Walmart Canada is testing a web order delivery option to consumers in the Toronto area. It is now adding “Grab & Go” lockers in six convenience stores operated by 7-Eleven Inc.
This is the first time Walmart Canada has worked with another retailer to offer an in-store pickup option. It already lets consumers ship Walmart.ca orders to 40 Walmart stores in the Toronto area for pick up from a locker. Alternately, consumers across Canada can have Walmart.ca orders delivered to a Canada Post office for pickup. Orders shipped to a locker or to a Canada Post location ship free to consumers in what Walmart calls “non-remote” areas—the more densely populated areas of Canada. Home delivery is free for orders more than C$50 ($39.41) to consumers in non-remote areas, or C$4.97 ($3.81) for orders of less than C$50. Walmart.ca implemented the home delivery fee for orders under $50 in April, citing high shipping costs in the country.
Walmart Canada says the locker program expansion to include 7-Eleven stores aims to make shopping on Walmart.ca easier. “We know our customers already use 7-Eleven stores in their daily routine. Now they can fuel up their car at their local 7-Eleven and pick up their Walmart.ca order in one easy stop, any day, any time, without paying shipping fees,” says Simon Rodrigue, senior vice president, ecommerce, Walmart Canada. The companies say they are testing the program for six months. Consumers receive an email telling them which locker their order is in and a PIN code to open it. They have seven days to retrieve items.
Walmart.ca has more pick-up options than Walmart.com does in the United States. Walmart.com began testing lockers as pickup points in 2013, but today they are available only within 10 stores in the Washington, D.C., area. Further, Walmart.com in June stopped offering U.S. consumers the option to have online orders shipped to a FedEx Office location for pickup—a program it started in 2010 and had expanded to 660 FedEx office location as of 2013. Walmart.com shoppers also can have orders shipped to Wal-Mart stores or to their homes.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in its first quarter earnings call in May, highlighted the strength of Walmart.ca’s sales growth. While e-commerce sales for the retailer grew globally at a rate of 17% during the first quarter, Walmart.ca sales grew “greater than 40%.” Walmart.ca gets about 400,000 daily visitors, according to the company. It is the ninth most-visited e-commerce site by Canadian consumers, according to Alexa Internet data.
The retailer announced in the spring that it will invest C$35 million ($28.1 million) to expand and improve Walmart.ca, and C$75 million ($60.3 million) to build additional distribution centers to expand its fresh food and e-commerce capacity in Canada. In July, Walmart.ca launched an e-grocery service in Ottawa, Canada’s capital.
Wal-Mart does not break out Canadian web sales in dollars, but BMO Capital Markets estimates Canadian consumers spent C$482 million ($387.7 million) online with the retailer last year, placing it eighth among e-retailers selling to Canadian consumers.
Walmart.com is No. 3 in Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide.
For more context on e-commerce in Canada, see the article “Canada gets serious about e-commerce” from the September 2015 issue of Internet Retailer magazine.