As the competition between Walmart and Amazon continues to intensify, the big-box chain now has a new partner against the e-commerce giant—FedEx Office.
Walmart and FedEx have tested a store-within-a-store concept in about 50 locations across North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas and Colorado, according to an article by CNBC.
The successful pilot program is now leading the two companies to test the concept within additional stores. The small-format FedEx Office shops will be added to 500 Walmart locations within the next two years, the companies announced at the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas.
“We gravitated toward Walmart because they have this fantastic physical infrastructure,” Brian Philips, CEO of FedEx Office, says to CNBC. “We are already great partners with Walmart on the transportation side, so it was natural for us to talk about a store-within-a-store format.”
Through this partnership, FedEx Office locations inside Walmart stores will allow customers to have their packages held on-site for up to five business days, which may be helpful for customers depending on where they live or if they’re worried about theft from home deliveries, the CNBC article adds.
Based on the pilot program, customers have been shopping Walmart after visiting FedEx in higher frequency, the article states. The FedEx Office shops will cover 450 to 750 square feet, and will provide employment to a total of 2,000 employees.
“The goal of the expanded relationship within stores is to reduce some strain on fulfilling ‘last-mile’ deliveries,” CNBC reports. “Amazon, Target and others have been looking for ways to do more of the same. Amazon, for example, has started placing its pickup lockers within Whole Foods stores and even malls. Target recently acquired Grand Junction and Shipt to bolster its supply chain.”