Fast Five Shorts | Walmart And Sam’s Club To Merge Their Supply Chains

 According to Supermarket news, Sam's club and Walmart are merging their supply chain teams. Uh, Sam's clubs, corporate supply chain team plans to merge with the supply chain team, a parent company, Walmart, according to a memo that was obtained by business insider, David Gugina, head of supply chain operations at Walmart, who we also got to interview at NRF last year.

Uh, wrote the memo, which was sent to the Sam's club supply chain team in the note. Cause you know, expressed his excitement for the collaboration stating that it brought together a quote supply chain that is future ready to serve both Sam's club and Walmart for the long term end quote. Additionally, a Sam's club spokesperson told business insider that the merger will give employees seamless access to Walmart's enterprise resources and will provide a clear path within the company.

No jobs are expected to be lost in this transition as well. We might point out, um, Chris, this is also our A& M put you on the spot question for the week. Okay. Are you ready for this? I am, man. Okay. Of course I knew this quote was going to come back to haunt me. They're quoting me from a couple of weeks ago when I made the very brilliant remark about no duh.

Um, they want to know a couple of weeks ago when the CRG colleagues were on with us. And I said that this falls into the no duh category in reference to, I don't remember. It was, it was Simon. Um, Oh, the Simon properties, Simon properties, like a mall having a marketplace, like that makes sense. Um, okay. So they want to know, does this fall into the Noda category for Walmart and Sam's, or is there something more complicated to consider for this union?

Chris, what do you think? Oh, that's wow. That's really interesting. Um, I think. I think to say it's a no duh, does it a disservice? Uh, for the most part, I think when, I think when you step back from most things in disservice, no duh. Well, yeah, right. Yeah. From a pundit commentary standpoint. Yes. A hundred percent.

Not, not the most articulate comment, but no, but anyway, but Hey, that's our show. And we're not, we're not always big on articulation. Um, both of us. So, but, so I think it does it a little bit disservice, but, um, But with that said, you could look at it, you could look at it. You can stop, step back 30, 000 feet.

You're like, yeah, this is just really smart to do. It's kind of a no doubt thing. But at the end of the day. It's probably pretty complicated. And then you also have to ask, Samscope's been around for 30 years, or give or take, why hasn't it happened if it's a no duh? So it takes, it takes some vision and leadership to make something like this happen because quite honestly, the operations are different.

And the article for those listening is also what prompted John Furner, who was then the CEO of Sam's club to request a meeting with us. At grocery shop. We didn't request it with Tim folks. He wanted to meet with us and he gave us 30 minutes of his time to talk about the insights that we presented in that article.

And so in it, for those of you who may not have read it, I posited that Sam's club and Walmart would eventually use their supply chains together because really why not? You know, it is kind of a no duh. If I'm shopping at Sam's or Walmart, why wouldn't I also want access to bulk buys or single item purchases Purchase options online, right?

It just makes sense. It's a state of the world too. Here's the other point that's important. It's a state of the world too, that only Walmart can do because only Walmart has these two things under its stable, but it takes out working the logistics. behind the scenes to make it happen on the back end and make it happen.

But long term, the organizational structure sets up this incredible point of differentiation. And also, I would add Walmart now has the digital tools on the front end, particularly via Walmart Plus, and the very strong scan and go usage at CMscope. At the front end to compliment it. So say you're in sales club, you find something you don't want.

Well, you can have it shipped in an, you can have it shipped in an each if you want, you don't have to buy it in bulk too, right? That is absolutely brilliant. And that's where I think this is going. So sorry, I took some time there, but. But I just really love this story. Yeah, no, I, I think that you, all the points that you outlined are incredibly smart.

I mean, at the end of the day, this results in customers of both Sam's club and Walmart saving more money and living better. And that's the main goal here for this entire organization. Um, the only other thing that I'm, I'm curious about from this is, will, will this also help, uh, Sam's club and Walmart learn throughout this process?

I'm going be shared then with other retailers down the road via like Walmart commerce technologies. Like, what did they learn about combining some of these services or bringing in bulk ordering and, you know, each is ordering like how do, how can they. Potentially use that as fuel down the road to, you know, boost that Walmart commerce technologies business that they've been really, um, promoting and talking about and working with retailers, especially over in Europe, um, to help them kind of bolster, I don't know if that's something that.

Is even in the roadmap yet, but I think they'll, they'll be learning so much, um, from one, how to set this up the 30 years that it's taken to get that those supply chain channels merged, but then also to figure out like how they can, they can use that, what they've learned and, and really make things better for customers all over the world.

Yeah, it's a great point. You know, at the end of the day to, you know, digital success comes from great back end execution. It's what it's what enables you to do the flexible things you want to do on the front end side of the experience. And yeah, I thought your point to like, it's about. Continue to help people save money and live better.

And hopefully they can find some cost efficiencies here and plow that money back into their continued approach to innovation. So, so does Wal Mart win the weekend? Who wins the week? Because you kind of poo pooed, you kind of poo pooed the shop with friends and went all in on the, the buy it now thing. So who wins the week?

I mean, we did do three Walmart stories versus two Amazon stories too. But we had an Amazon five insightful minutes. Yes, we did. You're right. So it was a fair balance. It's a fair balance and equitable show this weekend. I'm going to give it to Walmart. Yeah. I think Walmart wins because the supply chain thing, the holiday.

Yeah. I think I, Walmart by a narrow, narrow lead. Um, but yes, I think we'll continue to, we'll continue to watch these two. We need to have like a scoreboard up or like a bracket. We need brackets for this. I need another bracket. This week was like Walmart 1A, Walmart 1A, Amazon 1B, rest of retail.

Come on, folks. Give us some headlines to talk about. My God. Oh my God.