Walmart divests of Shoes.com

Just days after Walmart made a deal to sell the Bare Necessities retail business, the retail giant is also divesting Shoes.com, according to several media organizations, and first reported by Bloomberg.

Walmart acquired Shoes.com in 2017 for $9 million. The pending sale is to private equity firm CriticalPoint Capital. Neither party has made the details of the deal public.

Walmart has said Bare Necessities and Shoes.com would continue to offer a majority of their items on Walmart.com.

The sale is the third divestiture of Walmart’s online portfolio, and it also follows the wind-down of Jet.com, which has consolidated with Walmart.com. 

Walmart U.S. eCommerce Marc Lore said late last year that Walmart would continue to focus on growing its brands instead of acquiring them. 

He pointed to the success of the Allswell mattress-in-a-box and bedding collection that Walmart launched in early 2018. He said Walmart took Allswell from concept to a multi-hundred-million brand requiring minimal investment. 

“This was like an ‘aha’ for us,” he said. “This is super interesting. We can create these ourselves.”

Lore said Walmart is focusing on building brands that can cut across stores and sell online.

Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon has previously said the company’s online business is cutting losses, taking longer than he anticipated. Walmart sold ModCloth in October 2019 after owning it for just two years. This chic apparel business sold to Go Global Retail for an undisclosed amount. 

Walmart also recently confirmed a bid for the video-sharing platform TikTok in a partnership with Microsoft. 

Much of Walmart’s focus has been growing its Walmart.com platform organically and further concentrating on its omnichannel vision. 

Strong second-quarter e-commerce sales gains of 97% and a recent consolidation in the e-commerce and in-store merchandising teams are expected reel in expenses and continue to boost overall profits into next year. 

Moody’s retail analyst Charlie O’Shea said that the retailer “continues to raise the bar for multi-channel retail as the company continues to leverage its massive store base to support its e-commerce initiatives.”