How Sam’s Club is speeding up development during the pandemic and beyond

When the coronavirus altered the requirements of consumers starting in March, Sam’s Club understood it needed to act quickly to change the method it served its members. And while some store security preventative measures were reasonably clear and easy to execute, others included technology that hadn’t been established yet.

On this episode of Retail Gets Real, Eddie Garcia, Sam’s Club senior vice president and primary product officer, signs up with the podcast to share how the company is innovating at a sped up rate during the pandemic and what it indicates for the future of retail.

When Garcia was entrusted with offering the operations that improve user experience and convenience, he saw a chance to revolutionize safe shopping.

“Part of our DNA and part of our culture is rooted into infusing our solutions with terrific innovation,” Garcia said. It took Sam’s Club just 6 days to establish the concept and deployment of a concierge app, which provides fast and contactless shopping for customers who need to buy necessary items in bulk. The “Store from Your Automobile” service for senior and at-risk populations permits staff member to take orders from consumer cars, store and load merchandise without consumers needing to leave their cars.

“Little, empowered cross-functional teams” made up of Sam’s Club technology, item management, business, analytics and marketing groups collaborated to develop the app, whose algorithms auto-generate a tailored shopping list based on prior member purchases. With over 130,000 transactions from the concierge app, Garcia states hybrid shopping– that combination of digital and physical experiences– is not simply a pandemic trend; it’s here to stay.

“The winners in retail are those that are going to be the most versatile. We’re ready to adapt to meet the member requirement, if and when we require to, as rapidly as we can.”