• From Reuters:
"Price-conscious shoppers flock to Walmart Supercenters to pick up $1 potato chips and $3 gallons of milk, but the world's biggest retailer will now try to sell them $298 cozy swivel chairs and $50 Wrangler jeans, too.
"Using low-cost and low-margin groceries as a draw, Walmart is adding more than a dozen new lines of pricier, more profitable merchandise including six through partnerships with celebrities like Drew Barrymore and Sofia Vergara.
"The company wants to change its image from merely a steep discounter to a destination where customers can also purchase fashionable home goods and clothing."
Denise Incandela, Walmart's vice president of apparel and private brands, recently told investors that the company's strategy is to "democratize fashion" or. Reuters writes, "convert the company's core, price-conscious shoppers into style-conscious shoppers."
The story notes that "Americans shop for clothing, footwear , chairs and lights from millions of mom-and-pop stores, regional chains and online platforms every day, analyst say, giving no one retailer outsized dominance in the highly fragmented markets for home decor and apparel.
"But smaller retailers have a hard time competing with Walmart because of its scale and size and its well-known history of squeezing suppliers on prices by promising them volume sales."
