Walmart Redesigns Great Value After 10 Years | Fast Five Shorts
This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment explores Walmart’s first major redesign of its Great Value private label brand in over a decade.
Chris Walton and Ben Miller discuss how packaging, perception, and pricing power all play into private label growth and why this move could help Walmart win with higher-income shoppers.
⏩ Tune in for the full episode here.
#RetailNews, #Walmart, #PrivateLabel, #Branding, #GroceryRetail, #RetailStrategy, #OmniTalk
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Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcript
Walmart has announced the first full redesign of its Great Value private label brand for more than a decade, with plans to roll out new, more modern and colorful packaging.
Speaker A:How could it be anything but across nearly 10,000 grocery and household items over the next 18 to 24 months?
Speaker A:So a little bit more detail.
Speaker A:According to a Walmart corporate blog post, the new packaging designs were unveiled on April 15, will begin rolling out from May, starting with salty snacks, which is interesting with the GLP1 conversation, before expanding category by category into more than 100 product categories.
Speaker A:The new packaging is specifically designed to improve what Walmart calls shopability, making it easier for customers to identify products in store and on the aisles.
Speaker A:Customer research was the catalyst.
Speaker A:While shoppers ranked Great Value highly on price and quality quality, many said they didn't feel particularly proud to display it in their home.
Speaker A:So, Chris, do you think a Great Value packaging redesign will help get more people to buy more Great Value products from Walmart?
Speaker B:Oh, man, that's a tough one.
Speaker B:I don't actually know if it'll get them to buy more products because, you know, but I think at the end of the day I like this move because I don't think it's going to, it's not going to make them buy less products.
Speaker B:I don't think, you know, at the end of the day it's not going to hurt anything.
Speaker B:I mean, the article said nine out of 10 US households already buy it.
Speaker B:So I mean, how much room is there to grow when nine out of 10 are already buying it?
Speaker B:I guess you can get them to buy it more often, which I think is the play here.
Speaker B:And I alluded to it before because you're going after the upper demo.
Speaker B:If you read between the lines of this, we're not proud to show it in our pantries, which means we're not proud to highlight it to when we have guests in the house.
Speaker A:You're right.
Speaker B:And so that's the upper demographic that they're trying to get after.
Speaker B:And they're going after it, you know, because of the success they've had with Walmart.
Speaker B:Plus they want people to feel more pride in having it in their house.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:So it's not going to hurt anything if it doesn't move the needle, which it very well could.
Speaker B:It, you know, helps them to, helps people to save money, helps Walmart make more money and then look out because that's more margin for Walmart and also more media dollars from the CBGs who are not going to want to let that happen.
Speaker A:Yeah, you're right.
Speaker B:You're not going to want to see the territory at a great value.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:So the flywheel just keeps on churning.
Speaker B:So I think it's a really smart move from a profitability perspective whether they sell more great value product.
Speaker B:I think actually as I'm talking this out loud, Ben, I think possibly.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think to the upper income demos for sure.
Speaker A:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker A:I mean look, firstly, I love we're talking about private label.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's another big themes.
Speaker B:I don't talk about private label very often.
Speaker A:Yeah, we must keep talking about it as an industry more.
Speaker A:But let's look, let's talk about Walmart first.
Speaker A:Because.
Speaker A:Because it's Walmart, because the scale, because it's 10,000 products, because it's their core great value item, then it's a story.
Speaker A:But it's really not a story in some ways.
Speaker A:I mean, look, 30 years ago I sat my desk in, the marketing team at the grocery retailer was next to the packaging design team.
Speaker A:They were on a constant cycle of redeveloping packaging for the private labels.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:It's not news, it's just how you run a private label business.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So scale makes it notable, Walmart makes it notable, but it's just how you should be doing.
Speaker A:Having said that, to do it now is a huge signal and for that to read the signal, you got to look at what the CPGs did.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So we had inflation out of COVID CPGs.
Speaker A:CPGs took the pricing, create the branded CPGs took the price and they've grown through price.
Speaker A:So if you sit here now and you read the financial results of any of the big branded CPGs, there's growth coming from two places.
Speaker A:One, value, that is price, it's not volume.
Speaker A:Two, digital.
Speaker A:Come back to the conversation we were having earlier in the Instacart Bunsen.
Speaker A:That's where the growth is now.
Speaker A:In the last six months we'd hit a point where CPGs, it felt like the conversation that they'd realized that did they realize price had been touched too far and, and the differential to private label that opened up too much and that was happening just at a time that the inflationary pressures thankfully had eased off.
Speaker A:Okay, the world's changed in the last month.
Speaker A:We're suddenly in an environment where inflationary pressures are coming in.
Speaker A:This is a critical time.
Speaker A:Walmart is saying, okay, we're going big on our private label.
Speaker A:The industry cannot risk pushing price too much, otherwise that differential is going to increase even further.
Speaker A:And you're seeing the investment that's going.
Speaker A:So that for me is the big story.
Speaker A:It's watching how that goes.
Speaker A:Now, having said that, I also slightly don't agree with you.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:How dare you?
Speaker A:Okay, great, great.
Speaker A:Nine out of 10 households.
Speaker A:But it doesn't tell you how many items.
Speaker B:No, it doesn't.
Speaker A:It doesn't tell you what frequency.
Speaker A:It doesn't tell you how many categories they're buying into.
Speaker A:Nobody's gonna do a packaging redesign because they think they're gonna sell less.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So this is about modernization.
Speaker A:It's about pushing.
Speaker A:There's categories where it's fascinating.
Speaker A:They're starting with salty snacks and crisps, a category being hit by the GLP1 impact.
Speaker A:I hope that they recognize why it's been hit rather than just saying, here's another performer, let's put the investment there.
Speaker A:But they're smart people, so I'm sure they do.
Speaker A:If they get this right, it will help them grow penetration, growth frequency.
Speaker A:And that's a real watch.
Speaker A:And it's a real watch out for other grocers.
Speaker A:Because one of the things that sometimes gets lost in the conversation about private label is it's not just switching from branded to private label.
Speaker A:It's switching store locations to retailers that have a higher private label mix, like a limited line discounter, like a warehouse club.
Speaker A:So if you're sat in a major mall or even a regional grocery and you're thinking about, you know, what do I know?
Speaker A:How do I respond to this?
Speaker A:It's so important to get that private label range back.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of points I heard you say there that I think are important.
Speaker B:Just to reiterate.
Speaker B:So, like, one is the continued digital growth of grocery and showing up better there.
Speaker A:Huge.
Speaker B:One is the inflation impact.
Speaker B:1.
Speaker B:And then the other thing is the point that I think you and I both ended up making it.
Speaker B:I came around to it at the end too.
Speaker B:You did.
Speaker B:Thank you, thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker B:But it's right to disagree with me based on how I said it.
Speaker B:But like, that there are more people that could be buying more great value products.
Speaker B:My only question for you, Ben, is when they said that they haven't done this in 10 years, you know, were they kind of derelict in not doing it sooner?
Speaker A:Yeah, that.
Speaker A:That surprised me.
Speaker B:It surprised me too.
Speaker A:I think part of it is just the sheer scale of the range.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:You know, this is the core range.
Speaker A:It's a big undertaking.
Speaker A:Big, big, big undertaking.
Speaker A:And what stood out to me was, and I think I'd love the next time one of us is talking to a merchant at Walmart to understand, like, we're talking a 12 to 48, a 12 to 24 month rollout for this, I'd love to know how you can make that quicker.
Speaker A:You know, it feels like with the technological advances, with AI, that seems an awful long time to roll this out.
Speaker A:Okay, 10,000 gross is a huge change, but it'd be interesting to know, is Walmart doing anything different in the process to be able to improve this?
Speaker B:Yeah, well, and then there's also the correlating things that are changing in terms of packaging design and requirements in the industry as well, and how they're syncing all those up.
Speaker B:So this is not an easy undertaking by any means, in any way, shape or form.
