Walmart Is Going Upscale, But It Doesn’t Mean What You Think

With a selection of aspirational new apparel brands, a redesigned online home section and alignments with big names like Bonobos and, yes, Lord & Taylor, Walmart appears to have assembled a strategy for winning style-conscious shoppers while maintaining its price-conscious core. It has also evidently determined the right balance of flair vs. functional for competing with Amazon and Target. The goal may make sense, but it’s not guaranteed. Walmart wants more upscale, fashion-focused shoppers for their individual sales gains and the bigger basket each one could generate. However, it’s gotten lost on this path before. In 2005, Walmart’s Metro 7 fashion brand tanked; later designer lines with Max Azria and Norma Kamali also withered. What makes this run differently is Walmart appears to be applying lessons from the past to a potentially more open-minded market base, thanks to a fashion world cracked wide open to the masses by technology. Could its latest blend of fashion actions cause people to refer to the low-cost leader as “Walmarché?” History will tell. Read more at Forbes.