Walmart Is Launching Delivery As A Service With Go Local

As the world begins to recover from the trials of the COVID-19 crisis, the effects of the pandemic are still being keenly felt in the way customers are interacting with their favorite retail brands.

The area of retail where this impact is perhaps most apparent is the home delivery sector. During the worst days of the crisis, retailers – especially supermarkets and other outlets for essential goods – saw a surge in demand for home delivery services with delivery slots at the biggest brands filling up two, sometimes three, weeks in advance.

Even now we are tentatively coming out of the other side of the pandemic, the demand for an increased number of home delivery options continues. Combine this with the fact major carriers such as UPS have significantly increased their rates and there is a palpable need for new carrier vendors and multi-carrier strategies in the retail space.

Walmart

It’s this need which has led the world’s second largest – Amazon recently stole its long-held crown – Walmart, to implement a new home delivery service so as to better serve its legions of eager commercial customers.

Dubbed, Walmart GoLocal, the new initiative aims to create a delivery as a service type offering and leverage Walmart’s expertise in the field to make sure goods get where they need to go in the most effective and efficient manner possible.

"In an era where customers have come to expect speed and reliability, it’s more important than ever for businesses to work with a service provider that understands a merchant’s needs," said President and CEO of Walmart US, John Furner in a press release. "Walmart has spent years building and scaling commerce capabilities that support our network of more than 4,700 stores and we look forward to helping other businesses have access to the same reliable, quality and low-cost services."

Walmart GoLocal has been created to build on the retailer’s proven ability to execute seamless delivery capabilities at scale with extreme efficiency. In just three years, Walmart has launched and scaled delivery and Express delivery for its customers on over 160,000 products from more than 3,000 stores, reaching nearly 70% of the US population and growing using its existing delivery network, including exciting modern technology such as drones and autonomous vehicles all flowing freely from its advanced market fulfilment centers.

Delivery as a Service

With this lates white-label delivery as a service innovation, Walmart will be helping small to medium sized businesses to grow their operations by empowering them to offer the same next-level home delivery offering Walmart itself does.

This means companies without the infrastructure to handle home delivery themselves – and perhaps the resources to afford major carriers’ skyrocketing prices – can offer fast and reliable nationwide delivery coverage at a competitive price.

The service will include a range of options including delivery on a range of products, including those with size and other complex requirements, as well as the flexibility to meet varying timelines. Walmart is also planning to rapidly expand GoLocal to offer even more innovative offerings in the near future.

"We’ve worked hard to develop a reliable last mile delivery program for our customers," said Senior Vice President of Last Mile at Walmart US, Tom Ward. "Now, we’re pleased to be able to use these capabilities to serve another set of customers, local merchants. Be it delivering goods from a local bakery to auto supplies from a national retailer, we’ve designed Walmart GoLocal to be customizable for merchants of all sizes and categories so they can focus on doing what they do best, leaving delivery speed and efficiency to us."

Walmart currently partners with FedEx for its online delivery service but has yet to confirm whether the carrier will be involved in GoLocal. However, the retail giant has confirmed it intends to establish other innovative delivery partners, including Cruise, a self-driving electric vehicle start-up it invested in last year, as well as Waymo and Nuro. Drone delivery will be facilitated through, DroneUP, another company Walmart invested in last year, as well as ZipLine and FlyTrex.

Final Thoughts

In a rapidly transforming landscape, retailers need to make sure they are able to meet the demands of a customer base which has become increasingly used to have lightning-fast delivery options available to them.

Walmart has already cracked this code for itself and its extremely promising to see the retailer no making that expertise available to smaller businesses who want to be able to offer the same amazing service to their customers.

New and innovative carrier strategies are certain to be part of the conversation at Retail Delivery Connect 2022, taking place in August at The Westin Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.