Photo by Marques Thomas on Unsplash
Walmart Closes Its Store No. 8 Experiment
January 23, 2024
In 2016, Walmart spent $3.3 billion to acquire Jet.com, an online retailer that hadn’t had much success with sales yet. Many Walmart executives questioned the move, but CEO Doug McMillon saw the potential in digital retail, an arena where they were trailing behind Amazon.
The goal was not to keep operating Jet.com as such, so it was shut down in just three years. Instead, the acquisition was more about bringing on board Marc Lore, a successful online entrepreneur who had a clear vision for the future of e-commerce. The founder of Diapers.com, which Amazon bought, Lore had the expertise to guide Walmart’s digital transformation.
The plan was to use the Jet.com acquisition to accelerate the growth of Walmart’s e-commerce sector. Lore worked on expanding Walmart’s digital footprints and investing heavily in infrastructure. He also initiated a unique store — Store No. 8 — to try out new innovations.
Store No. 8, launched by Lore, worked as an incubation center for fresh tech ideas. It played a key role in positioning Walmart as an innovative retailer, especially in the realms of same-day delivery and the buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) model.
This special store aimed to foster startups that could reshape the retail industry in the long term. It developed disruptive retail technologies and practices that went on to be used across Walmart’s locations, including voice and text shopping options. Additionally, it helped numerous Walmart employees transition from the innovation hub to the main operations.
However, Walmart has recently decided to close Store No. 8. The responsibility for innovation is now dispersed across the chain, with no single person heading the efforts. Scott Eckert, the executive VP who led Store No. 8, is also leaving the company.
Before its closure, Store No. 8 and Outlier Ventures launched an accelerator program, the dCommerce Base Camp. It aimed to support selected startups working in Web3 to enhance the global retail and commerce experience.
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