Walmart's GoLocal Service Has Its First Customer: Home Depot

Home Depot will become the first customer of the recently announced GoLocal delivery service launched by Walmart.

The two mega-retailers announced the launch of the program on Wednesday. The service will begin in select markets in the weeks ahead with a broader rollout by the end of the year.

"The Home Depot is continuously working to give customers the most convenient shopping experience in home improvement, and that includes providing a wide range of fast and reliable delivery options," said Stephanie Smith, senior vice president of supply chain for Home Depot. "This partnership brings us even closer to our goal of offering same-day or next-day delivery to 90% of the U.S. population." 

Home Depot HD customers will be able to schedule same-day or next-day delivery of items such as tools, fasteners, paint, and other supplies. The company said eligible items must fit easily into a car. The option for Walmart GoLocal delivery will be enabled in the online checkout experience.

"We're honored to work with The Home Depot in our shared goal of making fast and reliable local delivery available in every community we serve, including rural and suburban areas, where we both have a strong retail presence," said John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. "We're excited to welcome The Home Depot as Walmart GoLocal's first retail client and look forward to helping power their local delivery efforts."

Walmart WMT announced GoLocal in August. The platform effectively commercializes Walmart's delivery operations, allowing the retailer to offer logistics services to businesses.  

"We've worked hard to develop a reliable last-mile delivery program for our customers," Tom Ward, senior vice president of last-mile for Walmart U.S., said at the time. "Now we're pleased to be able to use these capabilities to serve another set of customers, local merchants. Be it delivering goods from a local bakery to auto supplies from a national retailer, we've designed Walmart GoLocal to be customizable for merchants of all sizes and categories so they can focus on doing what they do best."

Related:

Read: What does Walmart's GoLocal service mean for last-mile delivery?

Read: Promise fulfilled: UPS buys into same-day delivery with Roadie

The pandemic accelerated sales for Home Depot as stuck-at-home Americans embarked on renovation projects. Many of those sales happened online, with the home improvement chain seeing sales increase 86% on its digital platforms in 2020 versus 2019, with more than half of those orders fulfilled through stores. Home Depot's 2,300 retail stores offer traditional in-store shopping experiences as well as the ability for customers to place orders online and pick them up in-store at a service desk, locker or curbside. A scheduled delivery is also available. In fiscal 2020, Home Depot moved a record 1.2 billion cubic feet of products through its delivery network and achieved record sales of $132.1 billion.  

Home Depot began investing in delivery services in 2019 with an investment in Roadie's $37 million funding round that year. Home Depot is a Roadie customer.

Roadie offers "on-the-way" delivery services. Launched in 2015, Roadie matches same-day delivery origins and destinations with the unused capacity of vehicles already making trips on those routes. Begun as a consumer-to-consumer service, Roadie now handles deliveries from businesses of various types.

UPS UPS announced in September that it was acquiring Roadie for an undisclosed sum. Roadie also has delivery agreements with Tractor Supply, Best Buy, and Advanced Auto and this summer reached an agreement with Bed Bath & Beyond BBBY and buybuy BABY.

Click for more articles by Brian Straight.

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