Dive Brief:
- Sam’s Club announced Thursday plans to open two new distribution centers outside of St. Louis and Minneapolis early next year.
- The upcoming St. Louis facility will serve as a distribution and fulfillment center while the facility serving the Minneapolis area will be a multi-purpose center.
- Sam’s Club now has three distribution centers planned to open in early 2024, including one in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Dive Insight:
The two newly announced distribution centers build on the Walmart-owned retailer’s multi-year growth plan aimed at improving end-to-end capabilities.
The St. Louis distribution center, scheduled to open in January, spans 370,000 square feet and is located at 5710 Inner Park Drive in Edwardsville, Illinois. The facility will create over 100 jobs and hiring for hourly associates will begin this month.
Sam’s Club’s Minneapolis-area center, located at 7400 Hentges Way in Shakopee, Minnesota, is slated to open in March. The facility is 365,000 square feet and will employ more than 80 associates with hiring already underway.
“We’re designing our supply chain network to strengthen our omni-channel experience and increase efficiencies and delivery speed to wherever our members decide to shop with us and receive their products,” Joseph Godsey, Sam’s Club’s senior vice president of supply chain, said in a statement.
In August, Sam’s Club announced plans to open a 300,000-square-foot multi-purpose distribution center in Oklahoma City in early 2024.
In January, Sam’s Club announced plans to modernize its supply chain through new distribution and fulfillment centers in addition to opening more than 30 new club locations over the next few years.
However, despite its plans to open five distribution centers in 2023 starting with a facility in Georgia slated to open in Q3, Sam’s Club has not formally announced whether the center is operational or if other distribution centers have opened this year.
A Sam’s Club spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the status of its distribution centers by press time.
In addition to opening new facilities, Sam’s Club said in January that it aims to retrofit numerous existing distribution centers over the next several years to bolster its physical and digital capabilities as well as launch facilities with “state-of-the-art automation and robotics.”
