By Denise Incandela, Head of Fashion, Walmart U.S. eCommerce
Customers are starting to see a different experience when they shop Walmart.com for fashion. The shopping experience is clean and modern. We’re offering editorial content to inspire customers. And, we’re significantly expanding our assortment, including introducing new brands like the recently launched exclusive EV1 line with Ellen DeGeneres and our Lord & Taylor premium brands.
As we continue to build our assortment, we are also focused on bringing on the right talent and expertise to drive our fashion business. With that in mind, today, I’m thrilled to announce the acquisition of Bare Necessities, a leading intimates online retailer, who will join the Walmart U.S. eCommerce portfolio.
Bare Necessities was founded in 1998 and offers more than 100,000 SKUs from more than 160 brands, including an extensive assortment of bras, swimwear, shapewear and sleepwear. Intimates, a category that has been aggressively growing online, has complex sizing and highly specialized products. Bare Necessities will bring deep category expertise, a content offering designed to educate intimates shoppers, as well as strong brand relationships and operational capabilities.
The acquisition of Bare Necessities fits well into our broader acquisition strategy, which includes two different types of companies: 1) category leaders with specialized expertise and assortment that can help enhance the customer experience on Walmart.com and Jet.com (think Hayneedle, Moosejaw and Shoes.com) and 2) digital brands that offer unique products customers can’t find anywhere else (think Bonobos, Modcloth and the recently-acquired ELOQUII). Bare Necessities fits into the former.
Bare Necessities will continue to operate its site as it has and will run as a standalone and complementary brand to our other eCommerce sites. Over time, for those brands that would like to serve additional customers, we will work to integrate the Bare Necessities’ assortment onto Walmart.com and Jet.com.
As part of the acquisition, Noah Wrubel, CEO and co-founder of Bare Necessities, will lead the intimates category for both Walmart.com and Jet.com, while also continuing to run Bare Necessities. I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Noah, Bill Richardson, COO and co-founder of Bare Necessities, and the rest of the Bare Necessities team to the Walmart family. I look forward to working with them to build a best-in-class intimates customer experience across Walmart U.S. eCommerce.
