Boxed, purveyor of bulk home products that likened itself to an online Costco, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after failing to find a buyer and enduring sustained weak revenue and earnings, a far cry from the promise of its SPAC IPO in December 2021. An affiliate of its main creditor may purchase its software service.
Over the past couple years, several retailers have launched new scan & go pilots. Some are even calling this tired technology autonomous checkout, comparing it to systems from Amazon Go. But scan & go and autonomous checkout really have little in common. Here’s how the two tech-powered checkout processes differ.
Walmart is taking another huge leap forward in its attempt to dominate grocery sales, launching an aggressive plan to increase the number of stores using micro fulfillment via automation and robotics to speed orders to local customers as it builds on the digital legacy of the departing Marc Lore. Dozens of such locations are planned.
Escalating concerns over the spread of the coronavirus are affecting every industry and sector, and retail and ecommerce are certainly no exception. This includes not only challenged supply chains in Asia and other affected countries but also things like runs on certain products in supermarkets and price clubs as consumers panic.
Softer-than-expected holiday sales drove Walmart’s Q4 2019 earnings below expectations, but strong ecommerce and online grocery sales provided buoyancy and optimism for the year ahead. U.S. ecommerce sales grew 35%, fueled largely by grocery pickup and delivery, propelling walmart.com to its highest quarterly growth of the year.
Prime Day saw 175 million items purchased by Prime members over the two days, according to Amazon, eclipsing its 2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales combined, while analysts pegged total GMV at $6 billion to $6.2 billion. See what other interesting statistics we found to paint a picture of the concocted “Christmas in July.”
Making good on an announcement it made in January, Sam’s Club is converting a second shuttered store location into an ecommerce fulfillment center, this time in Chicago. The first one opened in Memphis in June.
Walmart subscription bulk buying subsidiary Sam’s Club is rolling out an Amazon Prime-like service offering unlimited free shipping on nearly all items for its Plus members at $100 a year, $1 more than Prime charges, with no minimum order threshold.