Wal-Mart ramping up e-commerce capabilities

Wal-Mart Stores is ramping up its investment in e-commerce fulfilment infrastructure in its bid to compete with Amazon. Justen Traweek, Wal-Mart’s vice-president of e-commerce supply chain and fulfilment, was quoted by an article published by Reuters today (6 October) as saying that the retailer is on track to double the number of large warehouses dedicated to online sales to 10 by the end of 2016.

“We have doubled our capacity in the last twelve months and that allows us to ship to a majority of the US population in one day,” Traweek said.

As previously reported by Post&Parcel, Wal-Mart has been looking to expand its presence in the e-commerce sector and last month made a major move by buying online retailer Jet.com for $3bn and naming Jet.com founder Marc Lore as the new head of Wal-Mart’s  e-commerce business.

Even with the addition of Jet.com and the new warehouses, Wal-Mart is still a long way behind Amazon in the online business.

According to Reuters, e-commerce currently only accounts for about 3% of Wal-Mart’s overall sales – and Amazon’s $107bn online sales in 2015 far surpassed Wal-Mart’s $13.7bn.

Wal-Mart is holding its annual investor day today.