September 22, 2022
(press release)
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Sam Walton said it best over 35 years ago, Sam’s Club is an experiment. Today, Sam’s Club is a leader in digital retail transformation. We are called the ‘innovation engine’ for our Walmart enterprise. Through innovation, iteration, and failing fast Sam’s has staked its claim as a disruptive retailer – with a member-obsessed vision. We know this success is due to our associates, members and ultimately the business developing and adopting new ways of working to meet the transformation challenge. So, it feels like a natural next step in our journey to announce that we’re building a Design Studio on our Bentonville, Arkansas campus. This is the first dedicated space at Sam’s Club for innovating, creating, and collaborating. A building where all associates are welcomed and encouraged to pitch, develop, and curate new ideas for the better of our business. Let’s explain how we got here… First, is a retail design studio necessary? If someone would have asked me this question five years ago, I would have shrugged and said, “there is no use for it.” But in today’s retail industry, the value of thinking holistically about “endless aisle”, “omni commerce”, or “phygital” has exponentially increased. What changed? One big factor was the COVID-19 pandemic. At Sam’s we were ready to help our members quickly with new innovations like Scan & Ship, Curbside Pickup, and Scan and Go™. We also learned in order to expand and meet this new omni demand from our members we had to evolve the way we deliver product, design, and service. Our major unlocks were enabled by a few strategic decisions: So, what really is a design studio? Our Design Studio will serve as an idea factory, where anyone in the company can test, exchange, and collaborate on projects that push our business forward. Creating a dedicated space gives us several advantages: Why build a design studio? We are still the experiment Sam Walton started in 1983, and it will always be our goal at Sam’s Club to create the most seamless and convenient user experiences. For us, our Design Studio announcement officially marks innovation being woven into our company’s fabric for the future.
Get a sneak peek at what the Design Studio will look like…
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