Feb. 13, 2020
By Scott Eckert, SVP, Next Generation Retail and Principal, Store No8
Since launching Store No8 three years ago, one of our primary goals has been to launch new capabilities that can grow and be fueled by the Walmart engine, eventually shaping how we serve customers in the future. They may not scale to everyone today, but rather lay the foundation for capabilities that we believe will have a big impact on how customers shop tomorrow.
A recent example of this is InHome, which has grown as a stealth company from infancy to a pilot program that can truly change the way customers shop, by not only picking and delivering groceries but taking them all the way to their refrigerators.
Today, Jet black, the first portfolio company to launch from Store No8, follows InHome as the latest to graduate from incubation to join Walmart’s Customer Organization. We’ve learned a lot through Jet black, including how customers respond to the ability of ordering by text as well as the type of items they purchase through texting. We’re eager to apply these learnings from Jet black and leverage its core capabilities within Walmart.
As we said in the beginning when we launched Jet black, part of the initiative was to start testing and building technology with the intent that it could be used in other ways, including applying it to other parts of our business. Over the past few years, we’ve explored a number of areas in conversational commerce, from Jet black’s text-based ordering to voice ordering in Pickup and Delivery, all with the belief that this technology will be an important way Walmart serves customers in the future.
We are only beginning to explore how the capabilities being developed within Store No8 can complement one another and be leveraged to enhance the customer experience. We look forward to sharing more updates from the team as we work together to shape the future of retail at Walmart.
