Sam’s Club CEO wants you to feel like you’re shopping in the future

“We don’t have these massive investments that we have to make. We have capacity ready,” he added. “We can innovate at the pace of inspiration, versus innovating at the pace of a capital budget.”

The Grapevine Sam’s Club is literally bristling with tech, not just in the form of the hulking blue AI-powered gateways. There’s a pizza robot in the café that can knock out 100 pies per hour, RFID sensors on every aisle, computer vision pallet scanners on the loading docks, and a fleet of battery-powered coolers that will extend the club’s delivery range for perishables.

It’s Sam’s Club’s first new store in seven years and a model for the roughly 30 new locations and an unspecified number of remodels planned for the next five years.

Walmart, for its part, has a clear incentive to experiment with new technology at Sam’s Club. After growing sales by nearly 50% over the past five years, Sam’s Club’s $86 billion in revenue is still less than half of what Costco’s North American business makes. There’s plenty of ground to gain.

Several shoppers told BI they’ve been using the new tech at other Dallas-area stores and that it generally worked as expected, apart from a few hiccups due to the larger-than-usual crowd at the grand opening. Many of the shoppers had Costco memberships too. One shopper told BI he planned to cancel his.

Sam’s Club has also been a test-bed for retail concepts that eventually find their way into Walmart’s 4,600 US stores and beyond. Walmart Plus members can use a similar mobile app scan-and-go feature, and the businesses continue to combine resources — recently merging their supply chain management teams, BI first reported.

Former Sam’s Club CEO John Furner is now CEO of Walmart US, and Nicholas was instrumental in planning the modernization of Walmart’s store fleet during his earlier stint as chief operating officer for Walmart US.

During the interview, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon strolled over to say hello as he wrapped up his tour of the store. He, too, previously served as Sam’s Club CEO.

Many of the same design principles in Grapevine can be observed at Walmart’s recently remodeled stores, such as low-friction checkout options, larger dedicated space for e-commerce fulfillment, and tightly interconnected use of mobile app shopping through scannable codes and showcase displays.

Nicholas said he wants to transform shopping at Sam’s Club into a “delightful” experience, whether that means using AI to interpret the jumbled contents of a shopping cart or redesigning the pockets on the Member’s Mark jogger sweatpants to be an inch deeper after feedback so keys and phones are less likely to fall out when sitting.

“My hope is that Sam’s Club, when you shop, feels like what it’s like to shop in the future. That’s what I hope, and so that’s my job,” he said. “This is a glimpse of that.”