Couch potatoes looking to order a mid-century style sofa to go along with their Pringles are in luck, as Walmart.com today announced the launching of an easy-to-use curated home collection on its website.
Expected to officially go live in the next few weeks, the move is seen as an attempt to help the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer better compete against Target, which is known for its trendy, affordable home furnishings, as well as Amazon, and Wayfair.com, Ikea, La-Z-Boy and other furniture retailers.
“Walmart’s mission is to be the destination for customers no matter how they want to shop or what they want to shop for,” Anthony Soohoo, senior vice president and group general manager, Home, at Walmart U.S. eCommerce, wrote in a blog posted today on the retailer’s website. “And, as a mass retailer, we know that customers shop differently across categories. Some categories are more transactional, like groceries and consumables, while others are more inspirational, like apparel and home.”
The new digital shopping experience is aligned with how customers naturally shop for home products, Soohoo said.
The redesign includes a home destination page that features curated collections guided by design trends and in-house stylists; nine shop-by-style options, including Modern, Mid-Century, Traditional, Glam, Industrial, Bohemian, Farmhouse and Scandinavian; and editorial-style imagery and design tips that will enable customers to discover different styles and how to pull together a complete look.
“Shopping for your home should be fun and engaging. It’s about putting items in context to help customers imagine products in their own personal living spaces,” Soohoo said. “With this launch, we’re making it faster, easier and more inspiring for customers to discover the best of our assortment no matter their personal style.”
Soohoo noted that over the past year Walmart.com has nearly doubled its home assortment and introduced a wide variety of furniture and home décor items, like a new Scandinavian line of children’s furniture.
“The experience will roll out over the coming weeks and will offer the first glimpse of our broader Walmart.com redesign, which will launch later this year,” Soohoo said.
The move is part of Walmart’s plan to grow online sales by 40% in fiscal 2019. The website uses technology acquired from Walmart’s Jet.com subsidiary.
As reported, Walmart has been seeking to sell more higher-ticket and upscale items via its website to maximize and improve profitability on shipping costs. As part of that effort, the retailer recently announced a partnership with New York-based Lord & Taylor, in which the upscale department store will have its own page on Walmart’s website.
In other Walmart news, yesterday Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart eCommerce U.S., and founder of Jet.com, told CNBC that he is “absolutely not” leaving Walmart after a report in the New York Post said he would soon be leaving the company.
“I feel like we are just getting started here,” Lore told CNBC. “I think we are having a ton of fun. … We are making great progress on the value proposition.”
Recently Liza Landsman, Jet.com’s president, announced she would be leaving the Walmart division to join a venture capital firm that backed Jet.com as well as Lore’s previous company, Quidsi, CNBC reported.
