The battle to become eCommerce king wages on, and it looks as though Walmart is making moves to elevate its web assets in this space. Earlier this year, Walmart announced its decisions to acquire men’s clothing line Bonobos and vintage women’s clothing eCommerce site ModCloth. Both of these brands are a major coup for the discount retailer as the demographic falls into the millennial arena.
With millennials outpacing the baby boomer generation, it should come as no surprise that Walmart is gearing up to shift its attention. This week during an earnings call, Walmart’s team shared that the Bonobos and ModCloth brands will soon be sold on Jet.com but not inside brick-and-mortar Walmart stores.
Given the back-and-forth fight in the eCommerce world between Amazon and Walmart, this move by the discount retailer is said to be listing Bonobos and ModCloth on Jet.com as a strategic move to help pull in a wider ranging group of consumers. Walmart’s spokesman Randy Hargrove shared a breakdown of the typical Jet.com customer with Business Insider. “The Jet customer demographic – millennial, urban, higher income – aligns well with the demographics of ModCloth and Bonobos.”
As Jet.com further ingrains itself in the millennial eCommerce buying sphere, it’s apparent that Walmart stores will continue the trajectory of focusing on providing products and groceries at a family friendly price instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Rather than integrating these two brands into physical stores, this decision by Walmart to only sell them on Jet.com is showing a clear division between the two entities.
It seems as though Jet.com will be the core competitor to Amazon rather than the discount retailer itself. Soon, we may just be talking about the eCommerce battle between Jet.com and Amazon while the Walmart name falls by the wayside.
