Walmart offshoots look to the future

Walmart subsidiary, Code Eight, is testing a personal shopping service for “busy New York moms,” letting them get product recommendations and make purchases through text messaging. Household items are delivered for free within 24 hours; other purchases are delivered within two business days. Returns are picked up for free at a customer’s place of residence.

Meanwhile, Walmart’s startup incubator, Store No. 8, is working on Project Kepler, one aim of which is to develop physical stores without checkout lines or cashiers, similar to Amazon’s Amazon Go initiative.

Rent the Runway co-founder Jennifer Fleiss is heading up Code Eight, whilst the aforementioned Project Kepler project is fronted by Mike Hanrahan, the co-founder and former CTO at Jet.com, which Walmart bought for $3 billion.