Wal-Mart is known for big stores in small towns, but now it’s looking to put small stores in big cities:
The new stores, roughly a quarter to a third the size of a supercenter, largely will sell groceries.
Bill Simon, head of Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores business, said Wal-Mart envisions opening in the next few years 30,000- to 60,000-square-foot Neighborhood Market groceries and new, smaller outlets modeled on the bodegas it operates in Latin America. Its supercenters average 185,000 square feet.
Mr. Simon said he believes there is room for “hundreds” of small Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., offering food and consumer staples. The retailer first will test their urban appeal with 30 to 40 stores over the next few years before a full-scale launch.
The move is an about-face for Wal-Mart. At the start of the recession, it focused on attracting more middle-class customers who were “trading down” to discount stores by remodeling to feature neater aisles, fashionable clothing, and eye-grabbing discounts on fewer items.
But Wal-Mart now admits the gambit alienated many of the blue-collar customers who had made it a retail behemoth in the first place. So after shuffling executives, the company is hurriedly restoring the ungainly pallets of merchandise to its center-store aisles and reworking its marketing strategy to emphasize the “every day low prices” formula that the company’s late founder Sam Walton made famous.