In March 2018, Walmart cut the bar for its first omnichannel store in Mexico. Then, the self-service chain was preparing, without knowing, to face the acceleration of electronic commerce that brought with it the crisis due to COVID-19.
This model marked the beginning of the generation of the chain’s new stores: with Wi-Fi on the sales floor, extended digital catalogs located in kiosks, from where consumers can make purchases online, and the pick up service, that is, buy online and pick up in store.
The company directed by Guilherme Loureiro that same year presented the digital campaign Hot Days, and since then it was already an omnichannel bet with offers through digital platforms and physical stores, which this year took place from May 21 to 31.
The investment that the company directed in 2018, among other items, to remodel stores, the logistics and technological deployment was 17,933 million pesos, 3% higher than the previous year. This strategy is the link that allowed the company to respond to the acceleration of digital sales.
Cui Arroyo, vice president of Digital Operations e-commerce at Walmart, explains that the investments that since then have been aimed at strengthening omnichannel in the different formats of the company allowed them to respond to the evolution of the market and grow in both geographic and age segments . The evolution of electronic commerce that the company detected occurring in other countries, put the accelerator in Mexico and now remains as the backbone of the development of the company in Mexico and allowed an agile response to the challenges brought by the pandemic.
“What used to take us weeks before, we did in hours, like hiring people, setting up stores more quickly so that they had a greater capacity for home deliveries and, in a matter of days, we were able to practically triple our delivery capacity. And today that capacity is already being saturated again. We would not have been able to triple our operational capacity to order lines if we had not made the investments that we did before, ”he said.
Tangent results
Walmart’s goal is advancing steadily. This year, Walmart changed the look of its website, as well as the application of. During the first three months of the year, the contribution of e-commerce to total sales growth increased 190 basis points to 2.6%, compared to the first quarter of 2020.
For this year, the company estimates investments of 22,200 million pesos between new stores, remodeling, electronic commerce, technology and logistics. The intention of the company is for omnichannel to have a double digit stake within the company. To achieve this, Walmart will strengthen its on-demand strategy and launch Walmart Pass, a subscription program with monthly or annual payments that will allow shoppers to order at no cost.
Arroyo points out that the omnichannel approach has also led them to experiment and that is why the distribution centers are another of the important pieces in the company’s equation, and will follow the model of the one located in Mérida, Yucatán and that the The company opened in March 2020. From here, the company delivers the purchases they make in its digital stores directly to final consumers.
Walmart will enable its traditional distribution centers so that they also have the ability to make deliveries to buyers’ homes and not just the demand from physical stores. For this, it is already making adjustments and investments in infrastructure and technologies, in addition to strengthening the logistics network dedicated to e-commerce.
“The truth has been very positive for us, this has not only come to vindicate all the decisions we have made and has prompted us to be very aggressive, very direct and very ambitious in how we make these investments to continue adapting,” he declares.
Meanwhile, digital sales growth, depending on whether the store is Supercenter, Sam’s or Bodega Aurrera, is double to triple digit, which has remained constant during the start of this year and to maintain dynamism is that the company is committed to campaigns like Hot Days.
This year, in the fourth edition of the two weeks of discounts, Walmart not only detected demand in electronic products or white goods, such as screens or refrigerators, since the purchases were extended to general merchandise, such as wines, clothing and diapers. “Our perspective is always the same: to grow and strengthen ourselves. So obviously my sales plans for this year are higher than those of last year, ”says Arroyo.
