Two new online fulfillment centers are to be built in Texas and Pennsylvania for Wal-Mart (WMT 0.46%).
According to a company press release, the centers will dedicate their operations to delivering online shipments faster and more cheaply, and will create more than 600 new positions (275 in Texas, and more than 350 in the Pennsylvania location) for full-time Wal-Mart staff. The company said the center in Pennsylvania -- with more than 1 million square feet -- will be Wal-Mart's largest center of its kind.
Representatives from Wal-Mart believe that these new developments will help propel the company into the next generation of e-commerce, because in president and CEO Joel Anderson's words, "we gain a significant advantage by being positioned in the most important location --close to our customers... [This] allows us to get more products to our customers faster and at a lower cost."
The new centers will be able to store hundreds of thousands of items in a broad array of categories, from electronics to apparel and more. The 800,000-square-foot Fort Worh, Texas, center has already begun shipping orders as of last week, while Wal-Mart's Bethlehem, Pa., location is expected to open in the first quarter of the next fiscal year.
Wal-Mart has increased its projection for online sales this year, to $10 billion from $9 billion. Globally, online sales increased 30% in the second quarter. However, Wal-Mart's online sales remain only a sliver of its total revenue of $466.1 billion, excluding membership fees. Wal-Mart has more than 130 distribution centers.
-- Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
