Walmart and Amazon rivalry continues. While Amazon is working on the delivery of goods by home drones and shops without cash registers , the world's largest supermarket chain is implementing its technology to keep up. In 2016, the retailer began recording goods on the blockchain to track the origin of each batch of products, and a couple of weeks ago decided to release smart carts and drones to help with purchases. Now the company has stated in its blog that it is expanding its network of pick-up towers — devices that Walmart hopes will lure Internet users to its stores. The company hopes that behind this is the future of delivery. And we tell how it works.
Testing the technology of the largest American retailer began in June 2017. Pick-up towers are automated terminals that look like soda machines, only much larger (5 meters high). In them, buyers can pick up orders made on the site or through a mobile application. If earlier it was necessary to come to the office of some company that delivers and sign different pieces of paper, now it is enough to take a few steps away from the grocery section in the supermarket - and here it is. Confirm your identity, and take the package home. And, it seems, other large networks of offline stores will also soon introduce such a system for themselves.
How it works
You buy anything at the Walmart online store (more than a million items). And you specify the supermarket nearest to you as the place of delivery. Employees of the company collect the goods in packages, and a special truck delivers them to the station. After that, you will receive an email that your item is ready. And the next “journey” to this supermarket - on the way back you take the ordered item with you. Doors of the tower automatically open when the user approaches, allowing you to attach a smartphone with a barcode to the scanner and receive your online order.
At Walmart they say that the probability of an error in the issuance of goods is almost zero. And the convenience is quite tangible. Pickup stations are located right at the entrance to the store, they work around the clock, and delivery by this method does not cost the buyer a penny.
For Walmart, this is also not at a loss. Delivering goods to the supermarket is much cheaper than individually sending them to each customer's house (as Amazon does). Yes, you have to pay for trucks and fuel from your pocket. But people have another reason to go to their store. If you go to the supermarket anyway, why not buy something there? The popularity of offline stores in America has been falling for more than ten years in a row, shopping malls have been closing one by one, and Walmart will always have a “plan B”. Their supermarkets are now on the way with online shopping. In the literal sense.
For customers in the new technology has its advantages. When ordering from $ 30 shipping cost - $ 0. The price of goods online is usually the same or lower than in the store. And in April, the company announced a discount for more than a million products, so that customers quickly began to use the new "chip". The first 200 pick-up towers operating since last summer have already issued half a million orders. Walmart says it will launch another 500 by the end of 2018, and this, thanks to their strategic location, will allow it to serve 40% of US residents.
Not walmart one
Having looked at the interesting approach of the main offline retailer, a similar system in Spain was rolled out by Zara. She is now testing machines for issuing online purchases in her boutiques. The idea here is the same: take customers out of online, get them to come to the store, and there - forge iron while it's hot.
For both Walmart and Zara, technology developed by Estonian engineers from Cleveron. At Zara, the automatics look not so motley, they are lower, flush with the height of the boutique, and do not stand out against its background. But they go further inland, and can accommodate 4,000 parcels, which is twice as large as the Walmart towers.
Andres Linyat, Cleveron CEO, is confident that this is only the beginning:
Such technologies have enormous potential. Why waste space, why hire employees to issue goods? This is ineffective. We already have applications for the adaptation of such systems in many grocery stores.
Well, for Walmart such “lures” in supermarkets are another answer to the rapid growth of online shopping. About half of all purchases in the United States are already online. A month ago, a large American chain selling toys for children, Toys "R" Us, went bankrupt. She worked for seventy years, but failed in time to gain a base of online shoppers. All of its 1,758 stores are now being sold and closed. Walmart profits also fall. And the company is aware of who is to blame. Walmart CEO Bill Simon, talking about the bankruptcy of Toys "R" Us in an interview with CNBC, talks about Amazon's "predatory" habits:
They work online and don’t pay state taxes because they don’t have any physical stores. You see what happened to Toys R Us, what is happening now with JC Penney. Amazon sells below cost, it continues to do so. Their toys were cheaper than the toy store, this is not normal. It destroys the ecosystem, it bankrupts companies, people lose their jobs. They need to stop.
Only Walmart has enough resources to counter Amazon, and they take their “mission” seriously. Pick-up towers are one of the company's capabilities to somehow use the only advantage it currently has: having a huge number (more than 4800!) Of offline supermarkets across the country. Also in May, Walmart launches an updated website, with advanced shopping recommendation algorithms that, according to the company, are “much smarter” than Amazon’s and will not recommend you things that you no longer need. The retailer expects that this will spur online sales, and here the new towers will come in handy.
One pick-up station, according to Walmart, can issue "several hundred" orders during the day. They are also potentially planned to be upgraded, so that buyers could pick up large items, such as TVs, which now do not fit in the delivery window.
How Walmart is trying to transform its supermarkets to keep up with new technologies, you can read here .
PS You can buy in Walmart, Amazon and other US stores from Russia. There is more choice, prices are much lower. And we are responsible for the delivery, Pochtoy.com. Here you get a free American address for sending goods, and sending them to Russia costs from $ 8.99 per pound. GT readers who, after registering, enter the code “Geektimes” receive $ 7 per account.