Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

arizonaguy
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Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by arizonaguy »

Sam's Club is rolling out a new logo for its Member's Mark private label and is focusing it on sustainable products.

https://www.supermarketnews.com/sustain ... b8GNwxO_9M

I'm surprised that it is not Costco / Kirkland doing this. Costco's customer base, in my opinion, cares more about this type of thing than Sam's Club's.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by jamcool »

A number of the Members Mark products are better than their Kirkland counterparts. Their canned chicken is “cleaner” (only chicken/water/salt) than Kirkland, which has added starches. Same with their paper plates and paper towels.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by rwsandiego »

arizonaguy wrote: April 22nd, 2022, 4:24 pm Sam's Club is rolling out a new logo for its Member's Mark private label and is focusing it on sustainable products.

https://www.supermarketnews.com/sustain ... b8GNwxO_9M

I'm surprised that it is not Costco / Kirkland doing this. Costco's customer base, in my opinion, cares more about this type of thing than Sam's Club's.
If Sam's Club wants to expand its member base and poach Costco members, what better way to do it than focus on sustainability.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by ClownLoach »

Sam's Club continues to improve every single day. Stores are cleaner, brighter and constantly full of new, surprising products. I just wish they would start adding store count in areas where they are few and far between. If you look at the improvements they have made they are ideal for capturing share on the West Coast where they have many gaps in their store count.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: April 26th, 2022, 3:17 pm Sam's Club continues to improve every single day. Stores are cleaner, brighter and constantly full of new, surprising products. I just wish they would start adding store count in areas where they are few and far between. If you look at the improvements they have made they are ideal for capturing share on the West Coast where they have many gaps in their store count.
Traffic at these stores (and Costco) is increasing exponentially as more and more customers go chasing deals in this environment of rapidly increasing prices. So many Costco Stores are already maxed out from a capacity standpoint I don't know how much business they can add at this point. But in the case of Sam's, my view is they have a lot of capacity even with the current lower store count to pick up a lot more sales... in existing stores, in this environment.

Does Wal Mart open new stores ever anymore (other than stuff in the pipeline from 5+ years ago that is just now finally getting built)? Seems like at this point they are content with saturation. But Sam's isn't saturated...
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by norcalriteaidclerk »

storewanderer wrote: April 26th, 2022, 7:11 pm
ClownLoach wrote: April 26th, 2022, 3:17 pm Sam's Club continues to improve every single day. Stores are cleaner, brighter and constantly full of new, surprising products. I just wish they would start adding store count in areas where they are few and far between. If you look at the improvements they have made they are ideal for capturing share on the West Coast where they have many gaps in their store count.
Traffic at these stores (and Costco) is increasing exponentially as more and more customers go chasing deals in this environment of rapidly increasing prices. So many Costco Stores are already maxed out from a capacity standpoint I don't know how much business they can add at this point. But in the case of Sam's, my view is they have a lot of capacity even with the current lower store count to pick up a lot more sales... in existing stores, in this environment.

Does Wal Mart open new stores ever anymore (other than stuff in the pipeline from 5+ years ago that is just now finally getting built)? Seems like at this point they are content with saturation. But Sam's isn't saturated...
Sam's Club has actually contracted in Sacramento for the past decade or so:Natomas(don't know if it's still vacant)and Country Club(now a Costco Business Center)both closed within the past decade,while Rancho Cordova is undergoing conversion into an Asian supermarket.Don't know offhand whether North Sunrise in Roseville(an acquired Price Savers/Pace,since converted to an Ashley Home Furnishings)was an outright closure or relocated.A new build in Citrus Heights is one of a few local locations remaining.
For your life,Thrifty and Payless have got it.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by storewanderer »

norcalriteaidclerk wrote: April 26th, 2022, 7:34 pm

Sam's Club has actually contracted in Sacramento for the past decade or so:Natomas(don't know if it's still vacant)and Country Club(now a Costco Business Center)both closed within the past decade,while Rancho Cordova is undergoing conversion into an Asian supermarket.Don't know offhand whether North Sunrise in Roseville(an acquired Price Savers/Pace,since converted to an Ashley Home Furnishings)was an outright closure or relocated.A new build in Citrus Heights is one of a few local locations remaining.
I think it is murky and arguable if this is really a relocation, but technically that Rancho Cordova closure about 20 years ago was "replaced" by the one way out at the final Folsom offramp (doesn't even seem like the same trade area to me).

The North Sunrise unit in Roseville was replaced by a new unit up at Pleasant Grove offramp in Roseville.

There is also a unit somewhere in South Sacramento.

I'd argue they had too many stores in Sacramento; Natomas went in the last recession and maybe had they sat on it, it would be doing okay today... the Country Club closure was probably the right decision. I think that closure helped Citrus Heights a little bit.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: April 26th, 2022, 7:11 pm
ClownLoach wrote: April 26th, 2022, 3:17 pm Sam's Club continues to improve every single day. Stores are cleaner, brighter and constantly full of new, surprising products. I just wish they would start adding store count in areas where they are few and far between. If you look at the improvements they have made they are ideal for capturing share on the West Coast where they have many gaps in their store count.
Traffic at these stores (and Costco) is increasing exponentially as more and more customers go chasing deals in this environment of rapidly increasing prices. So many Costco Stores are already maxed out from a capacity standpoint I don't know how much business they can add at this point. But in the case of Sam's, my view is they have a lot of capacity even with the current lower store count to pick up a lot more sales... in existing stores, in this environment.

Does Wal Mart open new stores ever anymore (other than stuff in the pipeline from 5+ years ago that is just now finally getting built)? Seems like at this point they are content with saturation. But Sam's isn't saturated...
I really think that Sam's Club is going to force Costco to negotiate their way out of some of their labor promises. Sam's scan and go is world class and a big difference maker - combined with the fact that Members Mark is better than Kirkland most of the time now I have never shopped Sam's more than I do now. Despite driving past multiple Costco stores to get to Sam's I think they're getting more shops each month than Costco from me now. Costco does have too many stores that run every single register open to close on the weekends with very long lines and physically cannot add any more stores in some markets. For example in Torrance, CA they are on their third building in 15 years because they needed more parking and walking space (not merchandising space - the new building very obviously reduced assortment to widen aisles and expand register area). There literally isn't anywhere else for another store in the area. Sam's is next door and has refreshed to their newest prototype and you can see the sales growth - this store was empty 5 years ago and now they are packed with at least half the customers bypassing all checklanes because they are using scan and go.

My point is that where Costco is landlocked and can't add more stores, and they're maxed out already in volume, they have no choice but to implement something like Scan and Go or they will eventually find themselves unable to continue to grow sales. They have been trying self checkout, most recently moving the register locations around so self is either closest to exit, furthest, or splits full serve checkout in the middle. The failure point of course is that self checkout is going to reduce sales in a maxed out store because of the inefficiency of the customer ringing themselves up slowly; they will not be able to replicate the items per minute of a well trained Costco cashier who could have had a checkstand where two self checkouts went instead. They tried a scan and go type system with handhelds before but it was limited in the audit capabilities and you still had to stop at a kiosk where randomly the cashier would scan your entire basket again, other times you would just swipe your credit card and go. The technology is here now, all Costco needs is an app and Wi-Fi plus implement a consistent scan audit at the door vs. the manual receipt review process to prevent shrink.

I have noticed some security changes in Sam's scan and go but they are pretty logical; if you add or remove too many items during the shop now it will ask you to do an item count before finalizing the transaction which makes sense in case you deleted something inadvertently. It also now has a cap of $750 per transaction and of course California doesn't allow it to be used for alcohol (but I suspect that they will soon get around this problem if Amazon is getting away with it). But I would take Sam's scan and go over any self checkout, full service checkout, and of course over Amazon just walk out and get a receipt sometime in the next century. It just works and saves so much time.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by buckguy »

Costco has surprising gaps in their coverage, so they have room to grow. Next year, they're opening their first store in the Buffalo area, which could support more than one store. They only have a few stores in the Philly area--they have better representation around Pittsburgh which is a much smaller and less affluent metro area. They have stores in Connecticut but none in the New Haven area.

Costco has been able to identify opportunities to open stores in built up areas---they have locations in the DC area, one in a mall that had a dead wing, another near new the Amazon 2nd HQ that normally would be viewed as challenging to locate such a large store. They found a location not far from one of the Walmart that's closing outside of Cleveland, which needed more creativity than Walmart's and opened around the same time. The DC Costco has been very successful, despite being not too far from a suburban store--it used to be easy to shop on weekdays, but not anymore. Costco also has the advantage of not being tied to another business and one with a tarnished reputation.
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Re: Sam's Club to focus Member's Mark on sustainability

Post by arizonaguy »

buckguy wrote: April 27th, 2022, 3:04 pm Costco has surprising gaps in their coverage, so they have room to grow. Next year, they're opening their first store in the Buffalo area, which could support more than one store. They only have a few stores in the Philly area--they have better representation around Pittsburgh which is a much smaller and less affluent metro area. They have stores in Connecticut but none in the New Haven area.

Costco has been able to identify opportunities to open stores in built up areas---they have locations in the DC area, one in a mall that had a dead wing, another near new the Amazon 2nd HQ that normally would be viewed as challenging to locate such a large store. They found a location not far from one of the Walmart that's closing outside of Cleveland, which needed more creativity than Walmart's and opened around the same time. The DC Costco has been very successful, despite being not too far from a suburban store--it used to be easy to shop on weekdays, but not anymore. Costco also has the advantage of not being tied to another business and one with a tarnished reputation.
Costco's problem (and Sam's too) is that their largest customer base seems to be those in the Generation X and Boomer generations. That customer base will be shrinking over the next few decades.

A lot of younger generations do not shop at Costco anymore other than when they are with their parents. I've noticed that Sam's Club has a lot more younger families shopping there versus Costco the last few times I've been there (although I'd imagine a lot of the younger families are on the membership deals that Sam's club sends out in the mail).

Younger generations (millennial and younger) love online shopping and aps. Costco's online shopping / app experience is bad (and that's putting it nicely). Costco's website / app is designed to get customers into the store. Younger people do not want to shop inside the store.

The Sam's Club / Walmart relationship presents some issues if they were to ever separate. Sam's Club probably gets better deals from vendors by being a subsidiary of Walmart. However, as Sam's Club isn't Walmart's core business it also gets the least amount of capital spending of any Walmart entity. If Walmart was to somehow spin off / sell Sam's Club, Sam's Club's costs would rise causing higher pricing and probably making the chain less competitive with Costco.

If Walmart starts building new stores again, we might see a new Sam's Club here or there. However, it's very clear that Walmart and Wall Street seem to want to focus almost all capital expenditures on online shopping over the near term.
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