Walmart Inc. wants to double the number of products it currently sells online, according to the company's U.S. e-commerce president and CEO, Marc Lore.
The world's largest retailer aims to eventually sell 100 million stock keeping units, or SKUs, online. The company has achieved about half of that figure, Lore said, speaking at an analyst Q&A session during Walmart's annual shareholder meeting event in Bentonville, Ark., on June 1.
Lord & Taylor, a department store chain owned by Hudson's Bay Co., began to roll out its shop on Walmart's e-commerce site the week of June 1, Lore noted. The news of the Lord & Taylor store on Walmart.com is attracting higher-value brands to Walmart's e-commerce platform, he added.
"Bringing Lord & Taylor online has really helped," Lore said. "We've got over 100 premium brands that weren't previously interested in being sold on Walmart.com."
Lore also said that Walmart will continue to grow its same-day delivery operations throughout the next year, utilizing the company's broad store footprint. Walmart operates more than 5,000 stores in the U.S.
"There's huge opportunity to leverage stores to do same-day delivery," he said. "The idea is to get as many SKUs to one-day as possible. Of course, we have to execute."
Walmart made other moves on the e-commerce front at its annual shareholder meeting. The retail giant announced a membership text messaging-based shopping service called Jetblack , which it will initially roll out to certain customers in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, New York.
Walmart executives also fielded questions at the Q&A session about the company's recently announced plan to acquire a majority stake in Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce startup.
Indian regulatory bodies still need to approve the deal, so Walmart will share more details on its Flipkart plans in an October Q&A session, CEO and President Douglas McMillon said.
But McMillon added that Walmart is committed to growing Flipkart long-term and bringing some of the e-commerce company's strategies to the U.S. and Walmart's other international markets. The company will make further investments in Flipkart, which already carried a hefty $16 billion price tag and will cause a short-term hit to Walmart's earnings.
"Most retailers don't last because they don't change," McMillon said, regarding the opportunities that his company sees in the Flipkart deal. "That'll kill you. We want to make sure that doesn't happen to Walmart."
