Walmart is selling the online apparel brand Eloquii to FullBeauty Brands, marking the retailer’s third divestiture of a direct-to-consumer brand this year.

The big-box retailer sold Bonobos to WHP Global and Express earlier this month and offloaded Moosejaw to Dick’s Sporting Goods in February. The sales are a reversal of a 2017-18 strategy led by Marc Lore, Walmart’s former head of e-commerce.

The retailer bought Eloquii in 2018 for a reported $100 million, one of the numerous digital apparel brands with niche and loyal consumer bases. The goal was to build out the retailer’s online assortment with higher-margin apparel and home merchandise. The acquisitions would also bring in talent that could help Walmart accelerate its digital strategy.

“Eloquii joined Walmart’s portfolio of digitally native vertical brands to expand our Women’s assortment in sizes 14+ and offer the unique and differentiated product in an underserved but growing segment,” Walmart spokesperson Jaeme Laczkowski said in a statement. “Since acquiring Eloquii, Walmart.com has grown to hundreds of millions of items, and we’ve decided it’s the right time to sell Eloquii.”

FullBeauty Brands is buying Eloquii for an undisclosed sum, retaining its co-founder and brand leader, Julie Carnevale. Eloquii will join a portfolio of online plus-size apparel, shoes, and swimwear brands under FullBeauty Brands, which has 5 million active customers. 

Walmart re-engineering its business in 2023

Walmart is re-engineering its supply chain and business model in 2023. The brand aims to fulfill customer needs with a more intelligent and connected omnichannel network enabled by greater data use, intelligent software, and automation. 

The outcome improves in-stock, inventory accuracy, and flow whether customers shop in stores, pick up, or have a delivery.

Walmart showcased its supply chain innovation Tuesday at its Brooksville, Fla., regional distribution center as one piece of how the company is building a scaled system of supply chain capabilities that uses data, software, and robotics. 

Through automation and state-of-the-art technology, the company illustrated how the increased item storage allows the distribution center to provide a more consistent, predictable, and higher-quality delivery service to stores and customers and react more quickly to customer demand.

Stores operate as a place to shop and as fulfillment centers and delivery stations. Distribution and fulfillment centers hold a mix of items from suppliers and sellers. This allows Walmart to use its existing assets more flexibly and efficiently for new working methods.

By the end of Fiscal Year 2026, Walmart believes roughly 65% of stores will be serviced by automation, approximately 55% of the fulfillment center volume will move through automated facilities, and unit cost averages could improve by about 20%.

As the changes are implemented across the business, one of the outcomes is roles that require less physical labor but have a higher pay rate. Over time, the company anticipates increased throughput per person due to automation while maintaining or improving its associates' number as new roles are created.

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Dutch multi-channelers, physical shops for whom online selling is a side activity, saw their turnover increase with 26.5%. Total retail turnover, online and offline, was 4.3% higher in February in comparison to February 2018. The sales volume has increased by 3.5% in the past year.

Dutch online retail: popular markets

Companies that are selling DIY items, kitchens, floors, furniture and home furnishings accomplished the largest growth in sales in February. Last January, these sectors were also the most popular amongst Dutch consumers, as they experienced the biggest growth in January as well as February. Turnover from shoe companies, leather goods, clothing companies, consumer electronics and kitchen appliances, cosmetics and leisure items, are also higher than a year ago.

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Online sales generated on web-based marketplaces have grown 14%, while sales via apps on smartphones and tablets grew by 20%. While the total turnover grew, the average order value of an online purchase fell by 4 euros year-on-year, to 63 euros in this second quarter of 2018. On the contrary, according to the French e-commerce federation, there was an increase in the frequency of purchases.

The most visited e-commerce websites in France are, not surprisingly, Amazon, CDiscount and vente-privee. In 2017, e-commerce represented a total of 8.7% of overall French retail sales, up from 7.7% in 2016.

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■ Cross-border shoppers in developing markets are increasing significantly. Forrester’s survey data show an increase in online adults shopping online across borders in many European and Asia Pacific countries. Online cross-border buyer growth in Latin America, Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East will see double-digit compound annual growth over the next five years — significantly more than the growth in Europe and North America.

■ Marketplaces are increasing their share of cross-border sales. Cross-border shoppers prefer to use global marketplaces when they shop abroad.  Alibaba, which holds half of the online B2C market in China, increased its share of online sales from outside China to 7% in 2015.  In Japan, online marketplace Rakuten reported 41% growth in cross-border sales in 2015, more than twice the growth of the domestic eCommerce market.  In Germany, France, and the UK, more than half of cross-border buyers buy from Amazon and eBay.  

■ Cross-border shopping is becoming easier and faster. Free-trade zones (FTZs) in China lower taxes on imported goods. Bonded warehouses within FTZs allow retailers to ship goods across borders in anticipation of a sale, reducing the time to deliver to the consumer to just two to three days.  As cross-border shopping develops, cross-border buyers look to reduce shipping costs and delivery times by shopping closer to home. Forrester’s survey data shows for example that 38% of online cross-border buyers in South Korea bought from other Asian countries in 2015 up from 35% in 2014.

Price, Choice, And Authenticity Drive Cross-Border Shoppers
Consumers shop across borders to find cheaper goods, goods that are not available in their domestic market, or to shop at international retailers they can trust.  Although cross-border shopping often implies longer delivery times and higher delivery costs than for domestic purchases, the price (including shipping), choice, and authenticity of products drives consumers to shop across borders:

■ Price. A country's cross-border shopping correlates with the country's average price of goods. The higher a country's price level index, the higher the opportunity for online shoppers to find retail items cheaper outside their domestic market.  For example, domestic goods are expensive in the Nordic region and in Australia, which explains why more than 70% of Nordic shoppers and 80% of Australian online shoppers have purchased from abroad.

■ Choice. Larger competitive domestic online markets, such as Germany, France, the UK, and the US, inhibit the need for shoppers to buy goods across borders.  Online buyers in countries with small eCommerce markets, such as Russia, Mexico, and India, are more likely to shop across borders to find a better choice of goods. Canada is also a small online market; it’s less than a 10th of the size of the US. Given the convenience of having a large online market on its doorstep, it is not surprising that one-third of Canadian online retail sales in come from across the US border.

■ Authenticity. Product quality and authenticity are also important factors for cross-border shoppers, especially in India and China.  Chinese shoppers favour foreign brands over domestic brands notably for luxury goods, baby food, and beauty products.  Alibaba has recently undergone criticism for not managing counterfeit goods on its websites; this has hurt its reputation and further reinforced the need for online shoppers to buy across borders from recognized overseas websites to guarantee the authenticity of their purchases.

Retailers Must Embrace The Opportunities Of Cross-Border Shopping
Shopping across borders not only helps retailers understand new consumer needs, but it also helps logistics companies develop more efficient ways to deliver goods across the globe while improving the customer experience of the online cross-border buyer. Cross-border shopping helps retailers:

■ Develop a more integrated cross-border delivery network. Shipping costs are the most common reason in Europe for not completing an online purchase.  With half of all cross-border retail taking place between regions, online retailers are increasingly investing in global logistics solutions for efficient cross-border delivery. Both Alibaba and Amazon have made major investments in global supply chain infrastructure to facilitate cross-border retail.  Amazon is expanding its logistics operations in China to reduce logistics costs and make it easier for Chinese merchants and manufacturers to transport their goods to major hubs around the world.

■ Use online habits to drive cross-border habits. As in domestic online retail, apparel and accessories is the most popular cross-border category; one-fifth of the EU-5's online cross-border shoppers report that they've recently ordered clothes/accessories from a website outside their own country.  In Australia, which is a mature online cross-border market, the growth in cross-border commerce mirrors eCommerce growth.  Inhibitors to cross-border trade are similar to those associated with online shopping — whether that’s web interfaces that don’t adapt to the shopper’s preferred device, the inability to deliver content in their preferred language with their preferred payment and delivery options, or the lack of credibility and authenticity of the goods bought.

■ Identify gaps and opportunities within domestic online markets. Understanding the categories that cross-border shoppers buy helps identify gaps and opportunities within domestic markets. For example, it can highlight different prices for the same goods in different markets or how domestic markets don’t meet online shopper needs.  In 2015 only 17% of French online cosmetics buyers bought beauty products across borders, compared with 34% of their Italian peers.  Given that France is a key provider of premium cosmetics products to Europe, it is not surprising that French online beauty buyers are less likely to shop across borders than the Italians.  

This report uses data from Forrester’s Global Online Cross-Border Retail Forecast, 2016 To 2021 and from Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® surveys to understand online cross-border shopper behaviour. Michael O’Grady is a Senior Forecast Analyst at Forrester based in London.

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