Dive Brief:
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Story, a New York City concept store that positions itself as a “magazine-like” curator, has partnered with Wal-Mart’s Jet.com for a grocery effort called “Fresh Story,” according to a Story blog post. Merchandise also includes some non-grocery items, such as sushi socks and smart cooking gadgets.
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The pop-up shop opens on Wednesday and will run for six weeks, according to a report from The Street.
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The shop will feature in-store events like presentations from chef Mario Batali, makeup guru Bobbi Brown and mixologists from Hella Cocktail Co., according to Story’s blog post.
Dive Insight:
Jet isn’t the first retailer to partner with Story — Target took a spin in 2014, as has The Home Depot, among others. Story rotates its merchandise every few weeks with the tagline: “point of view of a magazine, changes like a gallery, sells things like a store.”
It’s a curious move for Jet, though, considering the e-commerce upstart’s appeal as a money-saving juggernaut, with a “secret sauce” algorithm that helps shoppers save via a variety of fulfillment choices. That algorithm is widely seen as the main attraction for Wal-Mart, which ponied up $3.3 billion to acquire Jet last year and hire its founder, Marc Lore, as its U.S. e-commerce chief in the process.
The tie-up between Story and Jet, temporary though it is, comes as Amazon — the retailer that Jet was first positioned to disrupt — continues to work on its decade-long fresh grocery effort. Jet, meanwhile, has been selling fresh groceries online since last year in select cities.
Wal-Mart is the largest grocer in the U.S., with the category delivering half of the company's overall sales. But no-frills grocery stores from abroad — Aldi, Lidl and Aldi cousin Trader Joe’s — threaten to disrupt the space with bottom-of-the-barrel prices and streamlined inventory. That has helped spark a price war this year in consumer products and food sales, led by Wal-Mart and increasingly joined by the likes of Kroger and Target. Similar competition from those retailers in the U.K. has been devastating to Wal-Mart's grocery efforts there.
