made last month by Bill Simon, head of the company's U.S. business.
Mr. Simon said the retailer is "looking at everything including appliances right now. If it's something that we believe there is customer demand for and an opportunity to make some money, we're going to get into it in a big way."
Obviously, a move by Walmart into appliance sales would have major ramifications for others in the space, including Home Depot, Lowe's, Sears and others.
A separate report by Bloomberg News said Walmart is considering a test of online grocery delivery service in the San Jose, CA market. The project with the internal name "Project Titan" is still apparently in the consideration stage with no formal plans to proceed.
"Wal-Mart needs to get more serious about e-commerce, so that would be interesting," Matt Nemer, an analyst at Wells Fargo, told Bloomberg. "Grocery delivery works in urban markets, and they already do it in the U.K., so they have experience."
According to the news service, Walmart brought in Richard Ramsden, who headed Asda's home shopping service in the U.K., to work with Walmart.com.
The retailer's online grocery business began selling some shelf-stable grocery items on the site last year.
"Growing their comparable-store sales by a percent takes a lot of revenue," Peter Brown, vice chairman at Kurt Salmon, told the Journal. "But they have to start driving some growth, and that means exploring a wide range of initiatives."