Walmart to apply its learnings from its Jetblack’s pitfalls to other ventures

New York – Earlier this month, Walmart Inc. announced it will cease its New York focused e-commerce experiment Jetblack.

The announcement comes barely a couple of years after the launch of the membership-based service which targeted affluent families living in New York City. It allowed customers to text an order and get any item, except fresh foods, delivered.

Walmart said it would apply insights from Jetblack to e-commerce in other ways. The company said 58 of Jetblack’s nearly 350 employees will keep their jobs and become a team focused on conversational commerce within Walmart.

Jetblack subscription program combined human and artificial intelligence to offer product recommendations to upscale customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and was the first project launched from Walmart’s Store No8 technology incubator in 2018.

“We’ve learned a lot through Jetblack, including how customers respond to the ability of ordering by text as well as the type of items they purchase through texting,” wrote Scott Eckert, SVP, next-generation retail and principal, Store No8, in a Walmart blog’s post. “We’re eager to apply these learnings from Jetblack and leverage its core capabilities within Walmart.”

"The digital space is all about failing fast and often," wrote Ryan Mathews, CEO of Black Monk Consulting cited y ‘Forbes’. "What Jetblack teaches all of us — including Walmart — is that sometimes you shouldn’t stay at the party so long," he added.