Walmart Stores has announced it is accelerating its plan for its small store format in the United States for its current fiscal year.
The company will expand its original forecast for capital provided from last October and expects to now add as many as 300 small format stores during the current fiscal year, which would double its original forecast of up to 150 stores.
Walmart U.S. is also continuing its plan to open as many as 115 supercenters during the current year as well.
The CEO and president of Walmart U.S. Bill Simon said the customers’ expectations and needs were changing. They want to be able to shop when they want to shop, how they want to shop and the company is transforming to meet those needs.
Simon said customers like the myriad of selections at its supercenters for trips to stock up, while they also appreciated the smaller stores as fill-in trips.
By unlocking the growth opportunity and the continuance of combining the supercenters with the small store formats and unlimited choices through its ecommerce site, Walmart is providing customers with anywhere, anytime access to its brand, said Simon in a prepared statement.
The small stores have continued delivering positive sales and increases in traffic each quarter. The comp sales for their Neighborhood Market stores increased nearly 4% during the 2014 fiscal year, helped by pharmacy and fresh items.
Simon said that their Neighborhood Market was performing comparable as well as favorable to other leading grocers. The small store expansion as well as providing customers a wide variety of different products, including pharmacy, fresh foods and fuel has helped the company usher in its next generation of retail.
Walmart currently has 345 Neighborhood Markets as well as 20 Walmart Express locations. The Express stores are performing well and have been expanded beyond the pilot program of three markets.
Due to its aggressive project, Walmart U.S. will see an increase in net retail footage growth of more than 23 million square feet during this fiscal year.
To fund additional growth, Walmart U.S. had revised its expenditures in capital forecasted from as much as $6.3 billion to $6.9 billion.
Roxanne Briean
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