- Walmart recently announced it overhauled its e-commerce operations
- Jet’s Retail, Marketing, Technology, Analytics, Product teams will be integrated into Walmart
- Walmart also rolled out a Delivery Unlimited service for $98 per year
Walmart has announced an overhauling its e-commerce operations over the past week, including major changes to Jet.com — which is the e-commerce startup it acquired for $3.3 billion in 2016. And Walmart Grocery is now offering a $98 per year “Delivery Unlimited” subscription.
Jet.com Changes
When Walmart closed the Jet.com deal, Walmart CEO and president Doug McMillon predicted that the two companies would leverage each other’s assets in order to grow the ways that customers are served. And after the Jet.com acquisition, the Jet and Walmart teams were merged to become one and it set up new customer experiences.
For example, the combined supply chain team retooled fulfillment centers and mirrored inventory. As a result, Walmart was able to offer to two-day free shipping and more recently free NextDay Delivery without a membership fee.
Going forward, Walmart is going to integrate Jet’s Retail, Marketing, Technology, Analytics, Product, and several other teams within Walmart teams. And the Jet.com president Simon Belsham will be departing from the company in early August as he supports the transition until then.
Why is Walmart making these changes? It is believed that Jet has not been keeping pace with Walmart’s internal sales goals. And Walmart also has reportedly been giving priority to the main website at the expense of Jet. These changes do not mean that Jet.com is shutting down.
The strategy and management of Jet.com will be overseen by Kieran Shanahan — who will also continue to oversee the Food, Consumables and Health and Wellness Categories for Walmart eCommerce. Shanahan started his career at Walmart with Asda and eventually led all of its e-commerce operations and the build-out of the US Online Grocery service before moving over to merchandising roles within Walmart U.S.
Jet.com founder Marc Lore — who is currently the head of Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce operations — will continue heading up the business. Jet.com’s other co-founders are also retaining their executive roles. Former Jet.com COO Nathan Faust is going to continue heading up Walmart’s e-commerce supply chain and former Jet.com CTO Mike Hanrahan is the CEO of Walmart’s Intelligent Retail Lab — which is the company’s AI Lab within a full operating grocery store in Levittown, New York.
“This natural progression of integrating an acquisition, allows us to fully leverage Walmart’s assets for Jet and leverage Jet’s talent for Walmart,” said Lore in an announcement. “Jet continues to be a very valuable brand to us, and it is playing a specific role in helping Walmart reach urban customers. The focus has largely been on NY so far, and we’re looking at other cities where we might bring together Jet’s expertise and the scale and operating model of Walmart. More to come on that.”
“Delivery Unlimited” Subscription
TechCrunch noticed that Walmart is now taking on services like Instacart, Shipt, and Amazon Prime Now with its own grocery delivery subscription service called “Delivery Unlimited.”
In the past, Walmart shoppers could order groceries online and pick it up from their local stores for free. Or they could pay $9.95 per order delivery fee. Now Delivery Unlimited enables consumers to skip the per order fee by paying a monthly or annual subscription.
The monthly price is $12.95 per month. And the annual subscription is $98 per year. Both of these options also include a 15-day trial.
The $98 annual price point makes Delivery Unlimited competitive since Shipt charges $99 for a similar service and Target also recently announced that Shipt shoppers can pay a per-order fee of $9.99. And Instacart dropped the annual fee to $99 late last year. Amazon Prime Now still has the highest price at $119 per year.
Unfortunately, Walmart Delivery Unlimited is not available throughout the country. It is only available in select areas.
