An affluent suburb of Hamilton, Ont. is ground zero for Lee Tappenden’s discount store of the future.
The chief executive officer of Wal-Mart Canada Corp. is touring a supercentre in Ancaster that is designed for the digital age. It makes big bets on some of the retailer’s top categories, such as groceries, toys, children’s clothing and health and wellness items, and scales back on others, including furniture, cribs and strollers – items that customers are often buying online.
At the store’s entrance, Mr. Tappenden reaches for one of the mobile scanning guns available for shoppers as a test here. Customers can scan each of their purchases as they move through the aisles, with the bill already tallied by the time they get to the checkout. The CEO makes a beeline for the refrigerated (8 degrees) walk-in fruits-and-vegetables room – another first for Wal-Mart Canada – and admires the rows of lettuce, strawberries and other wilt-prone produce.
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