Walmart plans this week to shut down a pair of stores in Bentonville, Arkansas, and Lincolnwood, Illinois, that offer only pickup and delivery service, marking the end of a nearly decade-long experiment by the retailer aimed at improving convenience for e-commerce customers, according to a company spokesperson.
Walmart without stores is nonsensical.
I’m not 100% sure of the timing, but Asda in the UK shut down there dark store/CFC near London pre-pandemic. I think this closure was while Wal*Mart still owned Asda (hadn’t been sold yet to the Issa Brothers as a PE funded transaction, to run alongside their EG group chain of fuel station/convenience stores in the UK)
The location wasn’t open long, couple of years at most, waste of double digit millions on a implementation of Manhattan WMS and a comprehensive set of traditional mechanisation–product to picker, ASRS for stock and for picked order marshalling to delivery vans, plus pick by cart and conveyoring for frozen and bulky/heavy lines, scaled for tens of thousands of customer orders per 24 hour day (deliveries running 18x7x52 except Christmas day, Boxing day, New Years Day, Easter Sunday)