Inviting you to join the club in times of doubt and uncertainty could be a great Walmart advertisement to accelerate the expansion of its Sam’s Club stores as competition intensifies with warehouse rivals Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club.
All three have set ambitious expansion plans and have been mapping out their strategies to try to protect their buyers from the worst inflationary impacts of tariffs as imports are affected by higher import costs.
Walmart said it wants to open 15 new locations per year «for the foreseeable future» and is also willing to remodel all of its roughly 600 existing locations, Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas said in a statement. investors meeting on Wednesday past.
Importantly, the chain has launched plans to double its membership, sales, and profits over the next decade, in part due to the strong growth of its e-commerce operations and also because pressured American shoppers are turning to discount clubs to stretch their dollars.
Nicholas said the company is confident it will see strong returns in sales and membership revenue while the entire Sam’s Club store portfolio is undergoing renovations.
Growth of Sam’s Club
“This is one of the most rapid and scalable transformations taking place in retail today,” Nicholas said. “We invested with the intention of becoming the best retail club in the world, both in our fleet, our employees, and our member experience.”
The ambitions were set after BJ’s Wholesale Club announced in early March its intention to open between 25 and 30 new locations over the next two fiscal years. The company also announced that it will open several clubs in Dallas-Fort Worth, both on-premises and at gas stations, starting in early 2026, marking its debut in Texas.
Meanwhile, Costco plans to open 29 new locations this year, though it did not specify how many of the new Costco warehouses will be in the U.S. Chief Executive Ron Vachris also said of the tariffs that the company plans to «minimize the impact of related cost increases on our members» and has been negotiating with suppliers.
Sam’s Club CFO Todd Sears added in the meeting that between 80% and 90% of Sam’s Club’s revenue comes from membership fees, while half of the company’s members shop online or use the store’s Scan & Go technology when shopping in its physical stores. He added that about 40% of the transactions Sam’s Club now records are digital, and that this measure includes its Just Go checkout technology and AI-based personalized advertising.
The shift to omnichannel is significant because customers who use Sam’s Club’s online tools shop three times more often than in-store customers, buy products from twice as many categories, and spend three times more than other customers, according to Tom Ward, Sam’s Club’s director of end-to-end operations.
About Sam’s Club Grapevine
Sam’s Club is a $90 billion division of Walmart Inc. and currently operates out of 600 clubs across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and members of those omnichannel clubs also renew their memberships at a 10% higher rate than other Sam’s Club shoppers, Ward added.
As part of its remodeling and testing of new formats, Sam’s Club renovated its Sam’s Club Grapevine, with a new dance floor and an omnichannel showroom to «reinvent the member shopping experience and give them a new way to interact with items.»
The checkout counters replace the existing ones, offering a space where members can explore online exclusives, use Scan & Go to add items to their cart, and have their purchases delivered directly to their door. Sam’s Club’s new offering also includes a sushi island and food delivery solutions, in addition to a full-service pharmacy, optical shop, and hearing care centers.
