Walmart Inc. wants to be a personal shopper -- for shoppers lucky enough to be invited.
The world's biggest retailer on Thursday unveiled Jetblack, a concierge shopping service for busy urban families. For $50 a month, members can text their requests and receive same-day delivery from Walmart, Jet and other retailers like Saks and Sephora with gift wrapping included. The service -- available by invitation only -- has been piloted for the past eight months in Manhattan doorman buildings and will expand to parts of Brooklyn and nondoorman dwellings in the weeks ahead, the company said in a presentation in Bentonville.
Jetblack, the first business to emerge from Walmart's Store No. 8 technology incubator, is headed by Jenny Fleiss, who co-founded Rent the Runway before joining Walmart last year to develop personalized shopping services. It comes as Walmart is upgrading its online operations to compete with Amazon.com Inc. through a redesigned website, hundreds of additional curbside grocery pickup locations and upscale brands such as ModCloth and Moosejaw.
"I don't know if it will work, but I know it's a good idea," Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University, said by email. "No traditional retailer has done a better job than Walmart of grabbing the mic back from Amazon."
Fleiss said Jetblack members are buying more than ten items a week, and Jetblack has thousands of people on its waiting list. The company has reserved some spaces for frequent customers of Jet.com, which focuses on affluent city dwellers.
"It lets you shop more efficiently," Fleiss said of Jetblack. "The key is surfacing the right products to the right consumer -- from paper towels to monogrammed jewelry boxes."
Shoppers text their requests to Jetblack, which uses a combination of automated bots and actual humans to recommend, for example, a selection of gift ideas for a child's birthday party. Responses usually take 5 to 10 minutes. The shopper picks the desired item, which is then typically delivered the same day via third-party couriers. The service is not using Parcel, the New York-based same-day delivery service that Walmart acquired last year. Fresh food is not part of Jetblack's offering.
New Jetblack customers get a 10-minute phone call from the service to help determine their brand loyalties and frequently-ordered items. It also checks if children in the family have allergies.
"I don't know that the market opportunity is big enough that it would be impactful for a company that has $500 billion in sales already," Sucharita Kodali, an analyst at Forrester Research, said. "But it's a great experiment."
In an email, Carol Spieckerman, retail consultant and president of Spieckerman Retail told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Jetblack has the potential to define text-based customer interaction and shopping.
"I can't imagine that Walmart sees Jetblack as a profit center at this early stage. The benefit will come through closely monitoring adoption and usage patterns then making ongoing refinements. Walmart is smart to pull products from multiple sources, not just Walmart, and to target busy moms initially. Doing so should set the stage for frequent usage that will translate into increased reliance on Jetblack (if glitches are kept to a minimum)."
Spieckerman said the trick for Walmart will be to use its artificial intelligence capabilities to encourage multiple purchases.
"It will be difficult to drive efficiencies and profitability if shoppers are placing one-off orders and only buying consumables based on immediate need," shae said. "This is an exciting development that serves as the latest example of Walmart looking ahead to the future of shopping."
Business on 06/01/2018