Page 42 - HW March 2022

global eyes
Retailers are looking hard at that last mile
LOWE’S AND WALMART, to name just two major retailers, have been looking long and hard at the shape of their last mile.
They’re not alone – Screwfix in the
UK for example has rolled out Screwfix Sprint, which enables delivery to home or site within 60 minutes.
Lowe’s pals up with Instacart – In the States, in a first for both parties, Lowe’s recently signed up with Instacart, the leading online grocery platform in North America, to provide customers with no less than 20,000 Lowe’s items, including small home appliances, building supplies, light fixtures, garden and outdoor essentials, and more, delivered from the store to their door.
Same-day Lowe’s delivery via Instacart is initially available in Boston and Charlotte NC, with plans to expand the program in coming months.
“People across North America have shown they’re embracing the ‘do it yourself ’ mentality, and demand for home improvement essentials on our platform grew by more than 50% in 2021 compared to 2020,” says Chris Rogers, Vice President of Retail at Instacart.
Mike Shady, Lowe’s Senior Vice President of Online. “As we explore a suite of solutions to meet our customers’ same-day and next-day delivery needs, this partnership is enhancing the customer experience and providing the choices today’s customers demand.”
To begin shopping from Lowe’s
for same-day delivery via Instacart, customers in Charlotte and Boston
can visit www.instacart.com/lowes- home-improvement or select the Lowe’s storefront on the Instacart app.
For all orders, an Instacart shopper picks and delivers the order from Lowe’s within the customer’s chosen timeframe and customers can follow along and live chat with their shopper in real-time if they wish.
www.instacart.com/ lowes-home-improvement
Walmart responds to changing customers – Walmart meanwhile is busy catering to the changing, pandemic- affected needs of its customers, whose “need for convenience led to six times the number of customers using delivery in the fourth quarter compared to pre- pandemic levels,” says the company in February, adding that this signalled “a huge change”.
In response, Walmart says it is “shrinking the distance, and increasing the convenience, in the latest frontier: last-mile delivery. And we’re not just doing it. We’re doing it fast!”
At the heart of Walmart’s last-mile strategy are its 4,700 stores, which it
says are located within just 10 miles of 90% of the US population, which affords Walmart an almost unique ability to integrate these bricks & mortar locations into its supply chain.
Having seen the number of orders coming from its stores increase by 170%, Walmart has already increased its store-based pickup and delivery capacity by
20% last year and plans to further increase this capacity by another 35% this year.
Enter Walmart’s new Market Fulfillment Centers (MFCs), which it’s calling “the next phase of store integration and evolution”.
These MFCs are effectively automated fulfilment centres located within a Walmart store. Their inventory is separate from the store’s, so a peak in demand for one or the other does not affect both online and in-store customers.
Walmart says of this move: “Using our size, scale, and tendency to stay out in front of change, we’re using our stores in new ways and doing something no one else can. As our capabilities grow, the last mile will continue to shrink, moving delivery from days to minutes.”
And then there’s Walmart InHome home delivery service which is now being scaled up to cater for demand from some 30 million US homes and is hiring 3,000 additional associates to drive a 100% electric fleet of delivery vehicles.
Walmart of course is also working
on offering last mile services to other retailers in the form of its Walmart GoLocal service and Spark Driver network, its proprietary delivery platform that connects drivers to opportunities.
www.walmart.com
40 NZHJ | MARCH 2022
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